Our webinar sponsored by Social Chorus on October 28 featured Laura Lee, Social Media & Corporate Communications Manager at Nestle Purina; Liz Brown Bullock, founder of the Social Arts and Sciences Institute and former Director of Social Media and Community at Dell; and Gregory Shove, CEO and founder of Social Chorus. The overarching theme was that, as great as technologies are at enabling and measuring a program that unleashes employee networks, a company needs to invest in the "soft" areas as well.
Lee presented a detailed look at how Nestle Purina, working with Social Chorus, took a pilot program of already-engaged employees and provided them with the training and support to help them promote relevant content, share and interact, and measure their successes. Starting with a small pool of 50 last April, the program was awarded with additional resources and support from management, which recently extended it to all employees.
Key take-aways:
It's not just about the marketing power of your employees' social networks, which Cisco, for example, found were 10 times larger than their company's, the value can also be measured in employee loyalty and satisfaction.
Start small: Purina was able to target a relatively small group of employees and as a result was able to provide high-value, face-to-face training to make sure that the launch was a success and that the program would have high measures of satisfaction and executive buy-in.
Think long-term: Shove emphasized that the benefits of employee advocacy are tied to long-term commitment and value. With the influx of millennials into the workforce, we're fast moving from social advocacy to social workforce.
employee advocacy / shutterstock