Employee Advocacy 2.0: Leveraging Influence

We are very excited to announce that just over a year on, we are publishing yet another guide book – this time on Employee Advocacy. Back in August last year we published our Definitive Guide to Influencer Relationship Management, and it was such a great success and help for Marketers that we’ve created the equivalent for Employee Advocacy, with the help from Tribal Impact. Similar to our last paper, we have brought together Influencer Marketing, Employee Advocacy and Social Selling experts to share their insights and tips.

Key contributors include:

Sarah Goodall – Founder at Tribal Impact
Lee Odden – CEO at TopRank Marketing
Susan Emerick – Sr. Manager of Global Marketing & Advocacy at IBM
Brian Fanzo – Founder of iSocialFanz
Neal Shaffer – CEO of PDCA Social
Michael Brito – EVP at Zeno Group
Cheryl Burgess – CEO at Blue Focus Marketing
Sonia Rosua-Clyne – Global Social Media at Sage
Michael Brenner – CEO at Marketing Insider Group
Jay Baer – Founder of Convince & Convert
Chris Richards – Digital Ecosystem Manager at Barclays
Caroline Jory – Engagement Director at Qubist
Eric Fuessel – Senior Account Executive at EveryoneSocial
Melonie Dodaro – CEO at Top Dog Social Media
Tom Augenthaler – Influencer Marketing Consultant
Keith Lewis – UK Social Media at Zurich Insurance

This guide is for anyone in Marketing and Communications who are running Influencer Marketing, Employee Advocacy and Social Selling programs to increase their brand awareness, shape brand perception and drive sales. Most brands are running these programs in silos and therefore not seeing the full potential. We want to help you change this.

We will take you through the whats, whys and hows when it comes to understanding how you can integrate all three programs into one advocacy program, through practical step by steps, guides and frameworks. Define your strategy, make this a success and effectively measure your results with the help of this guide.

Why does the industry need this Employee Advocacy guide?

Many brands are working with influencers (Influencer Marketing), have their employees sharing their content on social (Employee Advocacy) and their sales team engaging with prospects on social media (Social Selling). As stand alone tactics, these are not uncommon. But they’re being interpreted and operationalized as totally separate marketing tactics. If we take a step back and ask ourselves why each of these are so successful, what conclusions do we come to?

That the modern buyer journey is changing and becoming increasingly more social. Consumers are trusting brands less and people more; they’re consuming more content and conducting more research before they buy. As we are all well aware by now, influence is a huge market and a great opportunity for brands to reach and influence their target audience. People have lots of influence – and by people we mean YOU, influencers, family & friends and employees.

So if this is the basis of all three, why aren’t more brands integrating Influencer Marketing, Employee Advocacy and Social selling into one advocacy program? We see everywhere ‘content is king’ – and it certainly is where advocacy is concerned.

What does the Employee Advocacy guide cover?

The guide will take you through the whole process from beginning to end:

The background and Opportunity
What is a connected Organization and Employee-Led Buyer Journey?
The Four Stages to Employee Advocacy
The Integrated Model Explained
Optimizing your Content Marketing
The Similarities and Differences Between B2B and B2C
Setting Objectives (Business Objectives, Program Objectives/KPIs and Employees Objectives/KPIs)
Measuring Success

An example framework from the paper:

The Evolution of Employee Advocacy

What are the key Takeaways?

You’ll have to read the full paper for more, but key messages throughout are:

The modern buyer journey is changing and becoming more social. Brands must be visible on social if they wish to reach their target audience.
While employees are considered to be a brand’s greatest asset, employee advocacy is not an ‘owned’ media exercise, it is ‘earned’ media. Changing to this mindset will yield better results.
Shift the focus away from viewing employees as broadcasting channel, to instead helping them to become more influential. Connect your employees (internal influencers) with well aligned external influencers.
Listen to the influencer community to optimize your content marketing strategy and identify engagement opportunities for your employees and brand handles.
Content is absolutely key to make these three programs work. Without content conversations cannot happen.

Ready to make a start?

Great. Click the button below to fill in a form and we will send the guide your way.

Download Employee Advocacy 2.0