While many companies have blocked access to social media networks for their employees, there are some companies who are going towards the other extreme and promoting their employees to be active on social media. There are various reasons for this changing trend and one of them is turning out to be very prominent in companies across sectors. This trend is Employee Advocacy and it has emerged as a game-changer for social media presence of companies recently.
Social media is not about brands and technology. It is about people and trustworthy relationships. After all, many do not realize that sales correlate with the number of people who advocate your brand. According to a report, about 60% of the people find the information coming from a regular employee credible. That is even more than the people who find information coming from a company’s CEO credible. An important question that now comes up is how does a brand develop and nurture trustworthy relationships?
People Trust Employees more than the official brand communication
The times have changed and people don’t trust CEOs as much as they used to. Employees are the more trustworthy source of brand information now and companies are realizing this. In one such example, Nestle India, the food maker battling its biggest crisis, has asked employees and their near ones to become “valued brand ambassadors” on social media for the company amid concerns that discussions in the public domain on monosodium glutamate (MSG) in Maggi are “being done more on an emotional basis rather than on facts and science.”
Employees can be a brand’s biggest ambassadors, yet they are often an untapped territory. Employee Advocacy helps employees to grow their professional brand by empowering them to participate in discovering, sharing and measuring the impact, great content has on their networks. Employees have vast networks of friends, followers, and connections on social media, and nowadays they can be reached and influenced with just a click. In other words, employee advocacy is just a word of mouth publicity brought to the digital age. Advocacy allows deeper, integral relationships between company and customer. Employee advocacy is already being called the next social media mega trend and companies are actively looking for a solution to help them manage and use this change.
Usually, employees have more social media connections than the brand’s accounts. Think about the number of connections all your brand accounts have. Now Think about the total number of connections your employees have on social media. Can you imagine what if both your brand accounts’ and employees’ connections added up? Such a combination can do wonders for your brand when it comes to getting reach for your official word. Employee Advocacy allows deeper, integral relationships between company and customers.
What are the benefits of Employee Advocacy
- Involving your employees as advocates show you have faith in them to act as agents on behalf of your business. Empowering them to share information with their various social networks.
- Build your employees as industry thought leaders, allowing them to advocate your business on social media.
- You provide your customers and potential ones with real-time, meaningful interactions with your company. The very fact that generally customers will believe their social networks since they know that won’t be receiving answers or recommendations from some trained representative.
- Employees can post differently on social media than brands as it is their own personal recommendation and an authentic one.
Since we have established that Employee Advocacy is indispensable for any company’s marketing & PR strategy, it is recommended for companies across sectors to initiate this program before it’s too late.
SocioAdvocacy is one such tool that helps brands and companies run their own Employee Advocacy programs. It works by opening up channels of information flow between your employees and their inside and outside worlds. Also, employees get gratified for spreading the word. SocioAdvocacy has benefited various small and big companies find their mojo via employee advocacy. Click here to know more about it.
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