Employee Advocacy Marketing: Tips And Tricks this 2024

Turning your employees into your biggest supporters is possible with employee advocacy marketing.

Employees advocating for your company can help build audience trust, amplify your reach, and boost engagement—without breaking the bank. 

The challenge is that employee advocacy marketing requires more than your employees sharing your content on social media.

You need the right strategies and tools to ensure your employee advocacy marketing efforts drive your expected results.

The good news is that this guide’s got you covered. 

Continue reading to uncover the tips and tricks for effective employee advocacy marketing. 

What you will learn

• What is employee advocacy marketing?
• Why is employee advocacy marketing important for your brand?
• What are the best practices for employee advocacy marketing?
• How to use Vista Social for employee advocacy marketing
• What are the FAQs on employee advocacy marketing?
• Ready to implement your employee advocacy marketing strategies?

What is employee advocacy marketing?

Employee advocacy marketing is a form of online marketing in which employees promote their companies by sharing brand-related content on their social media pages. 

You can think of it as your employees vouching for your brand to their followers by sharing product updates, company news, and other brand-related content. 

Employee advocacy marketing is tapping into your employees’ networks to spread your brand’s message, connect with audiences, and boost engagement. 

Why is employee advocacy marketing important for your brand?

Implementing employee advocacy marketing offers several benefits for your brand, including the following. 

Boosts trust and credibility

People generally trust recommendations from reputable individuals rather than brands. 

When your employees share your brand’s content, it can feel less like a corporate pitch and more like a personal recommendation. 

You can leverage employee advocacy marketing to build trust and connect better with your potential clients. 

Increases brand awareness

Employee advocacy marketing allows you to tap into your advocates’ network of families, friends, and other connections. 

It can help expand your brand’s visibility and reach beyond your corporate channels. 

Improves employee engagement

When employees feel part of your brand’s story, they can connect better with your brand and grow their sense of purpose. 

Also, inviting them to participate in your employee advocacy marketing helps them be more engaged and align their efforts with your goals. 

Employee involvement can foster unity, boost morale, and improve team collaboration. 

Widens organic reach without breaking the bank

Paid ads are excellent, but they can be expensive. 

Employee advocacy marketing can be a more cost-effective solution because it helps your brand reach a wider audience organically. 

Plus, social media algorithms often favor content shared by individual users, helping your employees’ advocacy posts get more visibility and engagement than your branded content. 

You can do all this without spending too much of your marketing budget. 

Must read: TikTok Algorithm 2024 Explained: How It Works + Tips to Go Viral

Amplifies recruitment efforts

Potential hires are generally more naturally drawn to companies with engaged and happy employees.

You can leverage employee advocacy to boost your brand’s image, culture, and reputation.  

Having your employees actively promote your brand through advocacy marketing efforts can encourage the right talent to apply.

Strengthens your company culture

Employees who actively promote and take pride in your brand can help make them feel more aligned with your company’s mission and values. 

It can build a positive company culture where employees feel included and valued, making them stronger brand advocates. 

What are the best practices for employee advocacy marketing?

Employee advocacy can be a powerful marketing approach to help your brand expand its online presence and boost conversions. 

Check out the time and tested tips below to ensure your employee advocacy marketing efforts succeed. 

1. Assess your readiness to implement employee advocacy marketing

Determine whether your company is ready to launch your employee advocacy program and marketing efforts. 

Assess the following:

• Logistics. Do you have the right resources, such as personnel, budget, and time, to effectively implement and manage your employee advocacy and marketing initiatives? You must have the logistical components in place to ensure smooth implementation. For instance, you must plan and develop your social media strategy to guide your efforts and identify the tools and platforms where your initiatives will make the most impact

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

• Company culture. A lack of trust and connection between your company leaders and employees can derail your advocacy marketing efforts’s progress and success. It can cause misalignment in your strategy and content that negatively impacts the results

Must read: Key Employee Advocacy Strategy That Boosts Brand Visibility

Your assessment should reveal any gaps in your company’s readiness, which must be addressed before proceeding. 

