This document summarizes an employee advocacy presentation. It discusses why employee advocacy programs are important in driving engagement, performance and retention. It outlines key aspects of an effective program such as curating content for employees to share, measuring results through metrics like referral traffic and employee NPS, and providing frameworks to create highly sharable content around employee stories, education and thought leadership. The presentation emphasizes empowering employees to build their personal brands through advocacy in an authentic way.
4. Employees are our greatest asset.
Engaged Employees are Happy Employees.
Happy Employees are Higher Performing
Employees.
Higher performing employees have a
positive impact on the bottom line.
We need an EVP.
Social media isn’t about likes
and followers.
It’s all about that bass,
I mean, brand,
I mean engagement,
I mean, um hires.
(don’t laugh)
(Bottom line = Bottom line)
(we don’t know what that is, but we need one)
It’s about relationships and engagement.
5. What is our GOAL?
WHY DOWE INVEST IN MARKETING AND BRANDING?
To ensure the right (accurate)
message reaches the right (target)
audience
The messaging resonates in the
right (authentic) way
which means we measure success
based on how effectively we….
Fill jobs!
Retain Employees
6. How do we do that?
Understanding what our employment brand and brand perception is by
both our employees and the marketplace.
Identifying the drivers and influencers of our employment brand.
But wait, what about who owns it?
10. Advocacy vs Ambassador
Advocate
Brand Advocates can be:
• Internal (employees)
• External
• Active Job seekers
• PassiveTalent
• Former employees / alumni
• Special Interest groups / Partnerships
Ambassador
Gets Paid to promote!
Voluntarily promotes
11. 11
Employee Advocacy Path to Success
Curate Content
Team members curate content
produced by your brand and thought
leadership in your industry. They
may decide to comment upon and
talk about this content internally.
Amplify
Team members then share this
content on their personal and
professional social media channels
including LinkedIn, Twitter, and
Facebook.
Thought
Leadership
As a result of this sharing activity,
employees steadily develop a
reputation as thought leaders — while
driving traffic to your company’s
website.
ROI
Generates quantifiable ROI through direct
traffic, Earned Media Value (EMV) (i.e.
wider distribution of content), Advertising
Value Equivalent (AVE) - Employee
Referrals and Applications.
Employment Brand
Your company becomes a recognizable
employer brand — resulting in higher
levels of organic website traffic and
instant thought leadership within the
communities that you serve.
#TMJEdu
13. #TMJEdu
MyStory:EmployeeAdvocacyatAT&T
AT&TTwitterTribe:Year 1 resulted in:
• 1200 ee’s, 10K tweets, $300K EMV
Mobile Employee Referral Program:
• Living our brand, ease of us, integration w/social & ability to measure
Employee Resource (Affinity) Groups:
• 11 groups, created incentives and content worth sharing to benefit everyone involved
AT&TTalent Network:
• 3M opt-ins, .05% unsubscribe rate, top 5 – 10 source of hires in almost all career categories
External Partnerships / Advocates to help spread your message
• WITI
• DirectEmployers
• Campus Recruiting Partners
14. How did we create advocacy at AT&T?
CURATE / SHARE: We shared recommended employer content (news / jobs) w/Twitter
Tribe, ERG’s and encouraged them to share within their employee networks, as they
were another way to touch our employee population as a trusted resource.
EMPOWERMENT = AUTHENTICITY: Let them know it’s okay to have a voice. It’s
amazing the lengths people will go to help be the driver of positive press when given
the okay to do so.
INCENTIVE: We created incentives around shares and opt-ins to ourTalent Network
(which means employees were sharing with their external networks)
FIND A NEED AND FILL IT: This also benefited employee groups by giving them
content to share, as they weren’t necessarily social media experts, but were trying to
build a brand around their groups.
16. Results
Much less cost to use advocacy groups / talent network as pipeline to fill jobs
(solid source tracking)
Consistency in external brand message; less dilution
Benefits for bothTalent and Consumer Marketing:
• Earned MediaValue for bothTalent AND Consumer Marketing:
• Advocacy actually drives engagement
• Advocacy + engagement drives the overarching company/ corporate brand
message; creates authenticity and real marketing value for the company as
well which can and does translate into real sales / dollars.
17. BUILDINGTHE
BUSINESS CASE
WHY EMPLOYEEADVOCACY
How do you build a program to:
• Tap into existing conversations
• Drive engagement
• Are measurable
• And move the needle on employment brand efforts?
#TMJEdu
19. 1. Referral Traffic:
Web visitors who come to your website
through social media. This metric tells you that
your content is generating awareness on
social media.
