How to Encourage Employees to Advocate for Your Brand on Social Media

If social media is already part of your organization’s marketing strategy, then it only makes sense to add employee advocacy to the mix. By leveraging your employees as brand ambassadors, you can quickly and measurably increase your social media reach with the audience you’re trying to engage. Here are five ways to get your employees excited about social media advocacy on behalf of your organization.

1. Lead by example

Major company initiatives stand a better chance of success when backed by the executive team. But we’re not just talking about getting leadership buy-in and support – we’re talking about your leaders serving as role models around social media advocacy. When employees see your executive team walking the walk and talking the talk, they’re more likely to join in.

Just as you need to identify the right employee champions for your advocacy program, it pays to pinpoint the best executive candidates. Determine which executive leaders have already established a strong social media presence and grasp the value of social, from awareness to community-building and onto employee advocacy. By sharing company-curated content with their networks, they can help pave the way for your employees to follow suit.

2. Motivate them to share

Even after your employees embrace the concept of social media advocacy, they will likely need encouragement to share content. They do, after all, have other priorities to contend with day to day.

That’s why it never hurts to occasionally remind them of the possible payoffs associated with your program. When they share relevant, thought-provoking content with their social networks, they can:

• Build their personal brands and establish themselves as thought leaders
• Boost brand awareness for the company
• Drive more and faster revenue generation
• Improve your organization’s talent acquisition efforts

3. Help them succeed

It can be easy to assume that your employees require little assistance. But few people keep pace with best practices for optimizing engagement on social media.

You can help your employees drive better results from their involvement by regularly sharing tips and tricks, such as:

• Best days and times of days to post
• How to improve post titles
• How to optimize social media profiles
• The ideal mix of content types and topics to share

4. Give the okay to be social at work

You want your employees to feel empowered and free to share content. But many employers discourage or frown upon the use of social media during work hours.

If that is or has been the culture in your organization, you should make it clear that the company is fully behind their participation and trusts them to use social media. A simple but thorough social media policy can help overcome hesitation.

5. Encourage them to connect with each other on LinkedIn

Encouraging your employees to link to each other keeps them connected, with your company serving as the basis for the shared bond. When they do connect, they will benefit professionally by expanding their networks. Those connections also benefit your company because these employees will be seeing more content – which means they will have more to share with their extended networks. This further increases your brand reach while helping to continually build out your community in an organic way.

It’s likely that your employees are already active on social media. You can help them to boost both the brand and their personal reputation through strategic employee advocacy. By continually providing employees encouragement and inspiration with these five tips, you can empower them to move the needle on both company and personal goals. 

LinkedIn’s employee advocacy platform is now integrated with the LinkedIn Pages experience. Learn more!