Amplify Paid, Earned, and SEO With Employee Advocacy

Between juggling multiple platforms and constantly shifting algorithms, how do you ensure your target audience sees your brand messaging? Paid ads, SEO, and organic buzz all offer solutions, but weaving them together effectively is the real challenge.

Now, imagine adding another layer — your employees. Employee advocacy can act as a force multiplier across all of your social media strategies.

But, how exactly does it fit in with paid, earned, and SEO efforts?

In this guide, we’ll break it down and show how employee advocacy can amplify your marketing mix.

But, before diving in, let's review the three core social media strategies that most companies rely on.

3 Core Social Media Strategies

When it comes to social media marketing, most companies rely on three core strategies: paid media, SEO, and earned media. Each one plays a crucial role in building brand awareness and functions differently, requiring a unique approach.

While these strategies are powerful on their own, there's a way to make them work even harder for you — through employee advocacy.

What Is Employee Advocacy and Why It Matters

Employee advocacy is the promotion of a company by its employees, primarily through their personal social media channels. It’s a form of earned media that can be incredibly impactful. Examples of employee advocacy include sharing company content, posting about events, and writing reviews.

Source: Rob Larson

So, why does it matter? People trust personal recommendations more than traditional ads. When employees share content, it comes across as authentic, boosting your credibility and visibility. Plus, employee’s networks usually have 10x more connections than company followers.

Cost-wise, employee advocacy is low compared to paid media — it typically involves the cost of an advocacy platform and employee training. Key metrics to measure its success include reach, engagement, clicks, and conversions driven by employee shares — making it an efficient, high-impact strategy for increasing brand awareness.

Now that you understand employee advocacy, let’s explore how it acts as a force multiplier for paid, SEO, and earned media.

How Employee Advocacy Boosts Your Social Media Strategy

Here are three ways employee advocacy can help boost your social media strategy:

1. Boosting Paid Media With Employee Advocacy

Employee advocacy can significantly extend the reach of your paid media campaigns. When employees share company-sponsored content, such as LinkedIn ads, it gains visibility beyond the initial audience targeted by the paid campaign.

This organic sharing increases the content's exposure without additional ad spend, maximizing the impact of your marketing dollars. With GaggleAMP, for instance, a B2B company can potentially see its LinkedIn ads reach a broader network as employees share and engage with the posts, driving higher engagement rates and brand awareness.

Source: Tim Arnold

2. Supporting SEO Through Employee-Shared Content

Employee shares also play a vital role in boosting your SEO efforts. When employees share optimized blog posts or articles, they help generate valuable backlinks and social signals. These shares can drive more traffic to your site, improve your search engine rankings, and increase the credibility of your content.

For example, if employees share a well-crafted, SEO-optimized blog post through an employee advocacy platform like GaggleAMP, it not only drives direct traffic but also encourages other websites to link back to your content, enhancing your site's authority and search performance.

Source: Anna Standley

3. Driving Earned Media With Authentic Employee Shares

Finally, employee advocacy can create genuine buzz around your brand. Employees sharing company news, achievements, or even casual updates on their personal social media channels adds an element of authenticity that paid and traditional earned media often lack. This organic, authentic engagement helps build trust and credibility with your audience.

For example, a B2B company that encourages employees to share their positive experiences and industry insights can see increased social shares and media mentions, reinforcing their brand reputation and fostering a stronger connection with their audience.

Source: Allison Macey-Miller

Managing an employee advocacy program might seem overwhelming, but GaggleAMP is here to streamline the process. Our platform makes it effortless to incorporate employee advocacy into your existing media strategy.

Now that we’ve established the role employee advocacy plays in enhancing your strategy, let’s explore how B2B companies effectively leverage it to amplify their paid, SEO, and earned media efforts.

Employee Advocacy in Action for B2B Companies

It’s clear employee advocacy can help boost your paid, SEO, and earned media, so let’s talk real numbers. Below are three examples of how our employee advocacy platform helped these B2B companies not only improve visibility, credibility, and engagement, but also save money and increase revenue. 

1. Learnerbly

Learnerbly, a performance enablement platform, used GaggleAMP to boost its brand awareness in a competitive market. With just 25 employees in their Gaggle, Learnerbly managed to achieve significant engagement across social media, particularly on LinkedIn. Over one quarter, they saw over 500 clicks, 1,000 social interactions, and a reach of 5.8 million — surpassing benchmarks for similar-sized organizations by 3x in clicks and 7x in reach.

Their employee advocacy program helped them increase organic traffic by 54% while maintaining a strong focus on brand awareness rather than just driving website traffic.

By encouraging employees to share content and participate in social conversations, Learnerbly extended the shelf life of posts and built a more engaged audience. The initiative not only increased their social media presence but also generated earned media value of $19,000 in just six months, making it a highly cost-effective strategy.

You can learn more about how this company increased its brand awareness in our case study here.

2. Buurst

Buurst, a computer software company, leveraged employee advocacy with GaggleAMP to save over $20,000 on cost-per-click (CPC) spend in just four months. By getting fewer than 20 employees involved, they saw more than 700 clicks, over 1,600 social interactions, and a potential reach of 2.5 million people. Instead of relying solely on paid media, Buurst empowered its employees to share company-approved content on LinkedIn, positioning them as industry thought leaders while drastically cutting down on paid advertising costs.

Before GaggleAMP, Buurst spent around $50,000 on LinkedIn and Google ads over six months, with limited results. Once they shifted to employee advocacy, the company's social reach skyrocketed, delivering an earned media value of almost $7,000 in just one quarter. Employees gained confidence in their social activity, which not only boosted Buurst’s brand presence but also enhanced the employees' personal networks with over 950 new connections.

You can learn more about how this company saved $20K on paid media in our case study here.

3. Wavestone (Formerly WGroup)

Wavestone (formerly WGroup) used employee advocacy to drive over $2 million in new sales opportunities through GaggleAMP. By empowering consultants to share company content and showcase their expertise on social media, Wavestone increased its brand value and positioned its consultants as thought leaders in the IT industry. This strategy boosted engagement with their target audience, generating 7,300 clicks and 7.8 million impressions over three and a half years.

Prior to GaggleAMP, Wavestone’s social media presence was limited, and sharing content was inefficient. By adopting employee advocacy, consultants could easily share marketing-approved content with a single click, transforming their online influence. This increased visibility helped create a stronger brand image and directly contributed to the firm’s lead generation efforts.

You can learn more about how this company built a $2 million sales pipeline through employee advocacy in our case study here.

Based on these three examples, the results speak for themselves. A well-rounded social media strategy that integrates employee advocacy can elevate your marketing efforts across the board.

Tying It All Together

To truly excel in social media marketing, a strategic blend of paid media, SEO, and earned media is crucial. Paid media offers immediate visibility, SEO builds sustainable traffic, and earned media enhances credibility. Integrating these strategies can maximize your brand’s impact.

Employee advocacy is the key to unlocking their full potential. It is also a cost-effective, high-impact strategy that complements all of these efforts. By integrating GaggleAMP into your marketing strategy, you can enhance your reach, credibility, and search engine visibility, leveraging the power of your employees to compete effectively for budget allocation.

Ready to see it in action? Discover how our platform can help you harness the full power of employee advocacy, and start your trial of GaggleAMP today.