Employee Advocacy
July 11, 2024
Did you know many leading brands have an employee advocacy program in place?
And it’s no surprise at all as it comes with some incredible benefits:
So, what exactly is an employee advocacy program? To understand this, let’s first look at what employee advocacy is:
Employee advocacy is effectively word-of-mouth advertising. Yet, asking your employees to conduct word-of-mouth advertising without a plan (or a program) in place won’t be very effective.
An employee advocacy program is that plan. Using tools like GaggleAMP offers a seamless way for your employees to share your content across their social media channels. It’s also offering incentives to keep your employees motivated — such as leaderboards and gamification.
Employee advocacy programs are becoming so popular worldwide that top brands and companies are starting to use them to save costs, make themselves recession-proof, and keep their name at the forefront of customers' minds.
Today we’re going to look at some of these top brands and the benefits of employee advocacy that have helped them grow their program. We’ll also look at how you can get started with your employee advocacy program.
Ricoh Canada provides services, technologies, and solutions to digital workplaces across Canada.
To expand their social media reach, Ricoh decided on a three-month employee advocacy trial supported by GaggleAMP. Their goals?
Ricoh decided to undergo this trial with just nine of their sales reps, and their results were more than impressive.
Ricoh’s sales reps reached 534,000 people across their social media channels.
These results far exceeded Ricoh’s expectations, so Natalie Chung — the Brand and Communications Manager — decided to expand the program and bring in a long-term strategy involving more employees.
While implementing this strategy, Chung introduced GaggleAMP’s gamification features — to help keep those involved motivated.
Did it work? Here’s what Chung had to say:
"The company has increased its reach on social media from over 500,000 people over its three-month pilot program, to 2.6 million in the following 6 months." — Natalie Chung
Employee advocacy was so successful for Ricoh, that as time passed, they began to expand the program, so it wasn’t just in place for their marketing department.
In fact, the executive management team, human resources team, and even the services department got involved and started sharing activities and content across their social media channels.
The best part is: Ricoh’s employees turned brand ambassadors were eager, engaged, and motivated. The inclusion of gamification kept employee participation enjoyable while helping Ricoh grow new leads.
“One of the most notable successes is how willing and engaged our employees are in using the platform. Their usage and dedication to encourage social amplification have over-exceeded our expectations.” — Natalie Chung
In short, what started as just a sales team trial became a full company adoption.
Kiteworks is a popular brand that manages and governs sensitive communications and content to protect companies and customers from cybersecurity threats.
Their employee advocacy program helps them increase brand awareness through social media platforms like LinkedIn.
On Linkedin, they share new blog content, hiring opportunities, and awards and kudos, like placements on G2. The content teaches readers about what Kiteworks does, promotes a demo of their platform, and gives friendly advice on how businesses can match government audit requirements.
Kiteworks’ blog is laid out in such a way that users directed from their employee advocacy program can immediately see an option to sign up for Kiteworks’ newsletter – meaning readers constantly get new content delivered right to their inbox.
Finally, like with Dell Computers, Kiteworks brand ambassadors promote new content daily with one click. According to Hootsuite, “Daily posting will grow followers 4x faster than posting less than once a week. Makes sense: more visibility.”
So what made Kiteworks choose GaggleAMP? Here’s what one GaggleAMP customer had to say:
“With lean, agile internal marketing organizations, GaggleAMP enables me to quickly scale up an employee social advocacy program with all of the support and structure needed to help it succeed.” — Administrator in Biotechnology
Buurst is a data performance company founded in 2012. They support businesses in various ways, such as through protocol support and cloud storage cost control.
As Buurst scaled their business, they wanted to become industry thought leaders for their clients. They also wanted to have better lead generation and increased engagement.
However, Buurst had one problem: they weren’t getting much traction with their traditional social media advertising campaign. They were spending more than the industry average and still not growing a solid social media presence.
What’s worse: they weren’t entirely on board with the idea of employee advocacy. Only 20 people worked for Buurst, and finding time to be a brand ambassador while supporting your customers isn’t easy.
“Most of our executives and people in the company were like, 'yeah, that's worth a try. I doubt any of them really understood what was going to happen. The expectation of what GaggleAMP could do from within the company was very minimal…” — Stephen Spector
Yet, employee advocacy did make a difference when they tried it.
Buurst’s 20 employees reached 2.5 million people on LinkedIn in just a few short months.
Which in turn earned Buurst 700 new website clicks and 1,600 more social media interactions.
It shows that with the right platform in place, employee advocacy is easy and likely to be successful for your business—no matter how big or small it is.
“We've reached 2.5 million in reach in a couple of months — that's enormous for a small company like us. Our LinkedIn page has 2,200 followers. Do you know how long it would take me with 2,200 followers to reach 2.5 million people? It's just not possible.” — Stephen Spector
Qualcomm is a wireless technology company that leads users into a connected future. They often show innovations through their YouTube channel, which Qualcomm’s brand ambassadors promote on their LinkedIn accounts.
Like Kiteworks, Qualcomm also shares new blog posts through their employee advocacy program. When readers click through to these blog posts, they’re immediately presented with buttons that allow them to follow Qualcomm’s social media pages, helping grow brand awareness.
Qualcomm has been around since 1985, and its employee advocacy program has helped them grow to over 1 million followers on platforms including LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
Ambassadors post daily using GaggleAMP which, as mentioned above, grows followers 4x faster and is essential for recession proofing.
Here’s another positive GaggleAMP review to prove why it’s an effective solution:
“What we've liked best about Gaggle is that it's allowed us to better share our message with all employees. Now, employees are able to be notified when a new post is up, and easily share that. We've been up on many of our KPIs on social, and I believe Gaggle has been a driver for that.” — Administrator in Computer Software
Finally, MasterCard—the well-known finance service company—uses employee advocacy to share the latest news across social media.
Did you know? You can see this in action by going on Twitter and typing in, “#mastercardambassador.” Here you’ll see employee advocates and influencers all contributing to the hashtag.
When you enter this hashtag, note how most employee posts have 100 or more engagements. This in itself shows how successful an employee advocacy program can be.
Also, since you can’t put a price on word-of-mouth advertising, none of these engagements you see cost money. However, on a standard Facebook advertising campaign, you have to pay-per-click, and this cost adds up quickly—especially if you’re launching new campaigns daily.
Here’s what one MasterCard employee said about their employee advocacy program:
“We have a lot of support from senior management and being able to rely on and empower some of the people who are already doing social media well is like having a big extended team.” (Source)
Empowering is the key word here. With an employee advocacy program, you’re putting your employees in control of your brand, boosting their morale, and making them feel like they’re a part of something bigger.
GaggleAMP facilitates your journey to employee empowerment with an easy-to-use platform you can get started with today.
“The platform is easy to use, and saves a ton of time reaching out to employees to try to get them to engage with the company's content on social media. With a simple dashboard and easy interface, employees can like, share, reshare and even create organic shares with just a click.” — Pamela R
Get in touch with GaggleAMP to request a demo and learn how you can get 14-days on us.
You can also visit our blog page to learn other important ways to make your business recession proof, including how to sell on social media and How Brand Advocacy Can Boost Your Lead Generation.
Employee Advocacy
Employee Advocacy
Employee Advocacy
