Did you know that over 50 million organizations have pages on Facebook?
Marketer bloggers everywhere have repeatedly referred to this growth as “noise” on social media and have discussed how important it is to “reduce the noise” to reach the target audience.
The good news for businesses is that the solution to this real problem is staring them straight in the face or sitting in the same building more accurately.
Did you know that your employees can achieve for your business as brand advocates? This article will discuss six reasons why every company should turn employees into brand advocates.
What are Brand Advocates
Brand advocates are actual people who believe in your brand and want to see it succeed and who actually and actively use your products. Such people promote your brand by leaving positive reviews, great posts on social media, creating other content focused on your brand, sharing it face-to-face with friends, or other forms of word of mouth.
Anyone who loves your brand and passionately promotes it through words is one of your brand advocates. Therefore, such individuals are usually your most loyal, enthusiastic customers, but they can also be your partners or employees.
Usually, brand advocates choose to share your brand without being promoted by your brand. Why? Simply because they love your brand and products and want others to know about it. Their enthusiasm and spirit inspire others to check out the brand or product for themselves. Your revenue may plunge even higher if a proportion of your brand advocates comes from your workforce or your employees.
Benefits of Employee Advocacy
Here we share the top six reasons you should embrace and actively encourage your employees to become leaders and brand advocates.
1. It Keeps Consumers Front of Mind
According to LinkedIn, when employees share content, they double the impact of brand marketing with the click-through rate seen by their company.
It enables brands to remain relevant to consumers, increase brand awareness and affinity, and drive people and sales.
With a massive increase in ad blocker adoption, paid advertising is becoming increasingly expensive and less effective, employee advocacy offers a fresh and transparent solution.
New technology means that an employee advocacy platform can deliver more intelligent content targeting and generate more authentic storytelling and personalized messages, helping to bring employees and customers closer together.
2. Gain Trust and Credibility
Employees are the most trusted voice regarding the company’s work environment and integrity. Posts shared by employees create a level of trust for prospects and customers for your brand. Employee advocates bring the essential human element to the brand. Salespeople and other employees can initiate initial conversations that can eventually lead to conversion rates and sales.
Experience with salespeople and employees, even on a social platform, dramatically influences a company’s customer perception. If a customer feels that they are talking to a real person on social media rather than a marketing bot, they will have a positive experience and see that the company really cares.
The more often companies interact with customers, the more loyal customers they convert. Daily engagement makes 87% more advocacy, weekly engagement makes it 64% higher, monthly engagement makes it 49% higher, and a few times a year loyalty makes 33% more.
Your brand’s stories reflect the company’s dedication to its customers and its enthusiasm for new trends in the technology industry. Photos, event shots, and video are the perfect mix of marketing multimedia telling a narrative to drive loyalty and advocacy.
Today, an employee advocate is trusted twice as much as a CEO. Customers no longer want to hear from the CEO promoting their own brand but from the people who work in the company. If employees are happy, it shows through their posts, and the brand becomes more credible and trustworthy.
3. More Online Visibility
When employees try to share branded content on their social media, they gain more visibility than any paid advertising campaign. It gives a more active online presence across all digital platforms. As the world is slowly turning digitally, an online presence is significant for any brand to stay in the market.
4. Improve Employee Satisfaction and Retention
Since most employees started promoting their organization’s brand because of their love for the company, it directly reflects their satisfaction with their job. It also has a positive impact on your targeted audience. Also, when employees are satisfied with their jobs, they tend to stay in the company longer. Either way, it provides integrity to the company.
5. Improves the Internal Company Culture
When thought leaders share their perspectives and knowledge with the outside world, the respect and loyalty they receive will permeate the company culture.
Employees will feel more pride and loyalty to the organization they represent.
They will instinctively learn to trust their thought-leader colleagues more, and this trust will gradually extend to all colleagues. Employees will also feel that the company is receptive and helpful for sharing knowledge and information instead of being secretive and paranoid.
They will also set a corporate tone that promotes personal empowerment, where one can feel confident to build and understand connections based on ideas from their peers that they may not have reached on their own.
And, of course, employees will feel excited to come to work every day knowing that the company they are helping to build is appreciated and relished by a loyal audience on social media.
6. Foster Thought Leadership
Encouraging and empowering your employee brand advocates through an effective employee advocacy program lets them know that you are investing in their professional and personal development. However, the bonus lies with marketing to virally share your branded content.
It’s invaluable to your business to share and grow relevant content using your personal social channels. It, in turn, creates terrific opportunities for using your content marketing efforts to promote thought leadership. The thought leadership content brings in more qualified referrals and leads to your business. All of this can be possible by implementing an effective employee advocacy program.
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