3. Employee Net Promoter Score:
The NPS measures loyalty between brands
and their customers / job seekers by asking,
“How likely is it that you would recommend our
company/ product/service/job to a friend or
colleague?”
2. Direct Traffic:
Job seekers who visit your website by typing
your URL into your browser. This metric tells
you your brand is memorable (and is key to
passive candidate attraction efforts).
4. Exposure to New Audiences
Content will quickly become your brand’s
engine for growth. Employee advocacy
marketing efforts can help your business
uncover new talent pools, pipelines and
channels.
Measurable Results = Direct Impact to Brand
#TMJEduhttp://www.socialmediatoday.com/
There are four KPIs that your program will influence:
21. #TMJEdu
Employee’s view social
sharing as an :
opportunity to build
thought leadership and
delight their own
audiences with valuable
information.
Their roles within your
organization is a crucial
part of their personal
journey and story.
22. Employee-Generated
Employee’s share what they are proud of. By
including them in the creation of the content, you
create a sense of ownership and pride (and build up
your authenticity factor for your overall brand).
Powerful Human Stories
Work has value beyond what we sell. What we build at
work is often an extension of who we are. Showcase the
human side of your company. Who are the minds behind
the brand? What is their journey? Employees are part of
these stories & will want to tell them.
Content that Educates
People are knowledge hungry; especially job
seekers who are looking to improve their skills &
get hired for your jobs! If you create content –
infographics, webinars, blog posts – with
educational value, employees and job seekers
alike will notice.
Framework for highly shareable content.
#TMJEdu
23. Top of Mind
Practical Value
What do people enjoy sharing?
Emotion
People imitate
what they admire.
Likely to share
what thought
leaders share.
Stories
We are what we
share. Empower
ee’s to build
personal brands
#TMJEdu
We are more
likely to share
what we are
actively thinking
about
Useful = Highly
Sharable. People
genuinely want to
help others.
We care about
what we share. It’s
important to curate
content that aligns
with values.
Employees may love
company, but don’t
want to be walking
billboard. Let your
employees buildTHEIR
thought leadership
based on brand
content
Social Currency:
Publicity:
24. The Practical Side to Sharing
#TMJEdu
“Social media is an
organic process. If you
tell employees what to
share, they’ll feel turned
off.The desire to share
must come from within,
however, your company
does need to take steps
to ensure that team
members have direction”
25. Thank You For Joining!
Gary Zukowski
@GaryZukowski
Tweet My Jobs
gzukowski@tweetmyjobs.com
704-544-9370
Carrie Corbin
@theCarrieCorbin
Branded Strategies
http://brandedstrategies.com
http://carriecorbin.com
http://linkedin/in/carriecorbin
Notas del editor
Point to note:
We are talking about employee advocacy for the purposes of recruiting, with the understanding that it impacts overall engagement. These aren’t so much the tactile points as they are things you should come away with some key learnings around.
Your team is the heart and soul of your business. You’ve gone the extra mile to attract great people — who regularly go above and beyond their everyday responsibilities to find and attract new talent.
Yet, your employment brand isn’t clearly defined. You
What if you could harness the collective energy of the companies employees’ existing social media activity? It’s this vision that has sparked the conversation around social marketing called ‘employee advocacy’ — a marketing channel based on your workforce’s already present enthusiasm.
By focusing too much of our efforts on engagement and branding, it’s easy to lose focus on our actual goal – which in the greater ecosystem of HR is to hire quality employees.
We drive engagement via appropriate content, communications & branding. Tactically speaking, it’s creating the message, distributing the message to the right channels, and building awareness via things like…
…. creating brand advocates of both our employees AND job seekers.
If we don’t actively manage our brand, it may be sending the wrong message.
Engaged employees may have a lot to say, but may not know how, what, or if they are allowed to share.
Engaged employees can help share our recruitment marketing message and help engage job seekers.
Blind man and the elephant parable….
Perception may be reality, but not the truth. Everyone has a different perception of employment brand. Be mindful that this is a fairly new discipline within our industry in the last 5-10 years and there are still a lot of questions around strategy and execution for quality, measurable results.
The advent of social media gave the average person the power only large organizations had – the power of mass communication.
Advocates now often tweet about positive experiences they’ve had with a brand or employer, and be heard all over the Internet. On the flip side, a particularly scathing review can permanently cripple a company’s reputation. Social media is also a way to convert an ambivalent or passive job seekers into not just active seekers, but and/ or an advocate of the company.
