The average employee spends 12% of their working day on unproductive social media. And while you may think of this as a waste of your company’s money, it’s actually an opportunity for you to enhance your social media strategy.

Employee advocacy means you encourage your employees to share thought leadership and social content on their pages, which dramatically increases your brand’s visibility. Now, not every employee loves their work the way Spongebob loves the Krusty Krab, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t share your company’s social content if you make it easy for them.

Follow these guidelines to get your employees involved in employee advocacy and amplifying your company’s reach through their personal networks.

Write a social media policy

You need to give your employees clear guidelines about what they can and can’t post on social media. This gives them a rubric for what types of content are acceptable and takes out all the guesswork. If they want to post something, they can double-check the guidelines for best practices.

Clear guidelines also keep your employees from worrying about potential mistakes and the bad publicity that can ensue. There have been plenty of corporate fails with social media sharing, and your employee certainly doesn’t want to be the next one. If they don’t know the rules for sharing, then they may refuse to participate. Be sure to make the rules easy to access and super clear, so it doesn’t feel like any extra work to follow them.

Create content your employees can be proud of

Beef up your content marketing and create videos, blog posts, and memes that your employees will be excited to share online.

This curated content makes your company valuable for potential clients, helps your company stand out against any competition, and sets you apart as thought leaders for your industry.

Plus, you can get your employees involved with your content. Feature them in videos highlighting the great work they’re doing, encourage them to create an explainer video with a subject they’re an expert in, or allow them to craft the company’s tweet for certain days of the week. When they’re involved, they may be more eager to share with their friends and family.

Make it simple for your employees to share

If you want your employees to post your content, you need to make it as easy as possible. Don’t just tell them to share the most recent post from LinkedIn, send them an email where they can share pre-approved content in one click. This is especially helpful for employees who aren’t familiar with social media. All of the platforms work differently, and sending posts to share directly to their email makes it easy for them to start sharing social content.

Let them share only what they’re interested in

24.5% of people use social sharing to share and discuss their opinions with others. So if your employee is simply not interested in sharing videos on their Facebook page, then you shouldn’t force them to.

You’ll be much more successful if you let your employees share what they’re interested in. Give them a wide range of content to choose from so that each post feels authentic to their followers. And authenticity is key to your organic social media strategy. You don’t want to sound pushy like ads, you want to tonally match your employee’s social feeds so they’ll share your content regularly.

And if you’re having a hard time getting your employees to share the content you are making, try sending out a survey asking what your employees would be interested in sharing. Then you can customize content based on their interest and create videos and posts that they’ll actually want to send out.

Engage with your employee’s social media posts

If no one engages with your employee’s social media posts, they may be discouraged from posting again. To remove their fear of posting, be sure to like or comment on employee posts to increase social media engagement. This helps them feel valued and also increases the visibility of the post and makes it more likely for someone else to comment or like it.

Encourage their feedback

Everyone wants to feel heard, and your employees are putting themselves out there on the internet. It’s important to listen to their opinions on your social strategy. Plus, they may have something to teach you that’s valuable to your social media marketing.

But you need to create this time for open dialogue with your employees. Start by holding a monthly meeting where everyone active on social media can come and share their thoughts, ask questions, and give insights into what’s working for them and what’s not.

If these meetings prove to be fruitful, you can hold them more often. But just remember, no one wants to be in a meeting that could have been an email, so don’t take up too much of their time.

Create rewards for sharing social content

Sometimes, people just need a little extra boost to start participating in employee advocacy. If you’re having a tough time getting people involved, create a rewards program for those who start sharing social content. This helps make people feel like participation is not required for social media marketing, but that they’ll still gain something by doing it.

You can try out any of the following to get people more involved:

• Free lunch for anyone who shares a certain amount of company posts per month
• A Starbucks card for your top social sharers
• The employee who shares the most is featured in a guest post where their personal accounts are shared on company pages

Just be careful not to push this too hard. Sometimes offering rewards can have a negative impact if you do it for too long, or make employees who don’t have social media profiles feel like they’re missing out on major benefits. Try to strike a balance between making sharing fun and rewarding without making it feel like an obligation.

Share your social media success with everyone

Your employees are putting themselves out on a limb by sharing your content on their pages, so be sure to monitor your results with analytics and share any wins with your employees. If your social engagement has drastically improved, send out a company-wide email and thank the people who helped make it happen by name.

Remove the social sharing hurdles with Clearview Social

Take your social sharing to   and remove the hurdles with Clearview Social. Clearview’s robust employee advocacy software makes it easy for your employees to share on their personal pages. You can send employees pre-approved social content via email, and all they have to do is click once to have it posted to their social pages. This makes it easy for your team members to consistently share on social media and boost your views and click-throughs.

And when you use Clearview, our robust analytics can tell you which posts are working for your socials and which aren’t, so you don’t have to waste any time creating content that your employee’s friends and family won’t be interested in.

Plus, Clearview is super easy to use and if you have any questions at all, our on-page chat responds almost instantly.

Get A Free Demo today to see why our clients have said that with Clearview, “You literally couldn’t make social media any easier.”