Top Benefits of Employee Advocacy: w/ Tips

Here’s a truth bomb: You’re missing out big time if you’re not running an employee advocacy program for your company.

Your employees can be your brand’s biggest champions. 

After all, your employees likely know your brand inside out, from your company’s mission and vision to your latest products and services.

But what exactly does employee advocacy bring to your company? Is it worth your time and effort? Will it help you achieve your overall online marketing goals?

If you’re still on the fence about employee advocacy, these top benefits can be the push you need to start running your program.

What you will learn

• What are the benefits of employee advocacy to your company?
• What are the benefits of employee advocacy for your employees?
• How to harness the benefits of employee advocacy with Vista Social
• What are the top tips to get the benefits of employee advocacy?
• What are the FAQS on the benefits of employee advocacy?
• Ready to enjoy the benefits of employee advocacy?

What are the benefits of employee advocacy to your company?

Running an employee advocacy program can benefit your company in several ways. 

[Must read: 3 Employee Advocacy Program Examples Worth Following]

1. Strengthens your brand credibility and reputation

Employees advocating for your brand can act as social proof—encouraging people to buy your products or join your company because others do. 

It can make your brand more credible and trustworthy, driving engagement and conversions. 

The more potential clients trust you, the more likely they will choose your company over your competitors.

Think of employee advocacy as having the people who know your company best authentically vouch for your brand. It can influence your potential client’s decision to avail of your services. 

Employee advocacy can also increase your brand’s social media engagement, indicating your company’s credibility. 

You can leverage that engagement to build trust with prospects and, in turn, convert them into paying clients. 

Speaking of reputation, you can leverage Vista Social. 

The social media management platform helps you track and assess your company’s reputation across your social media profiles. 

Use the platform’s review management feature to centralize, monitor, and manage all your social media reviews from one place and respond to them promptly. 

2. Boosts brand awareness

The truth is that your employees’ combined social networks can be equal to or even surpass your company’s. 

For instance, your company’s LinkedIn page can have 8,000 connections, but if you have ten employees with 2,000 followers each, their combined networks equal 20,000 connections. 

With this, you can implement an employee advocacy program that can help double your company’s reach, increasing your engagement and conversion opportunities.

Another perk is that social media users generally prefer interacting with actual people than faceless brands. 

It can make your employee advocacy program more impactful in connecting and engaging with potential clients. 

3. Draws in top talent

Sharing insights, new perspectives, and industry news through advocacy posts can position your employees as thought leaders. 

Having thought leaders representing your brand can help organically draw in the right talent for your company. 

For instance, if you have a job opening, your employee can share their experience working with your company in a Facebook or LinkedIn post. 

It can be an engaging way to give potential hires a good idea of what working for your company is like, enticing them to apply.  

4. Get more clients and close deals faster

Having your sales team members participate in your employee advocacy program can shorten your sales process 

For instance, regularly posting relevant content helps your advocates grow their networks naturally. 

It can expand your brand’s reach, giving you access to more potential clients. 

The approach works because it helps your advocates connect with potential clients, establish authentic relationships, and build trust. 

The more people trust your advocates and, by extension, your brand, the more likely they are to patronize your business. 

Employee advocacy can also speed up your sales cycle since prospects already trust your team and know what your company offers. 

That established rapport can keep your brand at the forefront of potential clients’ minds and influence their buying decisions. It can help your sales team close deals faster.

5. Improves employee engagement

An employee advocacy program helps keep your advocates in the loop about your company’s latest updates, news, and initiatives.

It can make your advocates feel more valued and connected to your brand, leading to more authentic advocacy posts and audience interactions. 

Employee advocacy can also foster pride and ownership in what your advocates do, resulting in a more enthusiastic approach to their work. 

Also, engaged employees are more likely to stay longer with your company, collaborate better, and work excellently because they see they make an impact. 

6. Drive excellent returns faster

Organically growing your brand’s social media following can take time and effort, which means that it may take some time for your company to see significant returns. 

Employee advocacy can speed things up by allowing your company to tap into your advocates’ established following. 

It’s like collaborating with popular social media influencers, but it’s better since it has high return potential but requires relatively minimal investment.

Employee advocacy can be cost-effective for promoting your brand, increasing engagement, generating leads, and boosting sales.  

Remember to plan your advocacy program carefully to get the best-fitting advocates and share the right content.

[Must read: How to Build an Employee Advocacy Plan: Step-by-Step Guide]

What are the benefits of employee advocacy for your employees?

With a solid program, employee advocacy benefits not only your company but also your employees. 

Below are several perks your employees can enjoy when advocating for your brand. 

1. Develop and grow digital skills

Employee advocacy can help employees learn and hone their content creation, audience engagement, and other social media and digital skills. 

These are skills that they can leverage to refine their personal branding while improving your advocacy program.

The skills can also enhance what they’re already good at, such as creating visuals and graphics. 

Plus, the skills can be great additions to their resumes. 

Who knows? Your advocates can start as participants in your employee advocacy program and become social media stars in the future. 

2. Gain incentives and rewards

Employee advocacy programs can be rewarding for your advocates. 

For example, your company can reward your most active participants with gift cards, bonuses, and even career development and advancement opportunities. 

It’s a win-win situation: Your employees get incentives for contributing to your brand’s growth, and your company expands its reach and boosts conversions. 

