An ebook that explains the concept of amplifying messages via social profiles of employees, discusses the pros and cons of the approach, as well as best practices to adopt during implementation.

1. Employee advocacy
A comprehensive guide about all that you need
to know about “Employee Advocacy”

2. Contents
What is “Employee advocacy” 3
Benefits of Employee advocacy 5
How to measure it 6
Pros and Cons of Employee advocacy 7
Best practices to adopt 8

3. 3
Employee Advocacy
describes the activities
of brands empowering
employees to support
the goals of the brand,
through employee-
owned social media.
Chris Boudreaux
The best of marketers understand that
direct impact of word of mouth
marketing has more power than any
other advertising technique. This is
called as Advocacy, where the
consumers speak and spread the
word about their experience with a
brand and help it grow.
Today most brands are present on
social media networks such as
facebook, twitter, linkedin, and
pinterest, but face the big challenge
of not being able to extend their
organic brand reach,

4. 4
Socially engaged
companies are 57%
more likely to get
increased sales leads
Combining internal advocacy
with social media generates another
powerful concept of Employee
Advocacy, where instead of the
consumers, the internal employees
talk about their company on social
media.
The employees of a company
are the best people who know
about the brand and the company
culture.
Employee advocacy can be
seen as the impact on the brand
that an employee can generate by
sharing useful information with his
or her own acquired audience on
social media.
Encouraging employees to be
brand advocates is being adopted
by various companies because
referrals are one of the best lead
sources, and non-sales employees
are a huge source of untapped
opportunity.
52% of consumers trust
an “average” employee
more than the CEO.
- 2014 Edelman trust barometer

5. 5
Rise of the social employee
It is better for brands to be a part
of million conversations via their
employees than having a one-way
conversation with their customers.
Since the brand is promoted by
those people who actually want it
to be promoted, it creates a sense
of trust and a positive impressions
in the mind of consumers.
Employee advocacy can help your
company generate new untapped
leads, increase event attendance,
holiday promotions, product
launches.
Not just that, it can also help you
attract & recruit new age
employees. Millennials are
increasingly becoming choosy
about where they want to work. A
socially engaged company has a
better chance of attracting them
than other competitors.
In general, empowerment fosters a positive
environment. Employees who see colleagues
demonstrate success will follow and emulate those
behaviors. This drives momentum for program
adoption, resulting in value for the company’s brand
and for the employees own personal brand. Finally,
collaboration and transparency helps flatten the
organization and eliminate the outdated hierarchy
which no longer functions effectively in most modern
organizations.
Benefitsofemployeeadvocacy
Susan Emerick,
Founder,
Brands Rising

6. 6
Measuringemployeeadvocacy
Employee advocacy can add value to an organization only if it is measured
in regular intervals against a pre-determined set of metrics.
Metrics could vary from say employee participation to start with. It could be
set to check how many employees voluntarily wish to participate.
Website traffic could also be a metric to understand the increase in number
of clicks after the employee interaction has started.
Depending on the campaign, the
ultimate metric that needs to be
measured is increase in bottom line
(Sales) or number of responses for a
position (Hiring) or increase in
participation of attendees for an event
(Marketing).
Find out the number of employees
participating in the program, number of
times content is shared by employees
and number of clicks per share. Now
you can calculate the total cost of
acquiring all those clicks by paid
channels. This should be 30-40 times
more expensive than implementing
employee advocacy platform.

7. 7
Prosandconsofemployeeadvocacy
- Increase in interactions between the companies employees
and their customers
- Helps social employees increase their social clout and influence
- Businesses save money on paid campaigns. The only money that is
spent is in implementing an employee advocacy platform, which in
most cases is a lot cheaper than implementing paid campaigns that
will help you get the same reach.
- Employees may struggle with sharing the right content on the
right social media channel
- Becomes a time consuming process if employees need to spend
time in finding and uploading content
- Employees who frequently share their company information on
social media websites might frustrate their friends, family
members or colleagues.
- When employees share their companies’ content with their own
voice on social media accounts, they might jeopardize the
company privacy policies
Tip – Opt for an employee advocacy platform that will help
you address the issues that come with an advocacy program

8. 8
Bestpracticestoadopt
Keep it optional to
promote the company. It
might be tempting to
make it mandatory, but
do resist. Find out which
departments (Marketing
/ HR / Sales) need it the
most.
Use tools like test groups and surveys to gauge if employees are ready to
share company related content.
Structure your advocacy program to reward
participation. Your employee advocacy
program should help your employees
strengthen their personal brands better on
social media.
Ensure that top management supports the
employee advocacy programs. The senior
executives needs to be the programs’ biggest
proponent.
Ensure that you have the right tools and solutions in your organization for
implementing your employee advocacy program.

9. 9
-James Sinegal
Email Contact@contentivo.com | Blog blog.contentivo.com
“When employees are happy, they are your very
best ambassadors.”