This document discusses how to maximize the benefits of employee advocacy tools. It provides an overview of employee advocacy and common challenges organizations face in using these tools. The document outlines identifying the best content mix by considering the types of content employees most commonly share and segmenting audiences. It also discusses leveraging employee advocacy tools for employer branding and tips for implementation, content strategy, and ongoing execution to get the most value from these tools.
The Martec & Employer Brand Mason Webinars | Session 1 - Maximise the benefits from employee advocacy tools like LinkedIn Elevate, Hootsuite Amplify, Smarp
1. 1
How to maximise
the benefits from
employee
advocacy tools
WEBINAR SERIES ON CONTENT MARKETING
FOR EMPLOYER BRANDING
+
2. Meet your hosts
BIO’S
Raaj has spent over 15 years working across marketing,
technology, and recruitment. Part of a founding team for
an email marketing platform. Grew to multiple countries
before being acquired by a publicly listed entity.
He’s currently the founder of the Martec. Provides
technology and services to support ghost-writing for any
employee in the world. Currently supporting over 100
global employer branding leaders and employee
ambassadors in over 30 countries.
RAAJ GOVINTHARAJAH
Brie is an employer brand thought leader and pioneer in
the Australian market, with over 15 years’ experience
dedicated to building multi-award winning employer
brands in the APAC region. Working within creative
agencies, RPO’s and leading inhouse global employment
brand teams, she has successfully translated marketing
and communications concepts to the world of HR to
attract, recruit and retain talent.
More recently, Brie launched Employer Brand Mason - a
consultancy to partner with organisations at all stages of
their employer branding journey.
BRIE MASON
3. Employee Advocacy – overview, tools, benefits
Common challenges faced by organisations
using employee advocacy toolsAgenda
WHAT WE’LL BE COVERING TODAY
1
2
Identifying the best content mix for your platform3
How to leverage employee advocacy tools for
building employer brands
4
Tips for getting the most value from your current
(or future) tools
5
4. It’s your employees representing your brand
in a positive light to elevate it through word of
mouth marketing.
It provides a face (or faces) to your corporate
brand and adds authenticity and credibility to
your company messages.
What is employee advocacy?
DEFINITION
6. • A more authentic and credible storytelling medium
• Greater breadth of channels – go beyond your company managed platforms
• Provides cut through into new communities
• Far greater reach - employees have the potential to reach more people than your
employer corporate social media pages combined
How employee advocacy impacts employer branding efforts
MAIN BENEFITS
7. Set up and implementation
• Resource heavy
• Employee skepticism
• Identifying content categories that support company messaging
and positioning
• Identifying which employees will give you best ROI on the tool
• Finding senior champions to role model desired behaviours
• Outdated views on social media in business use
Common challenges faced by organisations
using employee advocacy tools
WHAT OUR RESEARCH HAS TOLD US
8. Common challenges faced by organisations using
employee advocacy tools
WHAT OUR RESEARCH HAS TOLD US
Embedding and ongoing execution
• Finding the right mix of content topics – company vs external
• Finding the sweet spot - what employees will share vs what people want to read
• Need for a strong content pipeline of externally publishable content
• Finding how best to resource the work
• Risk of sharing content curation with people outside of comms function
• Loss of momentum
• The impact of low employee engagement on sharing
• Lack of shares for employee generated content
• Driving usage amongst company Executives
9. • Data shows higher levels of employee share activity for externally
published content
• However, data also shows higher audience engagement on company
published content
• Use data to educate employees on what is performing better
• External content should only account for approx. 50% of curated
content for employees to read and share
• Find externally published articles about your company (greater comfort
for employees to share)
• LinkedIn prioritises content that is natively published on their channel
• Employees are very selective about what they share so be careful and
deliberate in your content curation to ensure greater share activity
Types of content employees most
commonly share
IDENTIFYING THE BEST CONTENT MIX FOR YOUR PLATFORM
10. • No one size fits all plan for content – dependent on where the organisation is at on their
journey and what their comms objectives are
• ‘Awareness’ content performs better than ‘consideration’ and ‘conversion’ type content
• Less employee shares for recruitment content i.e. now hiring, job ads
• What works well:
• Thought leadership articles
• Tip based content ie. 5 Things Leaders Do Every Morning
• Big company announcements related to people ie. new parental leave scheme
• New product launches and behind the scenes of launches/ development
• Less willingness to share employee perspective pieces if they don’t know the employee
• Content needs to make the sharer look more intelligent
Topics employees most commonly share
IDENTIFYING THE BEST CONTENT MIX FOR YOUR PLATFORM
11. • Company broadcasting through official comms channels
is different to employee amplification
• You can’t simply use the same content and post copy
from your careers social channels – that’s in the
organisation’s voice
• Content shared by your employees impacts their
personal brands. Share copy/ posts need to be in the
employee’s voice
• Earning an employee share is very hard – what spin can
you put on the content to make it more relevant and
sharable?
Leveraging employee advocacy
tools for building employer brands
CONSIDERATIONS
12. What are the critical talent
segments most required in
your future workforce
strategy?
Segment your workforce
and agree on prioritisation
What are their attraction
drivers, what topics are of
interest, what’s trending
within these segments?
Who are the types of
people who share?
Understand objections
and desires of each
audience
Which employees will
have a greater impact on
your employer brand?
Make sure critical talent
segments are the primary
seat holders of your
advocacy tool
Who are the thought
leaders to represent your
critical talent segments?
Get them onboard to lead
by example, and show the
power of employee
generated content
Audience
segmentation
STEP 04
What is the best content
mix for these audiences?
Create a content plan for
each audience segment to
achieve greater relevancy
and engagement
Profiles &
personas
Identify
best users
Leadership
buy in
Segment based
content plan
1 2 3 4 5
Build a plan before you start
APPROACH
14. 1. Does this content help to explain what they do, or what the organisation they work
for does?
1. Is this the type of information they would say/share with people at a BBQ?
1. Would they be proud to share this, even if they don’t know the employee who
wrote the article?
1. Does this content share make them look more intelligent to their network?
Simple sense check
ASK YOURSELF BEFORE PUBLISHING
15. • Involve employees in the program and content strategy design
• Programs need a big bang launch
• Tell a clear story of why you’re doing this, the role employees play and what’s in it for
them
• Promote the clear personal benefits upfront – personal branding
• Invest in social media training - social media policy, how each social network works,
which content works best, and how to take advantage of these platforms to drive the
company’s goals
Implementation and launch tips
GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR ADVOCACY TOOLS
16. • Set up an employee champions group to approve topics before they’re created/ curated
• Gather feedback to revise content strategy and curation, or for use in the design of
ongoing advocacy engagement and management activities
• Incentives and recognition go a long way in encouraging employees to share more
• Your advocacy tools are only as good as your content is
• Bespoke ghost-written pieces from senior thought leaders could likely be the best
performing types of content – work out how to do more
• Outsource content generation – a good way of keeping up when your content needs are
high frequency, high volume and high quality
• Invest effort into finding a great image and writing impactful headlines and share copy
• Find ways to embed the desired behaviours and create a culture of brand advocacy
Embedding and ongoing execution tips
GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR ADVOCACY TOOLS
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Get in touch with us
LET’S OPEN UP THE CONVERSATION
Questions or comments
Email Brie: brie@employerbrandmason.com
Email Raaj: raaj@themartec.com
Visit www.themartec.com