Since its launch in 2003, the professional social networking platform LinkedIn has established itself as the best of its kind. Primarily used for professional networking, job search and career development, LinkedIn has now evolved into a business tool with a wider scope in marketing and employer brand development. In particular, LinkedIn employee advocacy is one of the most popular tools today when it comes to building brand awareness and reach.
So, how exactly does LinkedIn employee advocacy work? In a nutshell, employees share and create content relating to the company they work for on their personal LinkedIn profiles. For instance, they may share company updates or job openings or create and share content related to the company’s industry or products.
In this article, we will cover:
- The benefits of employee advocacy on LinkedIn
- How to show promotion on LinkedIn
- Employee advocacy LinkedIn: examples
The benefits of employee advocacy on LinkedIn
Using social media is an excellent way to promote your business in today’s digitally connected world. Let us have a look at some benefits of using LinkedIn for your employee advocacy.
Increasing brand awareness
Increasing brand awareness is essential for attracting top talent to your company (we cover this in the next point!). There is a very good chance that you’ll be able to drastically increase your reach and engagement through employee advocacy. On average, employees have a combined social media presence that is 10 times larger than a corporate account. Furthermore, employees typically experience a click-through rate that is twice as high as their company’s. Even though just 3% of employees tend to share content, they are responsible for driving 30% of overall content engagement for an average enterprise. Now that’s impressive!
Attracting quality talent
Although recruitment is usually considered to be within the domain of the Human Resources field, it is clear to see how interconnected it is with marketing, since attracting quality talent to your company requires having a positive brand perception!
Employee advocacy allows your following to hear great things about your company while at the same time showcasing the already existing talent within it.
The statistics speak for themselves: companies with LinkedIn employee advocacy programs are 58% more likely to attract talent and 20% more likely to retain existing talent.
Generate sales
Many salespeople and company executives turn to social media channels when making their purchasing decisions, making it a go-to consultation tool for modern-day sales activities.
Employee advocacy on LinkedIn can be hugely beneficial for salespeople: it can lead to an increase in qualified leads, attract new business and nurture existing ones, reduce the sales cycle length, and generate additional sources of revenue. Sales reps who consistently share high-quality content are 45% more likely to surpass their sales targets!
How to show promotion on LinkedIn
As we’ve already discussed, setting up a LinkedIn employee advocacy platform will help boost your employer’s brand. However, a program such as this must be sustainable and organic in order for it to work well. This means your employee participation should be voluntary and structured with well-thought-out goals. For this, planning is key.
There are five main steps you could follow while creating an action plan.
Set goals
Setting goals is very critical to a good advocacy program on LinkedIn or any other digital channel. Your goals might include the following:
- Increasing the number of viewers on your website
- Increasing your number of employees
- Increasing social media engagement
- Increasing the number of sales you receive
These targets are essential to set a good base for your program. Additionally, make sure that the goals are easy to understand and follow.
If you have a range of goals, have a different strategy for each goal. For example, include salespeople in the program to increase your sales, or include people from your HR team if you want to boost your employer branding in recruitment.
Select your audience
The audience you are trying to attract through LinkedIn is also influential and should be connected to the goals you have generated. This allows you to cater the content you put out to your desired audience, which will help you reach your goals.
Demonstrate the value to employees
Demonstrating the value of this program to employees is necessary. Remember, this program is also beneficial to your employees because:
- It allows employees to create a work portfolio/professional reputation
- It creates an opportunity for networking and building relationships
- Generates a sense of empowerment and confidence
- Increases engagement opportunities with the company
- Improves the internal motivation of employees
This is also the stage at which you can write and publish content that fits your advocacy program on LinkedIn. Your content team can also discover what content works the best and connects with the audience you are targeting the most.
Launch
Then, launch your program!
