Start a discussion about the pioneers of employee advocacy, and one organization that always gets a mention is IBM. You don't have to search very hard online to find great examples of
how IBM drives ROI through employee advocacy, so I was delighted when Amber Armstrong, Program Director of IBM's Social Business Team, found time in her schedule to talk me through a recent, highly successful initiative.
"The program was inspired by the 2014 IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Tampa, Florida," explained Amber. "People wanted to share what they had learned about 'always-on' marketing with coworkers who weren't able to attend and with other connections in their networks. At that time, IBM hadn't designated a preferred content-sharing channel, so we invited suggestions from the team."
An Ideal Initiative for Employee Advocacy?
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Amy Tennison, who heads up our earned social-media strategy, discovered that IBM Corporate had implemented Dynamic Signal's VoiceStorm employee-advocacy platform as part of a separate project; it seemed ideally suited to our needs and Amy volunteered for the role of Project Leader."
Approval wasn't a problem; Maria Winans, Vice President of IBM Social Business Category, is an enthusiastic supporter, actively encouraging her people to try new ideas. "Maria is constantly asking 'What do you need?'" says Amber, "and we soon had 60 or 70 employees signed up for the program."
Working with
Michela Stribling, Social Business Program Director responsible for brand-channel content, Amy put together an initial project plan. Although employee advocacy - empowering employees to participate in achieving brand objectives by sharing content via personal social-media networks - is widely established throughout IBM, no two initiatives are identical.
Introducing people to VoiceStorm was a key part of the exercise; as with any employee-advocacy program, success depends not so much on the capabilities of the platform, but on the way in which it's used. Simply expecting people to broadcast content, parrot-fashion, is a recipe for disaster.
Why Success is Only the Tip of the Iceberg
Induction and training complete, Amy gave her team the green light. The initial results were very encouraging; as a direct outcome of their activity over the first three days, team members drove more than 25,000 clicks to shared content. Yet, there was an inconsistency that suggested this was only the tip of the iceberg. Some people elicited a far greater response than others, even though each person worked with the same raw material.
Amber's take on this key point is worth filing away for future reference. "For each tweet, share or post that a team member makes, the platform calculates the number of 'reactions' - retweets, likes or shares - that occur as a result. We found that more than 90 percent of the team's activity took place on Twitter. Some people, including me, garnered a large number of reactions.
"Yet others, sharing identical content, provoked little or no response," she told me. "The disparity has to be audience-based, since the only variables are the reach of each person's network and, to a lesser extent, the impact of the way in which they share.When we looked more closely, it was clear that some people were comfortable sharing content, but were not comfortable in building a targeted, role-based following and engaging directly with those followers. We knew we could do something about that."
Creating a Social-Media Boot-Camp
That something was a Klout campaign - although Amber was quick to emphasize that, in her book, Klout scores are not a measure of social-media effectiveness. "We needed to move people beyond asking 'What can I say?' and 'Is it OK to say this?'" she explained, "and we decided to use Klout as a yardstick."
In August 2014, she enlisted the help of
Laurie Summers, Director of Marketing, IBM Demand Programs, to run
Klout 3,000, a one-month campaign intended to overcome these concerns. Each member of the team was tasked with working on her social-media activity, with the objective of boosting her Klout score above 50 by the end of the period.
"The level of activity needed to achieve a Klout score of 50," said Amber, "is sufficient to increase both confidence and followership, to the extent that we saw a substantial increase in the number of reactions across the board. It convinced me of the need for a social-media boot-camp along similar lines for new entrants to the program - something we plan to roll out in other areas of the company."
Delivering Benefits for Everyone Involved
Since the Social Business Team is expected to lead the way for IBM's social-media community, it's vital that Amber puts forward a compelling portfolio of benefits, not only for the organization, but also for individuals. With more than 6,000 people participating across the whole of IBM, and around 300 "extremely active" members, she sees the initiative gaining momentum daily. She has no hesitation in justifying the time and effort devoted to the project, on several levels.
"As an individual employee, you're given an opportunity to establish yourself as a thought leader or an expert in a particular field. Your professional standing within your network grows by leaps and bounds, and the effort involved can be as little as 15 minutes daily.
"For IBM, the value lies in getting regular content out to a substantial audience, but on a virtually personal basis; this rapidly develops loyalty among followers. Our sharing is little-but-often, and the platform allows us to be highly selective, delivering only content that is likely to appeal to the intended audience.
"Among our followers and influencers, the response has been excellent. The take-it-or-leave-it nature of social media allows people to dig deeper if they want to know more, while content that isn't of specific interest can simply be scanned or ignored. Influencers, in particular, have a real-time means of letting us know if we drift off-message - social media allows instant feedback.
A Very Real Return from Advocacy
"Not only do we enjoy these qualitative benefits," continues Amber, "there's a very real return from advocacy. To date, our campaign has driven more than half-a-million clicks through to calls-to-action. That equates to cost savings on media spend of between $300,000 and $1.2 million - and whichever way you look at it, that's great value for money."
Amber left me in no doubt that this initiative will run and run. It's another great example of the power of employee advocacy, and one that I plan to revisit in a few months' time. Anyone wanting to know more in the meantime is invited to connect with Amber on
LinkedIn or
Twitter for first-hand feedback.
Beyond Engagement is an exclusive Social Media Today column published every other Thursday.
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