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As originally seen on Forbes
Every company dreams of engaged employees sharing firm content out of the goodness of their heart. The reality however is that pulling the trigger on employee advocacy can be very difficult companies. They have trouble getting started. Is it worth the risk? Is it worth the effort? Whose job is it? I always hear the excuses that people don’t have enough content, or enough followers or the engaged employees to even make it worth it.
Get over the excuses and get started because the ROI on employee engagement blows any other forms of marketing out of the water.
Since the pandemic, it has become blatantly obvious how impactful social media is on every aspect of our lives. When you don’t have your employees sharing the word about your company online, it’s like leaving all the lights off in your building, locking the door, and sending everyone home who could talk to potential clients.
If your employees are quiet on social, it is a missed opportunity.
Turn on the Lights
Engaged employees online will bring a dramatic boost to your visibility in the market. When you have employees consistently sharing content, there are hundreds or even thousands of additional opportunities for people in your market to see and interact with your brand.
A marketer at a professional services firm recently asked:
“What is X-law firm doing to get everybody posting on LinkedIn, I’m seeing them all over the place.”
The answer is simple, employee advocacy. They are making a deliberate effort to turn their lawyers into messengers for the firm through LinkedIn and other social media.
When your employees post to social media and share content about your firm’s specialty, people will begin to tie them to that specialty, adding their name and the company name a certain amount of weight. Just posting can bring up people’s awareness of your company tenfold. Software like and can be a big help as well.
To really flourish on social media, your company need to create two-way communication. This is how you unlock the door.
When sharing to social media, make sure to add a comment that invites a response (if you want to learn more about writing the perfect comment, read ). Try to get people discussing the topic where your people are the experts. Don’t seek out contentious topics just for the sake of generating conversation, but at the same time, don’t avoid those topics if your expertise is directly in the crosshairs.
Create posts that drive conversation. Creating engaging content that drives comments and conversation is just as much an art as a science. You can add provocative questions, tag people, tag companies, and hash tags, but at the end of the day connecting with a real problem that people care about with real solutions is what will get conversation going.
If you can get people talking in the comments section of your post, you are on to something.
If it works, and your content really gets people talking, don’t just sit back and watch – jump in. I always to try to respond thoughtfully to every comment. What that means is I may not respond to someone’s comment that says “interesting!” but any comment that is thoughtful, I’ll respond to, or ask another question to keep the conversation going.
Social media makes it easy to bring people together, but it doesn’t automatically create leaders. That is up to your employees who are specialists and at the top of their game. If you can transform your offline experts into online experts, you are on to something. .
If you follow these tips, your business and brand will shine bright and big for everyone to see. Otherwise, there’s a very risk you simply fade away.
For more on employee advocacy and social media, feel free to check out my other or follow me @adriandayton.
As originally seen on Forbes