How to Get Employees to Use Advocacy Software
Your company has just committed to employee advocacy software (or is thinking about it) after diligent research about social selling, employee advocacy, and creating a team of engaged employees.
So now you are ready to jump into the software.
But as excited as you are, you may be wondering: “How am I going to get other employees active and actually use the software daily?”
It’s a question the EveryoneSocial team is sometimes asked via email and on demo calls. But it is a valid concern.
Since your fellow employees most likely are already logging into different platforms daily, you may also receive a collective “groan” at first when your company considers adding another.
However, below are a few tips that can help ensure your employees are consistently active in employee advocacy software.
Choose the Right Software
In order to have success with employee advocacy and employee engagement, you definitely want to choose the right software for your needs. There are quite a few options out there and all have unique features.
Ideally, you want software that is easy to navigate and learn, creates a visually appealing experience, integrates with other platforms, and fits your budgeting needs.
However, one of the more important aspects is that the software is accessible and easy for employees to engage with.
Some questions to ask might include:
- Does the software have an iOS and Android version?
- Is there a chrome extension?
- Does the software send internal emails of the latest content to share?
- What kind of data reporting is there?
- Is there software training or video tutorials?
These are aspects we have implemented into our software package at EveryoneSocial. Including a direct app in Salesforce so if your sales team is already in there they can use EveryoneSocial directly within.
It’s all about making it easier for employees to access the software.
If you have employee advocacy software or you are considering one that is difficult right from the start, you already create a barrier for employees.
Maybe you have committed to employee advocacy software and are happy with the platform and features. But if you think something is missing from your current platform or are interested in switching, feel free to reach out to our team and get your personal demo.
Organize Your Company Stream & Content
If you are the admin to the employee advocacy software or are working with the admin, one of the first priorities before inviting and activating employees is to organize your content.
Your goal is to turn employees into powerful marketers, sellers, and recruiters for your company.
This not only improves brand visibility but generates new quality leads and increases web traffic. You can’t do that if you are disorganized.
To achieve those desired results, you will want your employee advocacy software to be organized with relevant content streams. Each stream should be tailored to specific departments of your company with high-quality content.
This means keeping specific topics together, knowing which teams should have access to what, and includes what type of content you want to appear.
Without organization of content, you can overload a system with mediocre blog posts or resources that your employees don’t feel comfortable sharing on their networks.
Your content streams can get disorganized with random approved content all over if there is no plan in place.
Start off organizing and creating a plan for the content, it will be much easier for employees to interact with the right content and also not waste company time filtering through lower quality articles.
Create Tailored & Shareable Content
This goes with the above section, but this might be the more important aspect. Without good, quality content, why would employees willing share it to their networks?
Your employees should be seen as experts in their fields and respected by social peers. Give them interesting and relevant content, which will greatly improve your odds of employee engagement and social reach.
Here are some ideas of content you can create that will have employees wanting to share:
- Tell stories about the company and give insights into the culture. Create content about the people who work there without sounding like a standard, “this is what we do, buy our product.” Transparency and workplace culture is key.
- Create in-depth, educational content that answers relevant questions related to your industry. This can include tips, tutorials, questions customers or clients ask, videos, etc.
- Highlight real people and companies who successfully do business with your company. In the sales process especially, content like this shows uses and successes from real people that motivate others to buy. It also makes access and sharing content easier for your marketing and sales teams.
Incentivize Employees
While leaders of different departments may use and see value in employee advocacy, for the ultimate in social reach, brand visibility, and lead generation you want to have a lot of employees engaging with content.
It’s quite possible that most of your employees are happy to share content from your company on their socials, but how frequently and the consistency can greatly improve by incentivizing your employees.
Even if you have amazing content, there are no guarantee employees will share it. But this is where incentives can encourage those content shares.
Most, if not all employee advocacy platforms, will have reporting and some sort of internal leaderboard.
For instance, our software includes gamification and a leaderboard that tracks social reach and overall points. The more an employee shares, the higher they end up on the leaderboard.
Providing employees with cool perks or incentives each week, each month, and even each year will encourage employees to engage more often.
Some incentive examples can include gift cards, extra days off, cash bonuses, etc. This could include even recognition in meetings, specifical certificates, lunch with an executive, highlights in company newsletters.
Whatever comes to mind, companies can set their own incentives and recognition ideas for their employees.
Many employees also look at the leaderboard as a game besides a way to get some cool prizes. The company wins too because more consistent content is being shared by more employees and helps content go viral.
The Bottom Line
Employee advocacy software can seem intimidating at first. However, by selecting the right software, staying organized, and creating detailed content with incentives, you will get more employees fully engaged with the platform.
If you are looking for more tips and insight about employee advocacy software, check out some of the resources and blog posts below:
