What’s one competitive advantage of any high-growth company today that many still overlook?
Answer: Enabling employees to become influencers.
Or maybe you prefer the term advocates, evangelists, or subject matter experts. By that, I mean encouraging employees to create, share, and engage with social content during work.
Here’s What You Miss Without This Strategy
~ Competitiveness. Buying has changed and word-of-mouth is more important than ever. Plus, employees have awesome networks, many of which know nothing about your brand, industry, or value.
~ Growth. Look at Refine Labs, Gong, and Chili Piper as some quick examples. A solid portion of their results and reach is influenced by employees sharing their expertise and personalities and engaging on social media.
~ ROI. To get the same reach and impact employees on social media can have, you’ll need to spend big $$ on paid ads. Media spend won’t go away (nor will PR), but you can maximize results with employee social networks without needing nearly as many marketing dollars.
~ Top talent and hires. While this might be a candidate market, employees influence employer brand and the recruiting pipeline massively. People trust people as a clue to what it’s like to work at your company and the culture.
Every company needs to market, sell, and hire, and there’s no better way to build trust and reach thousands (or millions) of people than through the employee voice.
An employee advocacy tool can do all this — and more
Remember: Anyone from the intern to the CEO can influence others via their knowledge, skills, or expertise in something.
You don’t need thousands of followers. If you impact just one person, you have influence.
While you can launch an employee advocacy program manually, via Slack, or a project management tool, there’s a better option to consider: an employee advocacy solution.
These platforms, such as EveryoneSocial, make it easy to organize, share, and create content from one location, as well as distribute communications via Slack, email, and push notifications.
Plus, you get all the ROI and reporting to see the value your program generates.
But if this concept is new to you, getting a budget or committing to a paid plan can make you a bit hesitant at first. While we at EveryoneSocial know the value — and that it costs a fraction of what you’d spend on paid media — we get it.
So, is there a free employee advocacy tool?
You bet!
Get started with a free employee advocacy tool by signing up for EveryoneSocial’s Starter Plan, which is free forever!
While we work with companies of all sizes, we want to make it easier for any company to get into the product and harness the power of employee influencers.
And when you sign up, you get a two-week free trial of our Teams Plan to start, which has more features and reporting capabilities. And don’t worry — no credit card is required!
After the trial is up, you’re automatically downgraded to the Starter Plan (Free forever!), unless you decide to pay and continue with Teams (or want to go Enterprise).
Why It’s Good to Start With a Free Employee Advocacy Tool
A few reasons it might be good for your company to begin with a free employee advocacy tool like EveryoneSocia’s Starter Plan:
- You’re completely new to employee advocacy and activating employee influencers/
- Your company has fewer than 50 employees. (However, larger organizations can still use a free tool like EveryoneSocial, too)
- You currently have no budget for additional paid technology.
- You want to test and create a strategy around a platform
- You don’t need reporting, gamification, or other features
- You don’t know if you’ll use it for marketing, sales, or employer branding — or aim go company-wide
- Your company is just curious and wants to poke around.
- You’re unsure of how employees will take to this strategy/platform.
- You don’t have executive support yet, so this is a place you can start.
Why You’ll Want to Upgrade Your Employee Advocacy Tool
To truly generate amazing ROI via employee networks, you’ll want to upgrade to more valuable product features and support.
With the EveryoneSocial Teams Plan, you have access to these additional features:
- Account analytics and ROI data
- Gamification and leaderboards
- Automated content emails
- UTM tracking on all shares
- Private groups and moderators
Need more support? Use our Enterprise plan, which includes:
- Lower cost per active user
- Dedicated client success team
- Tailored implementation and training
- Powerful help center
- Speedy, industry-leading support
- SSO and SCIM provisioning
- Security and compliance SLAs
Signs You Need an Upgraded Employee Advocacy Tool
- Your work culture is strong and growing.
- There’s a solid content strategy in place.
- You have management and executive support.
- You want to support employee personal brands.
- You’re ready to make social at work a key business strategy.
- You have the budget for it or are willing to create budget from other channels.
- You eventually want to grow and scale the program.
If you want to know more about the power of employee influencers, check out the various use cases:
Ready to learn more about our Teams or Enterprise plans? Schedule your demo with our team. We love to answer any questions you may have.
