Employee Advocacy

Employee Advocacy is a term used to describe the exposure that employees generate for brands using their own online assets. While social media is often the main medium for employee advocacy, these “online assets” include email, chat, forums, discussion boards and more. It has been shown time and time again that employee advocacy can have a major impact on revenue. According to the National Business Research Institute, a 12% increase in brand advocacy generates a 2x increase in revenue growth. It has also been found that socially engaged companies are 57% more likely to get more sales leads.

Features

At its core, employee advocacy is the promotion of an organization by its staff members.^[1] An employee advocate is someone who:
• Generates positive exposure and raises awareness for a brand through digital media or offline channels
• Recommends a company’s products or services to a friend or family member
• Represents the best interests of the company both internally and externally
• Can help build employee ownership of the organization
• Is an expert on your product or service and can be a credible spokesperson for your company
^[2] Employee Advocacy is sometimes considered to be a part of Advocate Marketing or Referral Marketing, or even Affiliate Marketing. While there are many similarities or overlaps with advocate or referral marketing, Employee Advocacy focuses on employees as the trusted channel for passing information to target audiences;^[3] whereas referral or advocate marketing typically use customers or other external audiences to distribute or amplify content and messages.^[4] Following are a few features of Employee Advocacy
• Boosts Social Media Presence
• Increases Employee Engagement
• Drives Sales
• Establishes Employees as Thought Leaders
• Provides Customers with Meaningful Interactions

Emerging Trends

While many companies have already understood its potential and have started using it, a lot of other companies are either not aware about it or are still deciding on whether to implement it. One of the major factors that is in play here is the employee strength of a company. With the social media platforms evolving everyday, the employee advocacy platforms also need to constantly evolve. This started off as a mere word of mouth, and now has evolved into a high end software that enables people to share, comment, like or tweet any content along with enabling the platform administrator(s) to read and analyse the metrics, organize and curated content for employee sharing, all in one spot, and the ability to automate content curation, for editors as well as employees ^[5]

See also

• Brand engagement
• Corporate social responsibility
• Empowerment
• Social Media
• Human resources
• Internal communications
• Internal marketing
• Digital Marketing
• Onboarding
• Organizational citizenship behavior
• Organizational commitment
• Positive psychology in the workplace
• Work engagement

References

1. http://www.socioadvocacy.com/blog
2. http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-business/7-ingredients-for-employee-social-advocacy/
3. http://linkhumans.com/blog/employee-advocacy-guide
4. http://socialmediagovernance.com/social-employee-advocacy-software-buying-guide/
5. http://www.socioadvocacy.com/benefits/