Gamifying your employee advocacy program can also promote healthy competition and camaraderie among your employees while keeping them engaged. 

3. Be empowered

Employees can feel empowered when you entrust them with advocating for your brand and even include them in your strategy development process. 

[Must read: Key Employee Advocacy Strategy That Boosts Brand Visibility]

Your advocacy program can make your employees feel they have a voice and value in our company, not just a means to an end. 

Plus, your advocates can grow their personal branding while advocating for your company, amplifying their online presence. 

While participating in your advocacy program, your employees can establish themselves as thought leaders, opening more career advancement and collaboration opportunities. 

For instance, they can be featured in popular news sources, asked to be guest speakers, or invited to industry events. 

All this can open more opportunities for your employees to grow their skills and expand their networks.  

How to harness the benefits of employee advocacy with Vista Social

Enjoying the benefits of employee advocacy requires running your program smoothly and effectively. 

You’ll need the best tool to streamline your tasks, from creating content to tracking your advocacy posts and advocates’ performance. 

Enter Vista Social, a modern social media management and optimization platform with a robust employee advocacy feature. 

Setting up your advocacy program is pretty straightforward. 

Head to your Employee Advocacy dashboard by clicking Advocacy on the left menu and selecting Create advocacy.

Next, select the profile group for your advocacy program and provide the required information.

When you’re done, you can invite your advocates by uploading a CSV file with their names and email addresses or manually inputting the information.

You can create your advocacy posts once you’re done setting up your program and inviting your advocates. 

Vista Social lets you create two types of advocacy posts: 

• Advocacy-only content that your admins can create and make available for advocates to share as new organic posts on their social media pages. The best part is that your advocates can customize the post based on their tone and style before sharing
• Previously published posts on your company’s social media pages, which can be made available for your advocates to interact with, such as reposting and commenting

You can schedule your advocacy posts to be available for your advocates to share or interact with.

Don’t miss out on using the AI Assistant in the Publisher to generate engaging captions and taglines for your advocacy posts instantly.

You’ll see all your published advocacy posts under the Content tab on your advocacy dashboard.

But wait, there’s more. 

The feature includes a leaderboard to help you track your top-performing advocates based on key metrics such as reposts, likes, shares, reach, and comments.

You can also track your employee advocacy actions under Activities.

The dashboard shows your key metrics, making it easy to track and gain insights into your employee advocacy program’s performance.

Vista Social’s employee advocacy feature makes running, managing, and tracking your program hassle-free. 

It allows you to run your employee advocacy program seamlessly, helping you raise brand awareness, drive talent, and increase your sales pipeline while reducing brand risk. 

Leverage the combined power of the platform’s social media management and employee advocacy features. 

Use Vista Social’s other core features, including the following:

• A social media publishing feature that lets you schedule your posts for auto-publishing
• An AI-powered hashtag generator
• A social media engagement feature that includes a unified Social Inbox for centralized and simplified audience interaction management
• A collaborative content calendar for easy social media content planning and management
• Social media analytics and reporting tools to help you track, measure, and extract insights from your content and campaigns’ performances
• Username generators
• A social media listening tool that helps you stay on top of conversations and mentions of your brand, relevant topics, or keywords

What are the top tips to get the benefits of employee advocacy?

Check out these quick tips to help you make the most of your employee advocacy program.

• Provide quality content. Provide your team with high-quality, relevant content that aligns with your brand and your audiences’ interests. Don’t leave the burden of creating content solely on your advocates
• Make participation voluntary. Authenticity matters, so don’t force your advocates to share your advocacy posts for the sake of it
• Stick to simplicity. Use platforms or tools like Vista Social to make sharing your advocacy posts easy for your advocates. A complicated process or tool can discourage your employees from actively participating
• Encourage creativity. Allow your advocates to add their styles and voices to your posts for better authenticity. Audiences are more likely to engage with your advocacy posts when they feel more genuine
• Foster a sense of community. Provide a space for your advocates to share their ideas and experiences and leverage them to optimize your employee advocacy program

What are the FAQS on the benefits of employee advocacy?

How do you promote employee advocacy across your company?

Encourage your employees to become your brand’s advocates by fostering a positive work culture and setting clear objectives. 

You can also get more employees on board by providing the necessary resources, content, and guidelines. 

[Must read: Top Employee Advocacy Guide: w/ Tips, Tools, & Programs]

Don’t forget the ultimate motivator: incentives and rewards. 

Can employee advocacy help with recruiting new talent?

Yes. 

Generally, potential hires trust employee testimonials more than your company ads and promotional efforts. 

Your company’s employee advocacy efforts can authentically showcase your culture, expertise, etc., drawing in the right talent. 

Does employee advocacy work for all industries?

Yes, it can. 

The right plan, guidelines, strategies, and tools can position your employee advocacy efforts for success, whether you’re a company in healthcare, ecommerce, retail, or tech. 

[Must read: Top Employee Advocacy Tools to Improve Brand Reach this 2024]

Ready to enjoy the benefits of employee advocacy?

Like any marketing and promotional effort, employee advocacy requires time and effort before you can achieve the expected results. 

So, put in the work now, follow best practices, and use the best tools to implement your employee advocacy program effectively. 

Invest in all-in-one platforms like Vista Social to ensure program implementation.

Create your FREE Vista Social account now.