LinkedIn, a veritable pillar of professional networking, has become an essential tool for companies wishing to strengthen their image and extend their reach. However, beyond company pages and advertising campaigns, an often underestimated strategy is emerging as a powerful lever: employee advocacy.
Behind this complicated word lies an idea. It's about turning your employees into ambassadors for your brand. By sharing content, engaging their network and leveraging their expertise, they contribute to your company's visibility and credibility. According to a LinkedIn study, publications shared by employees generate 8 times more engagement than those distributed by official pages. This figure shows just how much your teams can become your allies in a professional environment where trust is essential.
In this article, follow the advice of 18h08, an expert influence marketing agency, to effectively deploy an employee advocacy strategy on LinkedIn. Discover how to mobilize your teams, structure your approach and take full advantage of this strategy.
1. Understanding employee advocacy: why and how?
Employee advocacy is based on a simple but powerful principle: your employees have a unique and authentic network. By mobilizing their potential to relay your messages, you increase your organic reach tenfold, while reinforcing the human dimension of your communication.
3 benefits of employee advocacy :
- Increase your brand's visibility: Each employee shares your content with his or her network. They thus reach an audience that is less, or even inaccessible by traditional means.
- Building trust: A message shared by an employee is perceived as 3 times more authentic than one broadcast directly by a company (1).
- Unite your teams: Employee advocacy enhances the value of your employees by actively involving them in the company's communication strategy.
Tip: Define clear objectives before launching your program. Do you want to recruit new talent, raise brand awareness or strengthen commitment to your in-house expertise? It's the definition of each of your objectives that will guide your future actions.
Not sure where to start? Don't hesitate to make an appointment with us. We'll see if it's possible to work together, and if so, we'll create a tailor-made strategy for you.
2. Identify employee ambassadors
However, not all employees will be ready to commit to employee advocacy. Identifying the right profiles is a key step in optimizing the impact of your strategy.
How do you identify your ambassadors?
- Natural engagement: Look for collaborators who are already sharing content on LinkedIn or interacting with your publications.
- Sector expertise: Employees who specialize in a key area (marketing, tech, HR) are more likely to attract the attention of their network.
- Voluntary : Employee advocacy must remain a voluntary process. Ambassadors motivated by conviction will always have a greater impact.
Case in point: A technology company identified its ambassadors among its technical and marketing teams. The people involved were already sharing articles on industry innovations, so they were easy to identify. Their expertise reinforced the credibility of the company's messages on Linkedin.
Tip: Launch a pilot team of ambassadors to test your strategy. The positive results of this group can motivate other employees to get involved.
3. Train your employees on LinkedIn
A successful employee advocacy strategy requires careful preparation. Give your employees the tools and skills they need to master LinkedIn and leverage it. Training courses are available directly on LinkedIn, as well as on Coursera.
Steps to successful training :
- Optimize profiles: Guide your teams to update their photos, summaries and experiences, to reflect a professional image aligned with your brand.
- Create engaging content: Teach them how to write captivating posts, use relevant hashtags and integrate attractive visuals. Storytelling can be an important skill to master. If you'd like to find out more, we recommend this this article from BPI France.
- Interact with the network: Make them aware of the importance of comments, shares and private messages to strengthen professional connections.
Case in point: A company could organize monthly workshops where employees learn to write behind-the-scenes posts about their profession, enhancing both their expertise and the company's image.
4. Provide relevant and varied content
A library of varied content is essential to make it easy for your employees to share. It ensures that every employee has relevant resources ready for distribution. As you go along, create a folder, on Google Drive for example, with all the content that could be useful. This way, you'll be able to share these resources quickly and easily.
Types of content to focus on :
- Company news: Announcements of partnerships, product launches or internal events.
- Educational content: Blog articles, case studies, infographics or instructional videos.
- Internal success stories: Testimonials, achievements or awards obtained by your teams.
Tip: Centralize this content in a platform accessible to all, such as an intranet or a dedicated solution (e.g. Sociabble, Google Drive, One Drive). Encourage employees to adapt these resources to add their own personal touch.
5. Encourage authenticity and personalization
Copy-and-paste messages lack impact and risk damaging the credibility of your strategy. As when working with influencers, let your collaborators personalize their publications to optimize engagement. They know their network, they know what appeals and what doesn't.
How can we foster authenticity?
- Provide guidelines: Provide ideas or examples, but let your employees take ownership of the tone and content.
- Highlight their experiences: Encourage them to share personal anecdotes related to their profession or an outstanding project.
- Avoid overload: Too many publications risk tiring their network. Prioritize quality over quantity.
Case in point: An employee shares a photo from an internal event, explaining what he or she learned and enjoyed. This type of authentic content often generates greater engagement than a corporate message.
6. Measuring the results of your employee advocacy strategy
Like any marketing initiative, your employee advocacy strategy needs to be monitored and optimized using key indicators.
KPIs to monitor :
- Reach: This is the number of views of the publications posted by your collaborators.
- Engagement: The number of likes, comments and shares generated by posts.
- Conversions: The traffic to your website or the number of leads generated thanks to shares.
Tip: To simplify your task, use specialized tools like Hootsuite Amplify or Sociabble. You'll be able to analyze the data in real time and adjust your approach.
7. Maintain long-term commitment
An employee advocacy strategy is not a one-off action. To be effective, it must be part of an ongoing, long-term dynamic.
How do you maintain motivation?
- Celebrate success: Congratulate the most successful ambassadors and highlight their publications at internal meetings. These publications can serve as a model or inspiration for future events.
- Offer rewards: For example, you can offer training courses or rewards based on the objectives you define together.
- Renew content: Don't forget to offer new resources on a regular basis to keep your employees interested.
Case in point: A company could organize a quarterly contest to reward employees who have generated the most interactions with their publications...
Conclusion: Turn your employees into brand ambassadors
Employee advocacy on LinkedIn represents a unique opportunity to strengthen your brand image while mobilizing your teams. By training your employees, providing them with the right tools and rewarding their efforts, you can increase the impact of this strategy tenfold. of this strategy.
Would you like to implement this strategy to increase your visibility? Contact us. We're France's number 1 influencer marketing strategy agency. We'll work with you to identify your needs and create a tailor-made strategy.
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