Turn your employees into social media ambassadors

Read time: 4 minutes.

You’ve probably heard the saying: If you don’t tell your story, someone else will - and you might not like how it’s said. Unless...

…it’s your employees telling it. They can do it in their own words, from their perspective and often, much better than you.

Why? Because people-to-people interaction gives your organisation a more human touch and is much more effective.

On LinkedIn, on average:

• employees collectively have 10x more followers than the company pages,

• posts from employees generate 2x the engagement rate compared to organisation-shared content,

• content shared by employees is seen as 8x more authentic than posts from the organisation itself.

So, how do you turn your employees into your social media ambassadors? Before I introduce you to the 4-step process, here’s one important remark:

Every employee advocacy initiative must create a win-win situation for both participants and organisations. Success often depends on your organisational culture - things like trust between management and employees, the level of autonomy employees feel, and your openness to trying new ideas. If those foundations are in place, it’s the perfect time to begin.

Now, let’s get started.

1. Build

Every great employee advocacy program starts with a thoughtful strategy.

Determining your program’s goals is a good starting point. What do you want to achieve? Do you want to boost brand awareness or drive employee engagement? Do you want to attract attention to your services or your work? Or rather, help build your employees' expert brands?

Defining and making your objectives specific and measurable will help you track your progress (see step 4.).

Once your goals are defined, you can think of content. Content is the fuel of any advocacy program, so it's critical to know what kind of content you’ll share with your employees, how often, and in what formats.

Part of your strategy is creating clear social media guidelines for your employees. What’s okay for them to share? What’s not? Giving guidelines to your employees will help them feel more confident about posting while protecting your brand’s reputation.

This is also the moment to get the first employees on board with the program. Do you know employees who are already active on LinkedIn or X and sharing professional content? If so, that’s a great place to start. Their enthusiasm can inspire others to join in.

2. Educate

The success of your program depends on your employees’ involvement. Here’s how to get them on board.

First, tell them what’s in it for them. Employee advocacy isn’t just great for your company. Being more engaged on social media and sharing content helps employees build their own credibility, expand their networks, and showcase their expertise.

Next, train your employees on how to use social media effectively. Educate them on your social media guidelines, share best practices on building profiles and using the social media platform on which you want to focus your program, and provide them with a simple framework for writing and personalising content.

My advice is to create ongoing support. Set up a community space (like a Teams channel) where employees can ask questions, share their experiences, ask for feedback and access quick tips or templates.

3. Engage

Once the program is in place, the critical next step is to implement it and keep the momentum going.

To do this, you need to make it easy for employees to share content.

Not everyone is confident enough to create content from scratch at first, so my advice would be to start with pre-written drafts and templates and show employees how they can personalise them to make their messages their own.

In parallel, encourage creativity. You can start by creating a company hashtag to inspire employees to share photos and stories and build a sense of community and belonging.

Since your employees come and go or become more or less active on social media, keep your program top of mind with your employees. Make sure that anyone interested can always get the information and be more involved.

4. Measure

To maximise your impact, you must continuously monitor and improve your program.

First, turn your strategic goals into key metrics to measure success. Depending on your objective, you may decide to track participation rates, content reach or engagement levels.

Once your metrics are in place, you can evaluate what’s working, tweak, and improve over time.

Treat your program as a living project: try new things and use feedback from your employees, especially in the initial stages.

👇 Get in touch

If you need support, whether you’re just starting or looking to optimise an existing employee advocacy programme, I can help.

From defining your strategy to running trainings, I work with organisations to create employee advocacy programs that drive results.

Hit reply or book a call - I’d love to chat about how we can make your program a success!

Thank you for trusting me with this space in your inbox.

Stay curious!
— Kasia