Top Employee Advocacy Guide: w/ Tips, Tools, & Programs

You can turn your employees into brand ambassadors with a carefully executed employee advocacy program.

Considering your employees’ insider information and familiarity with your company, it makes perfect sense to leverage their authentic voices to boost your brand’s credibility and win new customers.

That’s why it’s crucial to have a solid understanding of how to leverage employee advocacy effectively. Its benefits are substantial, yet implementing an employee advocacy program doesn’t have to be costly.

Continue reading for an overview of the top tips, tools, and programs for a successful employee advocacy campaign.

Employee advocacy definition

Employee advocacy is about promoting an organization or company’s brand through its employees.

Employee advocacy can be likened to having an internal team of brand ambassadors who actively share, like, and promote your company across various platforms, including social media and through word of mouth.

It turns your brand messages into collective cheers that reach wider and more engaged audiences. 

Employee advocacy can include sharing various content, such as:

• Blog posts
• Job listings
• Industry insights
• Product launches
• Original social media content

Employee advocacy can boost your brand visibility while building trust since people often trust other people more than a faceless company. 

Other perks of employee advocacy include the following:

• Increased engagement. Social media posts shared or published by employees have the human factor, which gets them more comments, likes, and shares than corporate posts
• Cost-effective promotion. Instead of spending a lot of money on running ads, you can tap into their built-in promotion teams by leveraging their existing resources
• Establish your brand as an industry leader. Empowering employees to share their insights can position your brand as industry leaders
• Talent attraction and retention. A robust employee advocacy program can highlight your company’s culture and enhance the attractiveness of your brands to potential hires

Employee advocacy tools

Check out the tools below to help you implement a winning employee advocacy strategy. 

1. Vista Social

Vista Social is a leading social media management platform with everything you need to manage profiles, content, engagement, and employee advocacy like a boss.

With Vista Social’s employee advocacy tools, empowering your team to share your content has never been easier. Here’s how Vista Social elevates your employee advocacy game:

• Boost Brand Awareness: Empower your employees to quickly share company-approved content, massively extending your social reach.
• Expand Your Audience: Tap into your employees’ networks, attracting new followers who are likely unaware of your brand.
• Save on Ad Spend: Achieve the reach of paid ads organically, thanks to employee-driven content sharing.
• AI-Powered Content Creation: Use Vista’s built-in AI to craft compelling posts, which your team can share with just one click.
• Real-Time Analytics: Measure the impact of your advocacy efforts and optimize your strategy based on detailed insights.

Imagine turning every team member into a brand ambassador with a few simple clicks. Vista Social makes this possible, ensuring that your message is consistently on point and reaches far beyond your immediate network.

Ready to see how Vista Social can transform your employee advocacy strategy? Dive in and watch your social reach soar.

2. Canva

Canva is a graphic design platform with user-friendly tools for creating and editing images, videos, and other content.

You can use the tool to create visual content for your employee advocacy materials. 

Some of Canva’s key features that you can leverage for employee advocacy include:

• Customizable templates
• Royalty-free stock photo, video, and sound library 
• Approval process workflow
• Video and photo editor
• Team management tools

3. Biteable

Biteable is an online video-maker that helps you create engaging and on-brand videos. 

You can use the tool to create employee advocacy videos, including slideshows, presentations, ads, trailers, logo animations, intro videos, and more. 

The tool lets you add music and text to videos and resize and convert files for easy sharing and publishing. 

4. Grammarly

Ensure your employee advocacy content is on brand and free of grammar errors with Grammarly. 

The tool allows you to set the tone and brand voice. It also includes a style guide feature that provides real-time suggestions aligned with company and industry regulations for your team.

Employee advocacy strategy

An employee advocacy strategy is a structured plan to encourage and empower employees to share company content across personal and professional social media channels. 

Developing a solid employee advocacy strategy can include:

• Planning, developing, and creating engaging content
• Training and empowering employees
• Offering incentives to encourage participation
• Gathering feedback from participants and using them to improve the program

Employee advocacy program

An employee advocacy program aims to motivate and empower employees to promote their company’s brands, services, or products on social media. The program’s effectiveness hinges on employees’ dedication, enthusiasm, and their grasp of what it means to represent the company effectively as brand ambassadors. 

To do this, you’ll need to develop a strong employee advocacy program, which can include the following:

• Achieving leadership buy-in
• Creating an ambassador committee
• Providing guidelines and support to streamline and encourage participation
• Setting up a rewards system for top advocates
• Facilitating employee satisfaction
• Involving employees in strategy development 

Employee advocacy plan

An employee advocacy plan is a detailed roadmap that outlines how companies will encourage and support employees in promoting their brands. 

Creating a strong employee advocacy plan can include the following steps.

• Facilitate and promote workplace positivity
• Set goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
• Identify the platforms or channels where you will run the program
• Foster a culture of advocacy
• Ensure employee advocacy initiatives align with company values
• Develop a content distribution and publishing strategy
• Establish tracking and measurement methods 

Employee advocacy Q & A

What is the best way to measure employee advocacy success?

It will depend on what you want to achieve with your employee advocacy programs. 

Common KPIs are engagement metrics such as shares, likes, and comments. 

If your goal is to turn advocacy efforts into business opportunities, lead-generation metrics can be your best indicators of success.

What is a good example of employee advocacy?

One good example of employee advocacy is a staff sharing an Instagram post that shows an interesting company project they are working on. 

A job candidate sees the post and is encouraged to check out the company and see if they’re hiring. 

How is employee advocacy cost-effective for brands?

Instead of paying for ads and other promotions, companies can save money by tapping into their employees and existing resources.  

Use employee advocacy to expand social media reach

Employee advocacy can significantly boost your reach on social media and other online channels.

Don’t miss out on the power of employee advocacy to raise brand awareness, boost social presence, and expand your reach for more sales and conversion opportunities. 

Leverage Vista Social to supercharge your employee advocacy efforts.

Create your FREE Vista Social account.