Is Social Selling Causing More Harm than Good for Your Brand?
What is Employee Advocacy?
Employee advocacy is not a new concept however the name and the tools to implement it are relatively new. Employee advocacy is empowering your employees to extend your brand’s reach to their network. Not so complicated, right? And thanks to social media, employees can quickly and easily share corporate-approved content with their online networks.
What are the benefits of Employee Advocacy?
If you’re a marketing leader, it’s probably already obvious. The benefits of employee advocacy are increased reach, stronger customer relationships, increased search ranking, attracting top talent, and more “feet on the street” to spot business opportunities. Did you also know?
Buyers trust people more than brands, Edelman Trust Barometer
Employees have 10x the amount of social media followers than corporate social accounts, Cisco study
B2B buyers expect access to subject matter experts yet less than 3 in 10 agree they have as much access as they need, ITSMA/CFO: How B2B Buyers Consume Information
Are your employees doing your employee advocacy program more harm than good?
Tools and platforms to enable your employees to share your brand content and messages via social media are critical to your program success, but what if your employees:
Don’t have a vibrant online network ready to listen
Lack social media know-how and etiquette
Frequently sell and market to their network, but don’t listen and engage
Do not understand how to integrate their professional with their personal social media presence
Buy-in and success for your employee advocacy program will suffer if your employees do not have proper social media skills to listen, network and engage.
What are the landmines of employee advocacy?
Should you invest in an employee advocacy program? Absolutely. When you do, it’s important to be mindful of these potential landmines:
Company culture shortcoming. Does your company foster a culture of trust and respect for its employees? Does it encourage transparency and employee authenticity? If the answer is no to either of these questions, employee advocacy efforts will fail or appear contrived. For employee advocacy programs to succeed, your employees must be empowered and trusted to engage purposefully and authentically.
No clear goals or expectations for employees: Employees can’t read your mind. They don’t know how much or how little time you expect them to spend engaging in social media. Some fear if they spend too much time there will be consequences. There are also employees who fear not investing enough time. There are no hard and fast rules for optimal time spent engaging in social media. The social media coaches at Profitecture recommend employees target about 15 to 30 minutes a day; sellers and marketers will likely spend more than that depending on their target audience and role.
Expecting 100% buy-in: It’s important to recognize not all employees are going to be comfortable with social media. With training and support, most will, but not all. Respect personal boundaries and focus on employees open and willing to participate, otherwise you risk unhappy employees in the social sphere.
Insufficient employee training: Learning the tools is easy. Knowing what to say, how to say it and when to say it requires training and practice. Employees retweeting and sharing brand posts are a nice start, but they can get spammy (the Urban Dictionary is so colorful!), especially if a few hundred employees tweet the exact same post. You start losing connections and trust, not growing them. Arming your employees with social media best practices and short cuts help build buy-in for your employee advocacy program, and, more importantly, showcases your employees’ expertise in an authentic and positive way which grows trust, preference, and referrals.