With personalized interactions online, companies can build a clearer identity, and at the same time portrays itself as open and approachable. These elements all help to reinforce a positive impression of the brand in the mind of employees and job seekers, leading to a larger pool of advocates.
If companies learn to identify and better take advantage of the resources they already have in brand advocates (for instance, by offering them official recognition or incentives from the company), brand advocates may eventually hold more sway than the (paid) brand ambassador.
Advocacy Efforts and Referral Programs to build Talent Communities .
Building of internal talent communities (employee forums, FB and LI groups / alumni groups) – with encouragement to post approved content externally and share the message.
External Talent Networks – note distinction
Internal employee resource (advocacy groups)
Tie advocacy efforts with referral programs and watch your talent communities grow faster than ever.
Building of internal talent communities (employee forums, FB and LI groups / alumni groups) – with encouragement to post approved content externally and share the message.
External Talent Networks – note distinction
Internal employee resource (advocacy groups) that may already exist or could be curated. Leveraging these groups to disseminate information that is important to their cause (provides them content, gives them something to engage their members, and you both benefit.
Provide them a list of hot jobs (if a very large company, maybe just your hardest to fill, or those specific to regional areas or to what ever that group is affiliated with (i.e. STEM jobs)\
opportunities for ee's of departments who don't normally engage, do... oppty for employee referrals as well as internal / external promotion
Senior Leaders love
External Partnerships
Witi, DirectEmployers, Campus Recruiting Partners - > get creative with the groups you partner with externally. You can do a lot of the same things in terms of helping each other, creating shareable content and filling a need to create a win for both involved.
Over time, an employee advocate program will yield a direct benefit to your organization that go over and above filling jobs.
WHAT WILL TEAM MEMBERS ENJOY SHARING?
2. THE PRACTICAL SIDE TO SHARING
The simple answer to this question is that employees want to share content that is personally relevant to their interests, values, and career aspirations.
As much as your team members love your company, they don’t want to be blasting their social networks with a sales pitch. They view social sharing as an opportunity to build thought leadership and delight their own audiences with valuable information. Their roles within your organization is a crucial part of their personal journey and story.
That’s why it’s important to share a mix of industry-related and branded content
When it comes to employee advocacy, your employees shouldn’t be forced into sharing — they should feel inspired. Your brand can encourage sharing by producing the following types of content:
Employee Generated – video campaign example
Human Stories: CSR
Content that educates: Game example
In a recent study of almost 10,000 companies, Wharton professor Jonah Berger and his colleague identified six characteristics of highly sharable content. These dimensions must be built into your company’s brand advocacy program. Build an amazing social sharing program by creating and promoting content with the following traits:
Social currency: We are what we share. People are more likely to promote content that makes them look good. Employee advocacy programs are most successful when team members feel empowered to build their personal brands.
Top of Mind: We want to speak what’s on our mind. If we’re actively thinking about a particular topic, we’re more likely to talk about it. That’s why content curation is so important for your company’s employee advocacy strategy – team members will want to share content that’s relevant to what they’re already thinking about.
Emotion: We care about what we’re sharing. That’s why it’s so important for companies to curate and create content that aligns with team members’ values. Encourage your fellow employees to participate in your content marketing efforts by blogging on topics that they care about.
Publicity: People imitate what they admire. They’re likely to share what their colleagues and favorite thought leaders are sharing
Practical Value: People want to do more than look good – they genuinely want to help others. Useful = highly shareable.
Stories: Employees might love their companies, but they don’t want to be walking billboards. They’d much rather build thought leadership as part of a larger narrative. Your brand’s content needs to drive thought leadership in your industry.
They won’t guarantee success, but they’re a starting point for getting your employee advocacy program off the ground. Speak to your team’s hearts in addition to their heads.
Your employees are incredibly pressed for time. As much as they would like to build their personal brands and reputations as thought leaders, they don’t have time to filter through email distribution lists and share everything that your team is publishing.
Your team members do; however, want to be closely involved…. So look for ways to make it easy for them!
There are plenty of publishing tools available and while relationships and engagement are important – they are not the goal, remember – they are the means to the end…
I’ve been a proponent for YEARS that automation and distribution are not bad; you just have to manage it appropriately.
And this is where in addition to using listening, monitoring and sharing tools – we want to remember the SEO benefits of social content (twitter has great SEO and is a considerable search engine in it’s own right.
And this is where I give the plug for Tweet My Jobs – because they were the first tool that actually gave me tangible, provable apps/hires from Twitter for a nominal cost by distributing all of my jobs and broadcasting through their networks;.