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Employee Advocacy vs. Employee Social Sharing
If you’re unfamiliar with the terms, we’ll break down the differences for you. The main difference between employee advocacy versus employee social sharing is that one term is broader than the other — you can think of employee social sharing as a component of employee advocacy.
Employee advocacy, at its core, is any program that encourages your employees to spread the word about your brand or share company content. These programs can be anything
- company events,
- webinars,
- testimonials,
- and more.
Employee advocacy is an incredibly effective strategy to maximize your exposure without blowing your budget. To illustrate, say for example that your company page has 1,000 followers. Most of those followers are likely your employees or their friends and family. Another subsection would be businesses or clients you currently have (or have had) relationships with. That leaves a dismally small proportion of people following your page that could actually be potential clients.
This is where employee social sharing comes in. Over half the world’s population is present on social media, so there’s a good chance that your employees have their own social media pages on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and so on. By encouraging your employees to share your firm’s content on their own pages, you can reach an entirely new audience that you would not have otherwise.
Employee social sharing is the fastest and most cost-effective approach to employee advocacy. Thus, it is best to think of it as employee advocacy and employee social sharing, rather than employee advocacy versus employee social sharing. These two concepts go hand-in-hand when it comes to boosting your company’s online presence.
However, there is one problem that marketers often run into when starting an employee advocacy program. How do you encourage your employees to share your content on social media? The answer lies in employee advocacy software like Clearview Social.
What Is Employee Advocacy Software
Employee advocacy software, like Clearview Social, gives you the tools you need to drive your employee advocacy and employee social sharing initiatives. Using Clearview Social simplifies the overall process by allowing your business to curate a queue of content to be shared on social media, which you can then send out to employees. Next, your employees can share that content with a single click, thanks to the software’s integration with various social media platforms.
This reduces a lot of the friction your employee social sharing would typically have, especially as the platform also offers gamification features (e.g. challenges or leaderboards) to further motivate employees to start sharing. For the past few years, Clearview Social has been used largely by law firms to get their partners and employees to share news and information about the company on social media — with successful, measurable results.
How Clearview Social Makes Employee Social Sharing Easier
- Helps you create a content feed for curating blog articles, industry insights, company news and announcements, and other forms of content — all in one place
- Makes it simple for your employees to share content with a single click, through automated emails containing all the information they need
- Uses an AI (Artificial Intelligence) program to schedule shares at peak traffic times on multipe social media platforms, with the option of scheduling up to a week’s worth of shares
- Allows you to monitor and measure results through powerful analytics tools
Why Use Employee Advocacy Software?
Technically speaking, you don’t have to use employee advocacy software when it comes to handling your employee advocacy and employee social sharing. However, you can’t deny that it significantly simplifies the process by automating multiple steps and easing the workload on everyone, giving both your marketing department and your employees the freedom to focus on other business matters.
Content shared by your employees is inherently effective — consumers tend to trust people they know over a faceless business, so your message will be met with more acceptance when it’s on your employees’ pages.
Aside from increasing brand awareness and recognition, employee social sharing also has the favorable side effect of positioning your employees as thought leaders in your industry. By regularly putting out quality content, you’re helping your employees start insightful conversations, build their professional networks, and establish their reputations as industry experts.
Current trends have also shifted to put the focus on employee empowerment and employee-generated content — when you take into consideration what your employees actually want to share, rather than what the company wants them to share, it adds a layer of authenticity and personalization that makes your shared content more interesting.
Who Can Benefit From Using Employee Advocacy Software?
The benefits of employee advocacy software can be utilized by many departments in a professional service firm.
- Marketing and public relations departments can use employee advocacy software to significantly expand the company’s reach and increase earned media value.
- Sales departments, working in tandem with marketing departments, can work to ensure that employee social sharing brings in the firm’s ideal clients, who are inclined to trust the company because of the posts they see online.
- HR and office management can benefit from being able to share company news and announcements with employees quickly. They can also benefit from employee social sharing during recruitment, as job postings shared by employees see higher engagement than those posted by a company.
- Employees can easily share content, keep up with current news, and feel more connected to their company’s overall mission.
Frequently Asked Questions
Today’s modern era requires businesses to practice engagement economy to thrive — a strategy focused on delivering personalized and authentic consumer experiences. To succeed in such a feat, we recommend shifting your brand strategies into something more natural and warm.
