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Unless you have an employee like Tom Haverford who would be thrilled to use any means necessary to post on social media, getting your team to share company content online can be a challenge. Even if your employees like the work they do and are passionate about their industry, that doesn’t always translate into being excited to make a social media post about their employer. If you want a robust employee advocacy program, you’ll need to show your employees how sharing can benefit them—and make it as easy as possible. If you want to create true advocates for your company, you’ll need to get past the barriers that keep them from sharing.
Here are common objections you can expect to hear when trying to implement employee advocacy, along with the solutions you can use to overcome them.
Objection #1: Your company culture is non-existent
If no one believes in the company they work for, it’s going to be difficult to get them to advocate for it on social media. In fact, if people are simply focused on clocking in and clocking out, you’re going to not only have challenges promoting social sharing—you could also see a 157% increase in burnout. Burnt-out employees are the last people who are going to agree to an employee advocacy program. Before you ask anything of your employees, focus on improving your company culture. When employees are supportive of the company they work for, getting them to post online is going to be a much easier push.
Solution: Hone in on a company culture
Company culture starts at the top. If you want to get people excited about working for you, start putting your employees first and have managers, directors and executives champion the initiatives by setting a good example. Promote proper time off and lunch breaks, offer career growth opportunities, and make sure there is transparency around the company’s mission and objectives. If you support particular initiatives or organizations, share those with your team as well to help showcase your culture.
Think about the adjectives you would like to have associated with your company. If you want your employees to think of the workplace as peaceful, encourage everyone to take 10-minute screen breaks every hour to breathe in some fresh air or stretch at their desks. When you implement a strong company culture, you create a jumping-off point for content on social media, making your employees more excited to share.
Objection #2: Your content isn’t cool
If you’re making reels based on trends that were popular six months ago, lack a consistent voice and tone, or promote content without unique value, people aren’t going to want to share your content.
When you create content, you need to think about your target audience, the platform you’re using, and how your content will benefit the viewer. In other words, you need a clear content strategy.
Solution: Create a clear content strategy
A content strategy works as a compass for your content. When you map out your content in advance, you have time to strategically make engaging blog posts, videos, and various types of social media posts that are helpful to your target audience. You’ll also get the opportunity to try out different styles—you can even use analytics software to zero in on the type of content that your audience likes best.
Be sure to share your content strategy with your team. If you really want to get them engaged, ask for their input. While you might not use all of the ideas, it can be helpful to have them feel as though they’re part of the process, which will increase the likelihood of them sharing.
Objection #3: You’re not giving clear instructions
Odds are, you had to write journal entries at some point in your high school English class. Sometimes your teacher gave you prompts or topics, and other times you had the option to just write about anything at all—and writing without an idea of what you should or shouldn’t produce turned out to be much harder than writing based on a prompt or topic.
The same applies to your employees when creating social media content or posts. If you don’t give clear guidelines to your employees, odds are they won’t be inclined to post anything at all.
Solution: Outline policies and procedures for social sharing
Develop a social media policy for your company—this can be as simple as a one-to-two-page document outlining what people can and can’t post on social media. This should match your company’s voice and tone (and ideally, would include rules for following that as well).
For example, if you’re a fairly casual company, you may simply ask that employees be respectful and not post any confidential information. However, if you’re more focused on a professional services or compliance-regulated market, you may need to include boundaries such as particular topics and phrasing to avoid.
Provide some examples of what appropriate sharing can look like, along with specific prompts to help your employees get started when sharing a post.
Additionally, think about tools you can use to make it easier for staff to share. Clearview’s one-click email-sharing tool allows you to send everyone an email with pre-approved content they can use, allowing them to pick and choose what to share on their personal pages. Or, they can just click once to share all of it.
Objection #4: Everyone’s freaked out by the idea of sharing
With so many social media scandals and potential missteps, it’s understandable people might be a little hesitant to post online. In fact, some of your employees may be under the impression that posting about an employer online can get them in trouble, so they choose to err on the side of caution and avoid it altogether.
You can assuage these fears from the get-go and highlight the benefits for your employees while helping to reassure them that they won’t be fired over a small misstep.
Solution: Explain the benefits of employee advocacy
Before your employees can get involved in employee advocacy, they need to understand it. Set up an introductory meeting, starting by sharing the benefits your employees will receive from sharing on social.
For example, participating in social sharing can boost their personal brand, offer free content to share on their social pages, and allow them the chance to become a thought leader in their industry.
It’s important to note that you can’t force people into employee advocacy. You want people to be engaged and excited about posting about your brand. How they feel about posting will come through in their content, and you’re more likely to drum up positive brand awareness when it’s a willing and eager share.
Objection #5: The higher-ups aren’t sharing
The best employee advocacy programs start at the top. If your top-level employees share the content you’re creating, your employees are much more likely to do the same.
Solution: Lead by example
Set an example by using your personal account to share the great work your company is doing. When the company’s social media account posts a video, share it. When someone mentions your company or uses one of your branded hashtags, retweet or share where appropriate. This encourages more earned media for your brand and gives your employees an example to follow.
Objection #6: You haven’t asked them to share at all!
If you don’t ask people to share, they probably don’t know you want them to in the first place! Thankfully, this one has an easy fix.
Solution: Ask the people who are the most active on social media
It can help to ask a few of your team members to get on board with sharing first. Look through your employees’ social media profiles to see who tends to be the most active. Then, invite those people to be the initial group for your employee advocacy program, setting an example for the rest of your employees. Once that’s a success, it’s more likely that everyone else will be interested in hopping on board.
Best Employee Advocacy Program: Simplify social sharing with Clearview Social
Maximize your social sharing with Clearview Social’s employee advocacy software. Our easy setup means you can get sharing the same day that you download the software. Plus, our tools make it simple for your employees to share content, including one-click email sharing and PeakTime™ AI, which posts at a time when your target audience is online.
See how easy employee advocacy can be—Get A Free Demo with the experts at Clearview Social today.