One approach for organisations who are launching an employee advocacy programme is to invite employees who already have large social media profiles to join.
We’ve seen this done successfully in large companies but it excludes the majority of employees who might want to take part.
So how can you involve employees who don’t yet have a strong social media presence and help them to become one of your trusted brand ambassadors?
Here’s our top tips to get started:
1. Create an internal community space
You don’t have to use an app or technology like the Togethr App, but you will need a centralised community space for your employees.
Use this space to provide employee advocates with coaching and advice on how to set up their social networks. Use it to give them brand assets, content ideas and advice on what content to share and what hashtags to use.
This centralised space is also really useful to give employee advocates a place to ask questions and talk to you and each other.
Clients who don’t use our app have used anything from internal Intranets to Google Plus for business and Slack to build their advocate communities.
2. Start by helping them to engage with others online
Social networks are called social for a reason. They aren’t broadcast channels.
Employees need to build a network on their chosen social media channel(s). They’ll need to find relevant people to follow and connect with, they’ll need to comment on these people’s posts and converse with them.
Like begets like, by joining other people’s conversations, people will join theirs when they’re ready to start posting brand related content.
You can support your staff by using your community space to provide them with guidance on how to find relevant people to follow and connect with – and how to talk to and engage with them.
A great place to start is with hashtags – they aren’t only important for employees to include in their own posts, they’re also vital in helping them to find an audience of like-minded professionals.
Provide your employees with a range of relevant hashtags to follow. They can use these to find and connect with others in their area of expertise and to make sure they are part of the existing conversations happening online.
Often, it’s worth employees spending several weeks doing this before they even begin to share brand related content.
3. Give them great content ideas
Whether your employees are established on their social media channels already or not, they’ll need to post great content that reflects your brand values.
You’ll want some control over the brand content they share but not to the extent that you stifle their creativity and authenticity.
You DO NOT have to give all of your employees the same, pre-written brand content to share.
Your aim is to help each and every employee in your programme to understand what content works for them, your brand and their followers.
If you have a particular marketing campaign and you want them to share some of the assets, that’s fine. But you also want them sharing thoughts about their role and what it’s like to work for you. You want them to share their unique expertise and experience with their followers and connections.
The key is to help your employees to build a personal, professional, multi-faceted social media presence – not just to broadcast ready-made brand content.