can be rewarding but also time-intensive, so the more internal resources a company can utilize, the better. This is why businesses should consider using employee advocacy to increase brand influence and social media reach.

Employee Advocacy Rewards and Risks

In my previous article, Customer Advocacy for Increased Social Media Influence, I provided resources that a company may use to transform its customer relationships into beneficial social media exposure. In this article I will provide information you may use to include your employees in your social media marketing strategy – commonly referred to as employee advocacy.

1. How does employee advocacy grow a business?

The primary reason for pursuing employee advocacy is scale. Used carefully, employee advocacy can also increase credibility, as customers see a broader company representation on social media. Multiple employees posting on social media looks a lot more impressive than just the summer intern posting content on your company’s behalf!

2. What does an employee advocacy strategy look like?

Some companies try to “hack” a solution. Employees may formally or informally be requested to follow the company on social media. They are frequently encouraged to like or share interesting content the company produces. Some companies may gamify these tasks by rewarding the most prolific content sharers. Ultimately, for this strategy to work, your company has to post to the same social media platforms its employees prefer; e.g. if your company is posting articles on LinkedIn, it’s not going to get many shares or likes on Facebook. 

3. How can an employee advocacy strategy go wrong?

The biggest risk associated with employee advocacy is that it could be abused, and then your company and/or its employees would be perceived as spammers. This can easily happen if the content your company shares on social media is bland, uninformative, or especially salesy. Pair this with an aggressive push from management that employees are to like and share ALL of the company’s posts, and this can be a recipe for disaster. To avoid this outcome, maintain an open channel between employees and your social media manager. If your company is gamifying its employee advocacy strategy, be sure to handsomely reward any employee who contributes his or her own content to share (pending prior review of course). It may just turn out that your employees are able to produce more compelling social media content than your marketing department.

Selecting an Employee Advocacy Platform

Within any reasonably sized company, trying to manage an employee advocacy strategy can quickly become overwhelming. This is where an employee advocacy platform comes into play. Advocacy platforms streamline the entire process, both for social media managers and employees. Critically, they provide analytics that help to inform content strategies and provide insights into the strategy’s overall success.

At time of writing, there’s only a handful of employee advocacy platforms available. Being designed for business, capabilities within these platforms run the gamut from focused employee advocacy functionality to full-blown marketing platform.

Because the employee advocacy social media platform space remains relatively uncrowded, finding a solution that can work for your company is not an overwhelming assignment. Here are the more popular vendors in this space, ranked by traffic:

• GaggleAMP
• EveryoneSocial
• Bambu by Sprout Social
• DynamicSignal
• PostBeyond
• SocioAdvocacy
• SocialHP

If your company is small, SocialHP would be a logical place to start as it offers a free account tier for teams of up to 5 users. As a newer player in this market, they also advertise as being aggressively priced relative to GaggleAMP – the most popular player in the market as determined by traffic at time of writing – and EveryoneSocial, which comes in a close second. SocioAdvocacy is, like SocialHP, a new contender with up-front pricing and a free demo offer.

If your company is already using Sprout Social for its employee advocacy efforts, Bambu would be a logical starting place for an employee advocacy platform, since it is made by the same company and is likely to have a familiar look and feel. PostBeyond and DynamicSignal fill in the middle and shouldn’t be ignored if your company is looking for a mature, capable platform.

Encourage Employee Advocacy, because Everyone Benefits

In a time when anyone can set up a website and claim to run a large successful business, adopting an employee advocacy strategy on social media brings transparency to your brand and customer outreach.

When it comes to promoting your company on social media, let your employees help you build a business and brand!

How to Build #Influence w/ Employee Advocacy by @Buzz_Tools #RocksDigital #Marketing
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Is employee advocacy already in play at your business? If not, why? Share your thoughts in the comments.

The post Invite Your Whole Team onto the Field – How to Build Influence with Employee Advocacy appeared first on Rocks Digital.

Third party reviews and testimonials have always been a powerful driver of brand credibility, but a business stands to gain the most credibility when a customer is recommended by someone they know. This is customer advocacy that every business needs.

Before the advent of social media, recommendations typically meant word of mouth, but platforms like Facebook enable recommendations (both positive and negative) to reach a wider audience much faster. Customer advocates are natural allies of customer-focused companies seeking more effective social media marketing.

The Benefits of Customer Advocacy

While I normally write on group advocacy, today I’m going to explore customer advocacy, another very important focus for any business.

1. How does customer advocacy grow a business?

One factor is increased credibility. Simply put, prospective customers trust their friends and family more than your company. (Would you like stats with that?) A second factor is scale. Unless you have a massive marketing department and/or marketing budget, it’s likely that your customers have a larger influence. When you put these two factors together, you get scaled credibility and, specifically, the ability to influence the buying decision of prospects you might otherwise never reach. It’s an approach that even the largest companies are adopting.

2. What does a customer advocacy strategy look like?

On the low-tech side, it can be as easy as requesting that customers review your company when they make a purchase. If you take this approach, the best strategy is to pick one or two platforms that you regularly monitor, e.g., Facebook and Yelp, and include direct links inside the order confirmation email you already send. This makes it easy for customers to share their experience with others.

3. What happens if a customer gives a bad review?

Assuming that you are able to reply in a timely manner, it is often possible to change a negative experience into a positive (or at least less negative) one. Sometimes you may actually turn an upset customer into an advocate if they are thrilled with the way you handle the situation. This is why it is important to select review sites to which you actively pay attention.

Selecting a Customer Advocacy Platform

Customer advocacy platforms help to streamline and optimize your customer advocacy efforts. They may provide immediate alerts of negative reviews. They may offer review incentives to help increase the number of customers saying good things about your brand. Most importantly, they frequently provide an inside channel to your most valuable customers.

The customer advocacy platform space is crowded with dozens of providers. Pricing varies considerably between providers, but few would be considered cheap. When evaluating a particular provider, consider how similar their customers are to your business, whether their product is likely to mesh with your existing workflow, and how their platform ranks on sites like G2Crowd.

The lone vendor in the customer advocacy platform space I was able to identify as offering a free account tier is Promoto.co. Their free offering provides support for up to 50 advocates. This may be a very good option for evaluating whether a customer advocacy solution can work for your company or organization.

Finding a free trial amongst the various vendors is also difficult. CustomerAdvocacy.com offers a free trial, although it is unclear on the duration and/or limitations. Once the trial has ended, pricing is also unclear. However, you may take advantage of the free trial offer to gain a better general understanding of how customer advocacy platforms work, even as you negotiate with the vendor or evaluate whether another solution might be a better option.

Vetted List of Customer Advocacy Tools

While it can be difficult to differentiate the offerings of one vendor from another, I’ve made it easier to evaluate the market by selecting the following vendors that offer customer advocacy platforms.

• SocialToaster
• Influitive
• Advocately
• BazaarVoice
• TrustPilot
• Sprinklr

Cultivate Customer Advocacy for a Win-Win

Customer advocacy is more vital than ever in a globally connected, always on, digital world. On social media, where brands are often viewed with skepticism, your customers’ voices bring authenticity and lend credibility to your own marketing efforts.

When it comes to promoting your company on social media, don’t go it alone! Let your own customers help you build your business and brand.

Customer Advocacy for Increased #SocialMedia Influence by @Buzz_Tools #RocksDigital #Business
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Do you have a favorite customer advocacy platform? Share your thoughts in the comments!

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