Launching an employee advocacy program starts with incentivizing participation, encouraging authenticity and highlighting the importance of using social media accounts to boost your brand.
An employee advocacy strategy can help you gain consumer trust by sharing organic content across various social media platforms. Below are steps for building employee advocacy in any setting:
- Define your goals and key performance indicators (KPIs).
- Understand which content types get the most engagement.
- Select your advocates.
These three factors should be enough to begin your advocacy journey.
According to Neilsen, a whopping 92% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know. When you develop an employee advocacy program, you unify your word-of-mouth social media efforts into one powerful strategy.
Additionally, these programs boost morale and productivity. They can help you save massive amounts on advertising dollars while enjoying high return levels.
An employee advocate is a workplace hero who helps organizations achieve their goals. In a social media setting, these individuals act as brand representatives by sharing content and providing audiences with high-level engagement.
No matter your business size or industry, including this strategy in your planning sessions can help you take your company to new heights.
Sprout Social defines employee advocacy as the promotion of a brand or company that an employee works at. A successful advocacy program amplifies company messages and promotions to increase brand awareness. When employees share company content, they are acting as brand advocates while maximizing your organic reach.
Employee advocacy is a two-way street. There is a greater chance your employees will be engaged and advocate for your company's brand when they are recognized and incentivized for their accomplishments. Give them a shoutout on social media to let them know they’re appreciated. Let the company culture shine through by posting pictures of what a day in the office looks like. Humanize your brand -- Provide content your employees will feel proud sharing and representing!
An employee advocacy platform helps increase your brands social media traffic. Among the best employee advocacy platforms, Clearview Social enhances internal communication as marketing leaders can send their own employees relevant company news. Our internal resource database includes easy set-up, one click sharing, algorithmic auto scheduling, measured results and so much more!
Your employee advocacy efforts can be improved by simply taking advantage of social media platforms. LinkedIn, in particular, can benefit an employee's personal and professional network. Posting company or industry related content demonstrates thought leadership and validates expertise. Providing your employees with pre-approved content with direct URL links will lead to more website traffic.
Step 1: Captivating Content Curation: Like with any social media strategy, developing content plays a crucial role in your success. The information you share should capture, engage, and move audiences into profitable action. Learn everything you can about your audience to discover what they want to see on your social media posts. Remember that you don’t have to settle for lengthy posts. You can create videos, infographics, e-books, and other content types to keep your audience wanting more. Employee advocacy thrives when there is good, relevant content, however the opposite is also true. Organizations that don’t have any content to share will often struggle to get meaningful employee advocacy programs off the ground. This is where Clearview Social can tap in to help!
Step 2: Share your Content Where Your Potential Clients Are: Contrary to popular belief, LinkedIn is not the only reliable site for professionals. We would also recommend using Facebook and Twitter if your target clients use them. It would be great if your own employees were already present where you want potential customers to see your content. While LinkedIn has an amazing number of professionals as members, the usage statistics for Twitter and Facebook are dramatically higher. Translation: people spend hours a day on Facebook and Twitter, while only spending a few minutes a day on LinkedIn. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to spread your message and brand advocacy where potential clients are spending most of their time.
Step 3: Use an employee advocacy software: Employee advocacy provides companies with many benefits, including boosting brand awareness, recognition, and loyalty. If you want to achieve your goals as quickly and affordably as possible, we recommend using our employee advocacy software. There are dozens of choices out there for employee advocacy software, but Clearview Social is unique because of its ease of use. You can quickly paste in your content, share your content, schedule your posts, and measure results. Automating this process can boost your online presence in no time. Once users are logged in, they can schedule their entire week of content in just a couple of clicks with personalized push notifications.
Getting your employees engaged on social media requires minimal effort and allows them to act as brand advocates. Simply sharing company news and other relevant content enhances consumer communications, boosts leads, and attracts quality talent. Employee advocacy platforms make social selling and employer branding inevitable. It’s a win-win!
Employee advocacy tools get employees engaged on social media. They help marketers extend their social reach and amplify their message with effective and efficient internal communication. These tools also maximize and monitor employee advocacy efforts. Employee advocacy makes word of mouth marketing happen organically when more people are seeing your company content.
We’re a simple platform that helps your team share your content on their social media platforms, with easy prompts, email reminders and one-click activation.
