There's a lot of talk in social media marketing circles these days about employee advocacy - empowering and/or inspiring your employees to share your brand content through their own social media networks. The popularity of employee advocacy programs stems from the practice's proven ability to drive increased leads and awareness for brands.
A study by LinkedIn in March 2016 revealed that employees receive 2x higher click through rates than their employer when sharing the same content. With results like that, it's no surprise to see more businesses taking notice.
Furthermore, 92% of people trust recommendations from friends and family when making a buying decision. If sharing brand content through advocates in this manner can further influence buying decisions so significantly, then it's definitely worth the effort.
But another interesting consideration in advocacy is thinking about which other advocates, aside from your employees, you might possibly be able to utilize to help increase your outreach?
Here are five additional advocacy avenues to contemplate.
1. Sales Partners
If you sell indirectly to customers, such as via channel partners - resellers, retailers, and wholesalers - why not involve them in your advocacy program and enable them to share your social media content too? By doing this, you can help them grow their own online presence, whilst enabling you to increase your potential reach, thus benefiting both parties.
A recent survey we conducted with Microsoft's partners showed that 80% of them felt they lacked time to post content on social media, with a further 68% saying they lacked content to share.
By enabling your partners to share your content, you're actually helping them resolve this issue, and helping to build your own brand at the same time.
2. Employees
Yes, we've already noted employees, but it's important that businesses consider the breadth of options on employee advocacy - don't limit the sharing of content to your marketing team.
This is often where businesses go wrong - you should seek to encourage all employees to share your brand content.
Of course, not all content will be of interest to all your employees, but by using a sophisticated social media platform you can categorize the type of content and choose who to send it to. An example being product news to the tech department, or commercial content to your sales team(s).
You don't need to share the same content to all employees, tailor it to their interests. This way you will receive a higher number of employees sharing your material on social media.
3. Customers
Enabling customers to share your social media content is a really interesting one.
Everyone loves to look at reviews before making a purchase decision. So if you encourage your 'best' and most proactive customers to share your content, you can effectively achieve the following:
- Sway buying decisions and drive increased leads
- Increase brand reach
- Create brand loyalty
4. Influencers
Influencers cover a full spectrum of individuals. This can include celebrities, industry thought-leaders or, really, anyone who likes your brand and can affect another individual's decision.
But you do have to be a little careful here - you don't want the message to come across false. It's important that the message is delivered as if they're sharing your content due to their own genuine interest and loyalty to your brand, not because of a monetary reward.
5. Invest in the right program
According to a recent survey by Sirius Decisions, 83% of organizations view advocacy/reference contributions as critical or important, yet advocacy programs receive just 10% of marketing program dollars, on average. For this reason, it's important to do your research and find the right program for your brand in order to prove its value and transformational ability, and encourage further investment in the future.
If you haven't already done so, it's time to look into how you can encourage your employees to share your content on social media - but while you're at it, you might as well enable all your advocates to share your content as well. This way you'll reach a far greater audience and receive increased recognition, maximizing your brand awareness efforts.