This table recommends all the various aspects to consider before your launch.
| What to consider | |
| Content | What do you want your content to include? Think about your target audience here. |
| Format | Do you want to share articles, written posts, videos, photos, or a mixture of all formats? |
| How to optimise your posts | What is the best way for your posts to be seen? |
| Schedule of posts | How often do you want to post? Consider pre-scheduling posts. |
Measure results
Finally, measuring the results of your employee advocacy program allows you to keep track of your progress and adjust your goals in your program if you still need to reach them. This is a vital step as it helps to maintain engagement and increase sales and recruitment.
These are some tools you can use to monitor and evaluate your program:
LinkedIn employee advocacy tool
LinkedIn has built-in tools to help you monitor and improve your employee advocacy. It allows you to see the employee advocacy analytics for your company, the employees connected to the program as well as keep track of their engagements with the company. This not only allows you to see how each employee is contributing to the program but also allows you to build new connections with your employees, increasing your employee engagement.
Employee advocacy analytics LinkedIn
With the help of LinkedIn employee advocacy analytics, you can track your progress. It provides a breakdown of the various interactions and engagements with your company account from your employees. This includes:
- Recommendations
- Reaction to posts
- Comments on posts
- Reposts
You will be presented with percentage increases or decreases in the number of interactions with your posts and account in a month, which allows you to make suitable adjustments to your goals and programs depending on how well the program succeeds.
Hootsuite amplify
There are other employee advocacy tools available outside of LinkedIn. For example, Hootsuite’s LinkedIn employee advocacy tool called Hootsuite Amplify is designed to help businesses encourage their employees to share branded content on LinkedIn and other social media platforms. The platform allows companies to build a repository of pre-approved content that employees can easily share with their network. This helps to increase the reach and visibility of the company’s brand and ensure consistency in employer branding. Hootsuite Amplify also provides analytics to track the program’s success and identify top-performing employees.
Employee advocacy on LinkedIn: Examples
There are several examples of companies that have implemented successful employee advocacy programs on LinkedIn. The common elements in their campaigns are:
- recognising the importance of leveraging LinkedIn
- implementing effective training programs to help to encourage their employees to share content and promote their brands on the platform
Let’s look at some of the examples here.
Adobe
Adobe has a successful program called ‘Adobe Life’, which encourages employees to share content related to the company’s culture and work on LinkedIn. Adobe’s social media advocacy program, known as ‘Social Shift’, also encourages employees to share Adobe content on LinkedIn and other social media platforms. The company provides training and resources to help employees create engaging content and increase their online presence.
Adobe’s employee advocacy program has helped the company increase its reach and engagement on LinkedIn and build stronger relationships with customers and industry professionals.
Dell
The technology company Dell has been recognised for its impactful LinkedIn employee advocacy program. Dell’s employee advocacy program, called ‘Dell Ambassadors’, encourages employees to share company news and content on social media platforms like LinkedIn.
They also offer a program called ‘Dell Social Media University’, an internal training program that educates employees on best practices on social media and provides them with resources to share Dell’s content on LinkedIn and other social media platforms. Dell has seen a significant increase in employee engagement and brand awareness as a result of its employee advocacy program on LinkedIn.
IBM
IBM launched ‘IBM Voices’, which provides employees with a platform to share content related to the company’s values and products on LinkedIn and other social media platforms. The program encourages IBM employees to share and amplify company content on their LinkedIn profiles to their personal networks. IBM Voices also provides training and resources to employees on how to optimize their LinkedIn profiles and how to share content in a way that aligns with IBM’s brand and messaging. The program has successfully increased IBM’s brand visibility and positioned IBM employees as thought leaders in their respective fields.
Leveraging LinkedIn for employee advocacy offers numerous benefits. This is achieved by employees sharing and creating content related to their company, reaching an audience 10 times larger than corporate accounts. Implementing an effective advocacy strategy entails setting clear goals, selecting your audience, demonstrating value to employees, launching the programme, and tracking results. As we showed you, numerous companies like Adobe, Dell, and IBM have already tasted success with LinkedIn advocacy programmes. Use tools like LinkedIn’s own or Hootsuite Amplify for analytics and performance tracking to fine-tune your programme, and enjoy enhanced brand engagement.
