Employee Advocacy: Getting Employees to Share Content on Social

As content and marketing professionals, we want our employees to share content through their social channels — to become advocates for our organizations. But that advocacy cannot be forced. It has to be earned. To do that, our content needs to resonate not just with prospective customers, but with our own workforces.

Because each employee’s social network is filled with trusted friends and business connections, employees have an image to maintain within their networks — a personal brand to uphold. So, they carefully choose to share things that reflect well upon them.

Let’s think about the ideal employee advocate…. Let’s call her Tammie. She’s active on social media, has a lot of connections, and carefully shares select corporate content, adding her own thoughts and insight. When she’s excited about an industry article she comes across, she shares it. She consistently draws likes and shares that reflect well on herself and, luckily for us, our organization.

B2B marketers continue to create content. Videos, blog posts, podcasts, white papers, articles, infographics — content generated to help us connect with customers and prospects, build trust and get them to think of us when it’s time to buy.

These have always been the goals for communication and marketing. But today’s buyers are less trusting of brands and more likely to search for authentic information from someone they trust rather than directly from organizations (someone like their friend Tammie). This is causing organizations to lean on employees to be those authentic voices — to share corporate content through their social channels. Known as employee advocacy this puts pressure on content marketing: To make our content “blow up,” we can’t simply post and forget, we need our employees to share it (or sometimes even initiate it).
 

Gaining employee advocacy isn’t automatic.

A 2018 New York Times study reports that 94% of study participants “carefully consider how the information they share will be useful to the recipient.” Spreading the word about your organization is (and should be) secondary for your employees.

The same NYT study notes five key reasons people share online content:

• To bring valuable and entertaining content to others
• To define ourselves to others
• To grow and nourish our relationships
• Self-fulfillment
• To get the word out about causes or brands

As you create content, keep employee motives in mind. If employees simply hit “share” or “like” in a robotic, as-instructed way, it’s not authentic. Their networks will quickly see and lose interest. And when they lose interest in Tammie, they lose interest in us.

Now, you may be thinking, “How would I know what my employees find appealing?” Ask them.
 

Here are suggestions for creating content that appeals to customers but also encourage employees to become company advocates:

1. Have ongoing conversations with your employees. Ask them about the content you’re producing. Get feedback. When employees feel heard and involved, they’re more likely to share. When they’re informed, they’re more likely to speak up on your behalf. Pay attention to what’s being shared and by whom. Create more of it.
2. Create Intriguing content. Consider what type of content shows customers who your organization really is, that also appeals to employees.
   • Content that offers a glimpse of the inner workings of your organization, people or projects behind the scenes
   • Third-party articles that feature your organization and help employees feel proud that their organization made the news in a positive way
   • Short articles that explain, educate or simplify — things that would be useful to your employees’ connections
3. Encourage employee-submitted content. Short success stories from the everyday workplace make shareable content because it’s real. To maintain control of this content, offer guest blogging opportunities or interview these individuals.
4. Curate articles about your organization or industry. You don’t need to create all the content you share. Set up alerts to help you spot amazing articles written by someone else on topics related to your industry that are interesting to customers, employees and their networks.
5. Help employees understand how to share and why it’s important to them personally. The payoffs for being active on social media are that they’re more visible, which is good for anyone’s career.

Employee advocacy is an important goal of today’s content marketing. Encourage it by creating content that resonates with your employees. Tammie, we hope you like this one.