Four ways to build an employee advocacy programme from the ground up

Do you have social media savvy stars in your organisation? An employee advocacy programme can be a worthwhile and powerful endeavour to strengthen your employer brand; in fact, research has shown organisations who’ve invested in employee advocacy programmes saw a ten-fold increase in their audience outreach. 

If the time is right to kickstart this initiative, here’s how you can start: 

Identify your brand ambassadors

Audit your current workforce – who are the standout employees who are already talking positively about your organisation on social media? Look in every corner – not just the usual social media channels. Someone writing LinkedIn posts or contributing to company-backed hashtags can be just as effective and important as a tech employee proactively engaging on trade channels like forums and more niche social media apps and sites.  

Give all your employees the opportunity to join the programme 

While it’s important to identify your proactive employees, it’s just as important to open up the invitation to everyone within your organisation. You’d be surprised at how many of your employees would be interested in the opportunity to feel like they’re a part of your campaign and contributing to the conversation. When communicating to your employees, you’ll have a personalised touchpoint and opportunity to address why you’re doing this and why now is the time – a occasion to remind yourself and your employees of your company’s mission, vision and values. 

Make sure your volunteers are representative of the talent out there

It can be easy to just move forward with the initial team you assembled, but it’s vital to be inclusive and ensure diversity is represented amongst your ambassadors. Consider approaching existing internal Employee Resource Groups to see if they’d like to participate. Also, ensure there’s representation across all levels and different departments to help add to the clout of the programme. 

Keep your employee ambassadors engaged

It can be laborious to provide enough opportunities, content and encouragement to keep your ambassadors engaged. Consider hosting drop-in sessions to check-in on your ambassadors to see how you can help them; create a database of content that’s easy to navigate and repurpose on personal channels; try to engage different group of employees throughout the year; and help signal boost employee content from company’s owned channels. 

For other strategies to start, build and maintain an employee ambassadorship programme, download our Employer Brand Whitepaper Series now.