In a competitive market, brands are competing to present themselves as the best option, both as a business offering a product or service and as an employer. Savvy brands, who recognize the importance of cultivating brand engagement and loyalty, are using employee testimonials to help set themselves apart from the competition and attract top talent.
In this article, first, we’ll briefly explain what employee testimonials are. Then we’ll dive into some ways that employee testimonials drive brand engagement and loyalty, plus share tips on how to share them on social media.
An employee testimonial gives potential employees (and customers) a peek into your company’s culture, mission, values, and work environment. By providing candid insights, employee testimonials resonate with candidates because they’re viewed as an authentic endorsement of your brand.
Potential employees use these testimonials to gauge if your brand aligns with their values, and vice versa. By viewing the company through a current employee’s eyes, they can imagine themselves in their role to see if they would be a good fit.
No matter if you’re a B2C brand or a B2B tech company developing transcript AI, employee testimonials are a valuable tool. They also come in many forms, including:
Article Testimonial. Written by employees, this type of testimonial is hosted on the company’s blog and shared on its social media accounts.
Interview Testimonial. Here, employees are interviewed by a colleague. The interview can be video, audio, or written. Similar to article testimonials, they are also shared on the company’s blog and social media platforms.
Photo Testimonial. This type of testimonial features a picture of the employee along with a brief quote or summary of their insights. Photo testimonials are featured on the company website and shared on social media.
Social Media Post. Testimonial content can be shared directly from the company’s social accounts, from its employees’ social accounts, and reshared (e.g., company reshares an employee’s post or vice versa).
In addition to cultivating brand loyalty, employee testimonials shared through employee advocacy can reach a much larger, targeted audience and are a key component of recruitment marketing strategies.
It’s clear that employee testimonials are good for your business, after all, they drive engagement and loyalty.
Now let’s take a look at some additional ways they benefit your brand.
Trust is something easily taken for granted. In fact, your employees and customers might not trust your brand as much as you think. According to PwC’s 2024 Trust Survey, 90% of business executives report a high level of trust from consumers, and 86% report high trust from employees. However, only 30% of consumers trust these businesses and only 67% of employees actually trust their employer.
Source: PwC
When you see an ad, it’s designed to highlight the product’s positives. When a CEO is involved in the ad, personally marketing a product, they obviously have a stake in it being a commercial success. But, with employees, consumers see staff members as more relatable and authentic, even better informed.
Employees work directly with the products and see everything behind-the-scenes. That’s why employee testimonials can effectively build trust in both your brand and workplace culture. However, it’s important that their insights are genuine. It’s easy for testimonials to feel overly scripted and robotic. The best employee testimonials sound natural and come from the heart, which brings us to…
Excellent employee testimonials tell a story to draw your audience in, featuring genuine experiences working for your company. For example, a dev team employee for an email automation service describes working on a new feature that would make a great alternative to Mailchimp. They share the inspiration for the new feature and how they persuaded their manager to let them be responsible for implementing it. This shows both a level of personal investment and how the company values employee input.
Current (and potential) employees looking for growth with a company find these types of employee stories relatable. Sharing experiences that people can identify with can be far more engaging than generic social media posts.
Turning employees into brand advocates means that your company lives up to the hype of its employee testimonials. True employee advocates don’t just praise your company on-camera. They’re also likely to recommend you to friends and family as a fantastic employer, product, or service.
And when you have exciting company news, a product launch, or a job opening, they will be quick to share that information with their LinkedIn networks and on other social platforms.
Although the Great Resignation may be over, companies are continuing to highlight their company culture and values to retain and attract employees. Employees are an extension of your brand, so it makes sense to harness the power of their testimonials.
Let’s say an eco-conscious shoe manufacturer makes footwear from reclaimed or recycled materials. Testimonials from workers explaining how you salvage and process discarded textiles for sustainable practices gives a glimpse behind the curtain and shows that your manufacturing methods match your brand ethics. This also helps attract candidates who share similar values.
