Will employees happily share your brand content? The short answer: it depends.
If you’re asking employees to share brand posts that aren’t authentic to who they are or what they’d normally post, they won’t share it – understandably so – it’s not the content their friends and fans follow them for.
Employee advocacy isn’t about taking the same content you post on your brand networks and getting your employees to share it robot-like. Not only will that approach fail but your employees might resent you for asking them.
However, if you empower employees to talk about their role, their experience and expertise, their positive day to day experiences while working for you… that’s another matter entirely.
That’s how to create true employee influencers.
Content your employees will share – a step by step guide
- Give employees a variety of high-quality content prompts – these will give them an idea of the type of content they can share that also fits with your brand… but crucially, gives them freedom to express their own personality
- Provide them with content examples or customisable content to help build their thought leadership and own personal branding online
- Give them engaging challenges to help drive high-quality, employee-generated content
- Empower them to contribute their voice as part of your brand
- Provide them with localised content (e.g. relevant content to their role or region they work in)
- Regularly provide a fresh choice of content and prompts: text, images, video, polls
- Monitor the posts employees share on behalf of your brand, not only to see the ROI and value it provides you but so you can provide employees with feedback
- Give positive feedback where appropriate and guidance if any posts are off-brand.