Employee’s Advocacy. Your Untapped Army.
Why Your Employee’s Advocacy can increase leads and sales from Social Media.
Most companies today have embraced Social Media into their Marketing Strategy whether it is on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. There is a limit to how much influence, time, energy and content that brands/companies can push out to their followers or fans.
Companies’ give very little thought to one of the most powerful, untapped resources sitting right under their nose with the potential to reach new customers every day.
Your employees can become a secret army on Social Media for your business. Studies show that employees whose social media accounts contain 561% wider reach than your business accounts combined, this also provides seven times more likelihood to convert to customers.
What are the benefits of employee advocacy on social media?
1. Result in more traffic to your website
2. Increase in lead generation
3. Stronger Social Influence for your company
4. Wider visibility about your brand or business
So how do you get your employees to share your content?
You would be surprised how many employees want to help build a company profile online. Often, companies develop a social media policy which restricts staff members from disclosing information about the business. Creating an easy to understand policy with guidelines can help.
The key is to make it simple for them and easy to share. A lot of businesses are now incorporating social media training as part of self-development programmes for the employees. It’s like the old story: “you can lead a dog to water but you can’t make him drink”. This is where training is vitally important
There are many different levels of understanding when it comes to social media. Training from beginners to advanced levels provides this and the benefits for the employee and the company is vital to the success of these programmes.
It also works on a two-tier basis:
1. Increased self-development providing individual knowledge and training creates loyalty to the business.
2. Training and understanding develop stronger visibility for the company and increases leads and sales, to new target audiences plus strengthens the company’s online presence.
Why would you not want to tap into the connections and reach the audience your employees already have?
Through social sharing, employees get a sense of being a bigger part of the company and also increase productivity. Which in turn leads to expanding their skill set and longevity for the business.
The added bonus with employee advocacy is being able to measure your current marketing strategy and understand what content is working and getting the most shares and what is not.
Your employees may also be able to guide you further content as they are the face of your business on a daily basis and see the pain point customers are experiencing.
The key thing to take away here is that with the right training, your employees can become your best advocates for your brand and business.
The fundamental understanding is buyers trust employees over brands and even CEO.
