At first blush, the idea of brand ambassadors may bring to mind people outside your company: satisfied customers, for instance. But your current employees lend a unique and highly credible perspective to your employer’s brand and reputation. While successful brand advocacy has both on and offline components, the most effective way to make it happen and expand its reach is via social media.
- Research has shown that 63 percent of 18 to 34-year-olds trust what influencers say about brands more than they trust the brands themselves. Most of your employees are already on social media, so where better to turn for powerful brand advocacy that will help deepen your talent pool and realize a strong ROI?
- Still not convinced? Consider this additional statistic: Social media advocacy from your team can extend your brand’s organic reach by 200 percent and increase profitability by 23 percent.
Amplify Your Brand Message
By building a team of employee brand advocates, you can positively impact sales, improve brand sentiment, and continually amplify recruitment messages and career opportunities within your organization.
Additional benefits include:
- Enhanced employee performance: Advocacy goes hand in hand with improved employee engagement – and one study found that companies with high engagement outperformed those with no engagement by 202 percent.
- Greater control over brand messaging: With a structured employee advocacy program, you provide content for your employees to redistribute, augmented by their own personalized details. You retain control over core messaging and are in a solid position to respond to both positive and negative feedback.
- More qualified leads: As employees post positively about their jobs and work culture, it becomes easier for recruiters to find like-minded people who are already knowledgeable about your company and interested in working there.
Keys to Success:
Here are some basic guidelines to a successful employee social advocacy program:
- Focus on company culture. Foster an environment where people are motivated to be brand advocates.
- Set goals and KPIs. This gives structure and accountability to your program and provides metrics to track progress.
- Establish clear guidelines. Have a clear social media policy and brand style guidelines so your process is crystal clear.
- Create resources for your advocates to share. Create and regularly update a content library of content resources for your employees to share, while emphasizing their freedom to add their own personal touch, within said guidelines.
- Provide training. Help people hone, update, and feel confident in their social media skills.
- Recognize and reward your brand ambassadors. This is one of the leading factors that drives employee engagement, as well as pride of and a sense of ownership in one’s company.
There are many aspects to successful employer branding – including going beyond social media. And branding and social media are two of the four pillars of your recruitment marketing success, along with your website and job advertising. Just as they all work together, the expertise of Haley Marketing can combine with yours to make magic. Contact us today to learn more.
