The LinkedIn Pages team has given us many new features to improve Company Pages. Whilst I love features and functions as much as the next LinkedIn nerd, the true opportunity on LinkedIn comes from community, collaborations and conversations. Employee advocacy is your business’s secret weapon to go further faster by embracing all three.
If you haven’t used the search listening tool www.answerthepublic.com before, it really is a great place to start to understand what questions people are asking on a particular subject. I ran the tool on the search term “employee advocacy“, and this highlights all the questions people are searching for answers to.
What is Employee Advocacy?
Let’s keep this definition simple. It’s company employees promoting the company brand to their networks. Whilst the definition makes it sound simple the reality is it can be quite tricky to navigate.
Why Do Businesses Need Employee Advocacy?
The saying goes “many hands make light work”. Most employees will have access to larger networks and the company will benefit from leveraging this. In my research, it is quoted as anything up to 10X larger or maybe more in many cases.
The Top 3 Reasons Your Company Should Build an Employee Advocacy Programme
- Build your company brand credibility
- Amplify your company reach
- Increased revenue
How Do Employees Benefit from Employee Advocacy?
The trick to getting an employee advocacy programme to be successful is making sure that you have buy-in from all sides. Top-down, bottom-up – employees through to management.
When done well employees are engaged and recognise the benefits that come with the business support to build their personal brand.
When done poorly employees feel forced into something they don’t feel comfortable with or give up when they don’t feel their efforts are being recognised.
Listen in to the LinkedIn for B2B Growth Podcast “Tips to Build Employee Advocacy“, featuring employee advocacy expert Danielle Guzman.
Danielle shared so many practical tips to help businesses get started implementing advocacy. She shares her experience of creating programmes on a global scale as Global Head of Social Media at Mercer.
I always like to think about communities as it’s a long-term strategy. It’s not something that comes out of a box you can’t plug and play it. And it’s not a tactic. When people think I want to build a community they just figure there’s a checklist and they can just check the boxes and show up.
Danielle Guzman
How Can LinkedIn Company Pages Be Used for Employee Advocacy?
LinkedIn is the world’s number one B2B platform. It is also the most trusted. It makes sense if you operate in the B2B space that you use this as part of your strategy. The tools to support employee advocacy, whilst not perfect, are rapidly evolving.
One simple tool to assist is the “Notify Employees” button you can use once every 24 hours. This alerts a % of employees, depending on the size of your company, of a new post that has been created.
The “My Company Tab” is another great tool for companies that have more than 10 employees. I won’t go into detail, but you can find it all out “My Company” Tab on LinkedIn here.
Steps to Get Started on Your Employee Advocacy Programme
- Design & Strategy – this isn’t a checklist as Danielle says.
- Buy In – get the company vision aligned with the goals of the individual.
- Assessment – meet employees where they are at. Not everyone will be suitable and may have a different role to play in the background.
- Acknowledgement – CEOs, Business Owners, Senior Management you set the standard and can make or break the programme if you don’t give acknowledgment to active employees.
- Continuous Improvement – start off simple and work your way up. Track your progress with your analytics. This is a marathon so be patient and persistent.
Start thinking of ways that you can use your LinkedIn Company Page to build your employee personal brands. Highlight achievements in content, tag employees to let them know their work is being noticed.
Employee advocacy is a team sport. Whether you are the coach, the captain or a player you have a common goal. There is only an upside that comes with working together.
Cheers
MJR 😀
Michelle J Raymond is the founder of B2B Growth Co and has made her mark as a leading LinkedIn growth strategist, offering comprehensive strategies and training to brands eager to harness LinkedIn for business growth through thought leadership, content marketing or social selling techniques.
With 20+ years’ experience in B2B sales, and almost a decade of social selling on LinkedIn, Michelle stands out for her significant LinkedIn contributions as the co-author of two globally acclaimed books: “Business Gold,” the first book exclusively dedicated to LinkedIn Company Pages, and “The LinkedIn Branding Book,” and her insightful podcast Social Media for B2B Growth. Follow her YouTube channel @MichelleJRaymond for helpful how to’s.
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