8 ways to humanize your brand with employee advocacy

B2B consumers are individuals first. They don’t need to be bought to, they need to be helped. Worker advocacy isn’t about flooding feeds with generic posts. It’s about empowering workers to share significant content material, amplify your model’s voice, and create actual connections. So, how do you construct a program that really humanizes your model and fosters real relationships?

In partnership with MarketingProfs, we assembled an influence panel of professional worker advocacy program leaders to debate how employee advocacy can humanize your B2B brand. We had been joined by Aneta Francis, Lead Consumer Options Supervisor at LinkedIn, and Chris Sheen, Director of Social Media at Celonis.

We’ve rounded up and summarized all the highest suggestions from the webinar you have to know. Let’s get began!

1. Get management buy-in to set the instance

A robust worker advocacy program begins from the highest. In case your executives and management staff are energetic on LinkedIn, workers will really feel inspired to take part.

As Aneta Francis from LinkedIn highlighted, when leaders actively advocate for his or her manufacturers—whether or not about firm tradition, trade traits, or private profession experiences—it units the tone for the remainder of the group. It alerts that social engagement isn’t simply inspired; it’s a precedence.

Tricks to implement this:

• Prepare executives on greatest practices for posting on social.
• Encourage them to publish repeatedly, touch upon worker posts, and interact in discussions.
• Highlight their thought management posts in company-wide social initiatives corresponding to advocacy newsletters, firm conferences, and inner shoutouts.

When leaders set an instance, workers usually tend to observe and really feel snug doing so.

2. Begin small and scale strategically

Launching an worker advocacy program doesn’t imply onboarding tons of of workers in a single day. As a substitute, begin with a small group of enthusiastic advocates and steadily develop.

Chris Sheen shared how their program started with a centered group earlier than scaling to over 1,000 engaged workers, or as they name them at Celonis, Celenauts. By beginning small, you may refine your technique, determine greatest practices, and construct momentum earlier than rolling out company-wide.

Greatest practices for getting began:

• Establish a gaggle of engaged workers who’re already energetic on LinkedIn.
• Present coaching and assist to assist them confidently share content material.
• Measure outcomes, refine your strategy, and develop primarily based on what works.

It’s tempting to dive proper in, however advocacy packages take time to develop—and so they’ll look totally different in small corporations versus giant ones:

3. Make worker advocacy straightforward and accessible

Each advocacy program has its ups and downs. The secret is discovering methods to reignite engagement when it dips.

Chris Sheen from Celonis recognized two frequent challenges and the way his staff overcame them.

If sharing content material looks like further work, participation will drop. At Celonis, the primary hurdle was merely making workers conscious of this system. To sort out this, they:

• Promoted this system in firm all-hands conferences.
• Hosted lunch and learns to teach workers.
• Built-in Oktopost’s Slack notifications to alert workers when new content material is obtainable.
• Made advocacy a part of the brand new worker onboarding course of.

The second problem is retaining workers engaged long-term.

Sustaining participation long-term requires advocacy to really feel pure, not compelled. Celonis achieved this by weaving advocacy into firm tradition: working pleasant competitions, recognizing prime contributors, and integrating social sharing into advertising and marketing campaigns. By making advocacy participating, they turned it right into a behavior moderately than an additional job.

4. Encourage your advocates to personalize their content material

The perfect advocacy posts aren’t simply copied and pasted from firm templates, they replicate the distinctive voice of every worker. Personalised content material performs higher, feels extra genuine, and resonates extra with audiences.

Nevertheless, many advocates wrestle with the right way to make content material their very own. Aneta Francis suggests offering easy prompts to information them:

• What does this subject imply to me?
• Why does it matter to my community?
• How can I add my private perspective?

Chris Sheen shared a easy but highly effective rule for LinkedIn: the 102-character rule. He advises advocates to jot down simply one sentence earlier than the “see extra” cutoff to make their posts really feel private. Even a brief takeaway or response could make an enormous distinction.

Encourage workers to search out their very own voice, have interaction in conversations, and transfer past simply resharing firm updates. In the long term, constructing a private model that displays their distinctive perspective will preserve them engaged and invested in advocacy.

5. Diversify content material to maintain engagement excessive

Not all content material performs equally in worker advocacy. Primarily based on Celonis’ expertise, three kinds of content material constantly drive the best engagement:

1. Photographs and behind-the-scenes content material: workers love sharing moments from occasions, workplace tradition, and staff achievements. A easy group photograph can generate vital engagement.
2. Video content material: With LinkedIn’s new video feed, brief, genuine movies work exceptionally nicely. Worker-recorded clips discussing trade insights or sharing profession reflections are extremely participating.
3. Firm information and massive wins: Workers take satisfaction in sharing firm milestones, awards, and press options. These posts usually get excessive engagement from each workers and their networks.

By providing a mixture of content material varieties, workers can select what aligns greatest with their private model and viewers.

6. Present steady coaching and assist

Worker advocacy isn’t a “set it and overlook it” initiative. Ongoing coaching ensures that workers really feel assured and empowered to share content material.

Greatest practices for coaching:

• Host lunch-and-learns or fast coaching periods on greatest practices.
• Provide templates and publish prompts to spark inspiration.
• Share success tales to spotlight workers who’re excelling.
• Run competitions and award advocates with rewards and recognition.

Chris Sheen talked about that at Celonis, they supply common coaching periods and inner communication touchpoints to maintain workers engaged. The extra supported workers really feel, the extra seemingly they’re to take part.

7. Foster a tradition of recognition and celebration

Worker advocacy must be rewarding, not really feel like an obligation. Recognizing and celebrating workers who actively take part helps maintain momentum.

Methods to encourage engagement:

• Give shoutouts in firm conferences: spotlight workers who’re excelling in advocacy.
• Create pleasant competitions: provide small incentives for workers who generate excessive engagement.
• Characteristic employee-generated content material in firm newsletters: showcasing prime posts validates efforts and evokes others.

Aneta Francis emphasised that celebrating worker contributions makes them really feel valued and encourages continued participation. The extra recognition workers obtain, the extra they’ll need to have interaction.

8. Monitor outcomes and preserve optimizing your program

Like all advertising and marketing initiative, worker advocacy must be data-driven. Tracking performance helps determine what’s working and the place enhancements are wanted.

Key metrics to observe:

• Engagement charges (likes, feedback, shares)
• Click on-through charges (how many individuals are participating with shared content material)
• Follower progress (influence on firm and worker profiles)
• Lead technology (monitoring conversions from advocacy posts)

Chris Sheen shared a compelling statistic: Throughout their annual Celosphere occasion, worker advocacy posts generated twice as many ticket gross sales as company model posts. This sort of information reinforces the worth of advocacy and helps refine methods.

Get began with worker advocacy

Worker advocacy isn’t simply one other advertising and marketing initiative, it’s a approach to humanize your model, construct belief, and develop your attain via the voices of your workers. However as we’ve seen from the specialists, success doesn’t occur in a single day. It takes management buy-in, the proper content material technique, ongoing assist, and a tradition that encourages genuine engagement.

And naturally, having the proper instruments makes all of the distinction. An worker advocacy platform helps streamline the method, making it straightforward for workers to share content material and keep engaged. When you’re trying to construct or scale your advocacy program, Oktopost’s advocacy solution might help.

Wish to see it in motion? Get in touch with us, we’d love to talk!