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Updated on September 30, 2024
10 min to read
Content Writer
Published September 18, 2024
You need clear guidelines to align your employee advocacy program.
Having your team advocate for your brand gives more authenticity to your brand’s message while expanding your reach on social media.
But without the right strategy, your employee advocacy program can feel forced—or worse, fail to resonate with your target audience.
That is why following the right employee advocacy guidelines is crucial.
The guidelines provide direction, clarity, and dos and don’ts for keeping all your employee advocacy content and strategies aligned with your brand and goals.
Hop in as we explore the guidelines to help you run your employee advocacy program effectively.
Following a clear set of employee advocacy guidelines offers the following perks.
[Must read: Top Employee Advocacy Guide: w/ Tips, Tools, & Programs]
The components of your employee advocacy guidelines can depend on your program’s goals, target audience, industry, and more.
However, your guidelines should include critical aspects to ensure effective and efficient implementation, management, and strategy development.
[Must read: Key Employee Advocacy Strategy That Boosts Brand Visibility]
Consider the following components.
Include measurable objectives in your employee advocacy plan and guidelines. This will simplify tracking and assessing the performance of your advocates and program.
[Must read: How to Build an Employee Advocacy Plan: Step-by-Step Guide]
For example, your goals can be:
Setting goals gives your advocates a clear purpose and direction, ensuring their efforts effectively implement your program and contribute to your company’s overall vision.
Not all your employees may be the right advocates for your advocacy program.
That is why you must provide specific eligibility criteria to ensure only the best-fitting advocates participate in your program.
Consider your potential advocate’s role, sentiments about your company, tenure, and social media activity and engagement.
Specific criteria help ensure that your participants align with your brand’s voice and will genuinely advocate for your company.
Maintain a consistent brand image by giving your advocates critical messaging points to highlight or incorporate into your advocacy posts and activities.
The vetted key points and messaging should empower your employees to represent your brand confidently without sounding like they’re reading off a script.
You can provide a list of your company’s key messaging points through a shared document that advocates can easily access and reference.
Specify the social media platforms your advocates should use for your employee advocacy program.
Include information on the type of content your advocate can share for each platform.
For example, content about professional insights is best for LinkedIn, while showcasing your company’s culture through a short, fun video can be more suitable for Instagram or TikTok.
Specifying social networks helps ensure that your advocates post the right content on platforms where their voices will have the most impact.
Set clear rules on what, when, and how your participating employees should post social media content.
Include guidelines on the relevant hashtags, visual content, and tone that align with your specific campaigns or program and brand identity.
Leverage the social media management platform Vista Social.
The platform offers tools to help with keeping your advocacy posts on-brand.
For instance, the AI Assistant can generate and refine social media post captions based on your brand voice.
Share other relevant information, such as your social media guidelines, to ensure consistency and alignment across your employee advocacy posts and activities.
Providing clear content posting guidelines helps prevent potential mishaps, keeping your content on-brand and aligned with your social media strategy.
It also ensures that the right people see your advocacy posts at the right time for maximum engagement.
Ensure that your employees’ advocacy posts represent your brand identity properly.
Include guidelines on using your company’s colors, logo (and its versions), taglines, and other branding elements.
Providing standards for using your branding elements ensures your advocates know how to incorporate them into your posts and maintain a cohesive online presence.
Exercise transparency across your advocacy posts by ensuring advocates disclose that they work for your company in work-related posts.
Doing so makes your brand more credible and trustworthy to audiences and adds authenticity to your employee advocacy content.
It helps build trust with your audience while protecting your brand’s reputation.
Also, ensure that all your employee advocacy program’s disclosure requirements meet local regulations for transparency and compliance.
This includes social media platform community guidelines and other requirements, such as those of the Fair Trade Commission (FTC).
Set clear expectations for how your employees should behave, communicate, and interact with audiences online or in other activities representing your company.
Your guidelines should include rules about keeping confidential information out of their posts.
Specify the topics they should avoid, such as personal attacks, hateful speech, and sensitive issues.
Implement a thorough content approval process to ensure your employees’ advocacy posts are always on point and on brand.
