The very first question we were asked when we started EveryoneSocial was, “Will our employees really want to share company news and content?”
We didn’t know the answer then, but we believed that it would be “yes.” After all, employee advocacy is simply word-of-mouth marketing at scale. It’s something we’ve all been doing and asking others to do for millennia.
So that was our bet, but, like all new things, we didn’t actually know if it would turn out to be true.
Fortunately, based on our last 10+ years of data and learnings, there’s no doubt that the answer is “yes.” Your people 100% want to share company news and content to their networks.
Honestly, I can’t remember ever meeting anyone who said they wouldn’t want to do that.
It’s good for employees as individuals (they can build a personal brand, grow their networks, expand their industry knowledge, discover new opportunities, etc.), and it’s good for their companies.
But some major things have changed over the last 10 years that affect how you build and run an advocacy program. For one, the vast majority of all employees are now already active and sharing on social.
When we launched our first clients in 2012, LinkedIn had 90 million registered users. Today it has more than 1 billion.
The same goes with all the other networks: They’ve all seen a >10x increase over that period. So what does that mean for employee advocacy now and in the future?
What it means is that regardless of whether you have an employee advocacy program, most of your people are already sharing and engaging with content on social. And, in most cases, it’s content they created themselves!
So the question for marketing and comms teams shouldn’t be, “How do we get people to share our content?” It should be, “How do we benefit from what they’re already doing?”
Here’s an example to paint the picture: A client we recently met with had 60,000 shares over a 12-month period from their advocates in EveryoneSocial.
That’s awesome, but here’s where it gets interesting: 30,000 of those shares were company content and news (stuff the marketing and comms teams created), whereas the other 30,000 shares were content that the EMPLOYEES created (videos, photos, GIFs, etc.).
And I bet you can guess which shares drove the most impressions, clicks and engagements.
We’re in a new era of employee advocacy and it’s extremely exciting, but success really comes down to your platform and your strategy. There’s a HUGE difference between what we refer to as legacy tools and strategies, and how we approach advocacy here at EveryoneSocial.
It’s not about if or how you get your people to share your content — it’s about making it super simple for them to do so. It’s about not getting in your peoples’ way and leveraging the amazing stuff they’re already doing!
