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Are you including your employees in your marketing strategy? If not, now is a great time to start. After all, your employees may be some of the most loyal supporters of your brand. Not convinced? Challenge accepted. We’ve got some hot employee advocacy stats that prove why you need to be making use of your team to build support, enthusiasm, and momentum—and ultimately, boost your 2024 marketing strategy.
What is employee advocacy?
When you come across a new product or service, which claims are you more likely to trust: those that come from the brand itself, or those that are based on an individual’s personal experience with the brand? Chances are, you’ll gravitate toward posts from personal profiles instead of the content that you find on business profiles.
Employee advocacy, which is when employees take steps to promote the brand or company of their employer online, is based on the fact that people trust other people more than they trust a faceless business. It’s the unsung hero of marketing strategies—social media posts shared by employees get eight times more engagement than posts shared on company profiles.
When you implement an employee advocacy program, you’re essentially delegating part of your social media strategy to your employees while also encouraging them to act as thought leaders in their social circles. It’s a win-win!
Employee advocacy works
Let’s start with the good stuff: the actual ROI on employee advocacy.
Employee advocacy programs with at least 1,000 active participants can generate up to $1.9 million in advertising revenue.
It’s a no-brainer that having your employees post about your company on social media can offer more exposure than your brand’s social posts alone. And if those posts can generate comparable results to your paid ads, why not add employee advocacy to your social strategy and get the exposure you’re seeking at a fraction of the cost?
We know that 84% of consumers value recommendations from people they know above all forms of advertising.
When your employees share your company’s content on their personal pages, you’re not just getting a wider reach—you’re also establishing trust. Someone who might be likely to ignore your paid ad simply because they don’t recognize your brand may slow their scroll and read a personal post with similar information, just because it comes from a friend or family member (who also happens to be your employee).
And when they hear about a product or service from someone they trust, 77% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase.
Employee advocacy creates value
It’s great to talk up your brand. That said, it’s important to note that the same information you may share on your company page could be significantly more valuable coming from your employees.
Having happy employees sends a powerful positive message—47% of consumers say they trust brands more if they take care of their employees.
Customer service is also an important element of any business, but customers notice and care whether the company they’re purchasing from treats their employees well. While you can make those claims on your personal page, the message comes across in a more authentic way if it comes from the people who work at a company.
As they say, “show, don’t tell.” This approach is far more convincing.
Posts generate 561% more reach when shared by an employee compared to the company itself.
Wider reach, greater credibility, and more engagement? Simply put, happy employees can be one of your greatest marketing assets.
Employee advocacy works across all platforms
As long as your employees and their followers are actively engaged, employee advocacy can be effective on any social media platform—but it does especially well on LinkedIn.
On LinkedIn, 30% of a company’s engagement comes from its employees.
And employees on this social platform are 14 times more likely to share company content compared to other content types.
Of those who participate in employee advocacy, 87% of employees believe it expands their professional network.
Other figures of note:
- 76% of employees believe that social sharing helps them keep up with industry trends
- 50% feel that it helps them attract new business
- 49% experienced positive results in terms of opportunities for professional partnerships
Your workplace culture will benefit from it
Employee advocacy doesn’t just benefit your sales revenue or audience reach. It can improve your company culture and help you recruit and retain the right people to bolster that culture.
Your colleagues will likely see the benefits of participating in employee advocacy. According to the stats, 86% of employee advocacy participants experienced a positive impact on their careers. The advantages include more networking opportunities, better engagement, and the feeling of belonging to a tangible group effort.
Of course, before you can get more employees to advocate for your brand, you need to hire them. And guess what? Employee advocacy helps in that department, too. In fact, 86% of HR professionals believe that recruitment is becoming increasingly similar to marketing.
73% of job seekers between the ages of 18-34 found their most recent job through social media. (Because for those that grew up with the internet, social media is becoming quite the one-stop shop.)
Job seekers deem current employees as the most trusted source of information about a company.
The least trusted? CEOs and other executives, who rank even lower than recruiters or even news coverage about a company.
Having a formal program makes it easier
If your employees aren’t sharing, it may not be because they don’t want to—perhaps they just don’t know what to share. With a robust employee advocacy program, though, you can provide your employees with ready-to-post content that helps to establish them as thought leaders on social media while also promoting your brand.
Develop a clear social media policy that details what kind of content your employees can and can’t share, along with when and how. Because many company policies only focus on what cannot be shared, it’s only logical that many employees would avoid posting altogether to err on the side of caution. After all, it wasn’t too long ago that posting about your employer online was considered a professional faux pas!
You’ll also want to create an interesting, relatable content strategy for employee advocacy. Depending on the preferences of your employees, this could involve giving them full creative freedom or providing them with a selection of premade, ready-to-share content that they can choose from and share in just a few clicks.
Clearview Social elevates your employee advocacy strategy
The robust employee advocacy software offered by Clearview Social makes it easy for your employees to share company content on their personal pages. With our one-click email feature, you can send pre-approved content straight to their email, which they can then share in seconds.
We also provide robust analytics in a customizable dashboard outlining the content that works best for your brand. And while we pride ourselves on our software’s ease of use, our on-page chat is available whenever you need help.
To learn how to make social sharing easy for your employees, Get A Free Demo with Clearview today.