It allows you to review your advocates’ posts before they go live, giving you more control over your content.
The process also lets you check whether the posts align with your messaging, brand, and guidelines before sharing them with your audience.
With Vista Social, you can use the post approval workflow to automate sending your advocacy posts for review and approval before publishing.
You can create the post using the platform’s social media publishing feature and create your automated workflow for an efficient content approval process.
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Get Started NowSet a system or process to monitor your advocacy program and advocates’ performances.
Determine the key metrics to measure success effectively.
Some of the crucial metrics you can track include the following:
Use the data and insights to help adjust and optimize your content, program, and advocates’ performance accordingly.
Specify the resources and tools in your guidelines to help your employees implement your advocacy program effectively and efficiently.
Include the processes and methods, such as online resources, training sessions, and templates, to equip your advocates with the necessary skills and knowledge to represent your brand effectively on social media.
Motivate your employees to participate actively in your advocacy program by offering rewards and other incentives.
Specify the types of recognition and rewards your advocates can receive in your guidelines, including the following.
Recognizing and rewarding your advocates’ efforts can motivate your employees to connect better and deeper with your brand, potentially leading to long-term advocacy.
Provide a confidential and safe way for your employees to report guideline violations or share concerns and feedback.
Your guidelines should include a clear reporting process to address issues promptly and maintain the integrity of your employee advocacy program.
Also, implement methods for your advocates to share their feedback and use the information to refine your employee advocacy program.
If you’re looking for a powerful all-in-one tool that offers a suite of social media management features and employee advocacy tools, look no further than Vista Social.
[Must read: Top Employee Advocacy Tools to Improve Brand Reach this 2024]
The platform offers essential and advanced features.
It has social media engagement management, post scheduling, analytic, and dedicated employee advocacy tools.
The platform’s employee advocacy feature lets you easily connect your social media profiles and create your program.
Once your program is up, you can invite your advocates by uploading a CSV file or manually entering their names and email addresses.
Your employee advocacy dashboard shows an overview of your program’s performance based on key metrics and published advocacy content.
It also includes your program activities, a leaderboard to track top contributors, and current advocates for easy management.
Creating your advocacy posts is a breeze with Vista Social.
Start by selecting your advocacy post option: New social post, existing social post, or Advocacy-only post.
Next, create and customize your advocacy post accordingly.
Use the AI Assistant to generate or refine your advocacy post captions and taglines.
You can switch on the Advocacy post toggle and set a schedule to make it available for advocates to share.
The best part is that your advocates can like, comment on, share, and customize the post in their unique voices to give it a fun twist and more authenticity.
Your published advocacy posts are displayed on your Advocacy dashboard.
With Vista Social, you manage everything in one place, from your social media management workflows to your employee advocacy programs.
Don’t miss out on Vista Social’s other core features, such as a link in bio tool with customizable landing pages called Vista Page.
Understand the common pitfalls below to create strong employee advocacy guidelines.
Employee advocacy programs can take various forms.
For instance, your advocacy post can include information, an image showing your employee working on your company’s latest project, and a link to your website.
It can be a great advocacy post to help your company attract potential hires and new talent.
[Must read: 3 Employee Advocacy Program Examples Worth Following]
Employee advocacy helps your company attract new customers and reach a wider audience through social media.
It can also minimize the need to run paid social media ads while boosting employee satisfaction and engagement.
Employee advocacy can increase your sales and amplify your social media marketing efforts. It can also simplify attracting qualified candidates and talents.
Guidelines are crucial for giving your employee advocacy efforts direction and focus.
It also helps ensure your advocates’ social media posts, interactions, and activities align with your brand and messaging.
Plan and develop your guidelines carefully.
Use the right tool to implement your employee advocacy program seamlessly and drive excellent results.
Vista Social provides a one-stop shop for your company’s social media management and employee advocacy program needs.
About the Author
Content Writer
Jimmy Rodela is a social media and content marketing consultant with over 9 years of experience, with work appearing on sites such as Business.com, Yahoo, SEMRush, and SearchEnginePeople. He specializes in social media, content marketing, SaaS, small business strategy, marketing automation, and content development.
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