Statistics from the World Economic Forum show there has been a 154% increase in the rate of entry-level job ads referencing company culture and values over the last two years. This isn’t surprising when you consider that 87% of US employees prefer to work for a company which aligns with their values.
Source: World Economic Forum
Employee testimonials can help you reach audiences who share your professional or personal values. Let’s say your B2B company offers its employees remote work flexibility. By using virtual phone numbers for your in-office comms network and for remote teams, you can get employee testimonies from both explaining the benefits of a hybrid environment. These testimonies can attract potential candidates and clients with similar attitudes towards remote flexibility.
Employee testimonials can help cultivate a sense of community and loyalty among customers. They spur conversations on social media, driving engagement among targeted audiences. People love to share their opinions about products or services, and they can comment directly on your shared testimonials.
Consider when Apple does a product launch for a new iPhone. Apple consumers are eager to engage, sharing their thoughts on product features, design, etc. Your brand can cultivate that same level of engagement excitement, too.
Now that we’ve highlighted several ways employee testimonials benefit brand engagement and loyalty, let’s maximize your efforts. Here are four tips to optimize your employee testimonials for social media:
Visual appeal is one of the most important elements of a strong organic social media content strategy.
Visually engaging content can include text along with an image, infographic, or video. For branding consistency, your social media posts need to be in line with your visual branding. If your company is known for calming colors and a sleek professional look, your infographic color palette and layout should reflect that.
Depending on the size (and type) of company, employee roles will vary. However, it’s important to give recognition to all roles. Employee recognition goes a long way in building morale and boosting engagement.
Your business may include:
It’s important to collect employee testimonials across different areas of your business to provide a balance of insights. For example, you can feature your IT staff, perhaps giving them a shout out for the great job they recently did implementing enterprise architecture strategy with Ardoq.
When you gather employee testimonials from a variety of departments, you expand your brand reach by tapping into your employees’ social networks through employee advocacy. You also get the opportunity to promote areas of your business that aren’t public-facing, which can attract potential talent who weren't aware those job positions existed within your brand.
Employee testimonials are popular for the same reason people read customer reviews. They’re a more open method of expression, going beyond one out of five scores or a simple yes/no answer. Stories give context to praise and provide an emotional through line by way of relatability.
For example, a B2B company that sells a system for voicemail drops also uses that same product in their own outbound contact center. Testimonials from contact center employees can discuss the time-consuming nature of personalized messages, and how the platform allows the streamlining of work hours. Your employees can even talk about how access to the platform improves their work/life balance.
When employees put this sort of thing in their own words, the result is a goldmine of narratives and punchy quotes that sound natural. These testimonials can be brief quotes, or video interviews, making them an effective content for brand promotion.
Source: EFT Group
Employee testimonials are an essential part of your social media strategy checklist. So, our final tip is to share content to multiple social platforms, tailoring the content for each one.
While social media platforms also have their own tools to help you drive reach, by using an employee advocacy platform like GaggleAMP, can help streamline the content ideation and creation process.
Recruiterboom, a recruitment and staffing agency, is just one of many companies that has experienced success using an employee advocacy tool. Its team of 13 people used GaggleAMP to amplify event promotion and increase talent acquisition, and the results speak for themselves.
In just 60 days, Recruiterboom garnered a reach of 3.9 million, over five times their average benchmark. Similarly, their rate of interactions almost doubled.
Employee testimonials are a great strategy for cultivating consumer trust.
A positive testimonial provides a relatable narrative based on personal experience, which engages and informs the customer about your brand. And social media is an excellent platform for sharing testimonials. It’s one of the most popular and cost-effective marketing channels for your testimonials.
When optimized with employee advocacy, social media posts can generate ongoing discussions which strengthens your brand awareness and reach.
The simple fact is that employee testimonials can work wonders for brand engagement and customer loyalty. An employee advocacy tool like GaggleAMP can help boost your brand engagement and reach on your social platforms.
Schedule a demo today and start amplifying your brand engagement and loyalty efforts.