2. Determine your best advocates

Not all your employees can be great advocates, so choose those who can represent your brand best. 

The right advocates can be the following:

• Sales and marketing teams. Your sales and marketing team members know your clients’ pain points, products, and services inside and out. This makes them some of the best people to advocate for your brand since they can create content that resonates with audiences while showcasing what your company offers 
• C-level executives. Your company leaders and executives have the expertise to help boost your brand’s authority. They also typically have a large network that you can leverage to expand your employee advocacy marketing’s reach and impact
• Other employees. Look beyond departments and titles to find enthusiastic brand advocates, such as employees who:
  • Have good networking skills
  • Have an established social presence
  • Are reliable
  • Have excellent communication skills
  • Are passionate about your company’s products and brands
  • Have an established personal social media presence

The aim is to find employees who believe in your company’s message to ensure authentic and effective engagement.

The more genuine your employee advocacy posts and interactions are, the more likely your marketing efforts will succeed.

3. Use the right platform and tool

Employee advocacy marketing can take a lot of time and effort. 

That is why using the right tools or solutions is crucial. 

Reliable platforms such as Vista Social can streamline critical employee advocacy marketing tasks.

The tools can help you maintain consistent efforts, track content and advocate performance, and simplify employee content sharing. 

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

Consider these other tools to support your employee advocacy marketing efforts. 

• Employee advocacy solutions are dedicated tools that are designed to empower advocates to share branded content
• Social listening tools help you track brand mentions and conversations around business-relevant keywords within your social media networks. You can use the insights to tailor your advocacy posts to your audience’s needs and preferences
• Content planning apps can help you organize, develop, plan, and schedule your employee advocacy marketing content to ensure a steady flow of relevant posts for your advocates to share
• Content creation and curation software simplifies creating, finding, and collating content to share for employee advocacy
• Analytics and reporting tools can track and measure your content’s performance, giving you actionable insights to adjust and optimize your employee advocacy program

Must read: Mastering Social Media Analytics: How to Create Custom Reports

If you’re looking for an all-in-one platform with all the features and tools above, look no further than Vista Social. 

The platform offers all these features, from a collaborative content calendar to a social media listening tool. 

Invest in the right tools to help your social media and employee advocacy marketing team easily manage, scale, and assess your program. 

4. Provide clear guidelines

Guidelines are your advocates’ and social media team’s roadmap to implementing your program and marketing efforts. 

Must read: 3 Employee Advocacy Program Examples Worth Following

The employee advocacy marketing guidelines also ensure brand alignment across your strategies, content, and interactions. 

Provide clear guidelines that include the following:  

• The purpose and scope of your employee advocacy marketing efforts and program to ensure everyone is on the same page and working toward the same goals.
• Social media platform guidelines, such as the tone of voice, visuals, or text to use on specific social networks to attract and engage the right audiences
• Content dos and don’ts, including the content your advocates can or can’t engage with or share. For example, yes to company news but no to controversial issues 
• Feedback loop to encourage advocates and social media teams to share wins and challenges, including the support they need. The information is crucial to improving your employee advocacy marketing efforts
• Audience engagement standards to ensure all interactions are professional, above-board, and aligned with your brand. The standards also guide your advocates in handling negative comments and interactions properly

Must read: Proven Strategies to Increase Customer Engagement on Social Media

How to use Vista Social for employee advocacy marketing

Vista Social is a one-stop shop for managing and optimizing your social media content and tasks, including your employee advocacy marketing efforts. 

The platform’s employee advocacy feature has everything you need to implement your advocacy program and marketing efforts seamlessly. 

Plus, the platform goes beyond letting your advocates share your brand’s content, allowing them to like, share, comment, and repost your advocacy posts. 

It helps ensure that all the content your advocates post and share aligns with your brand and goals.

Creating your advocacy program on Vista Social is pretty straightforward. 

Once you connect your social media profiles, you can create your advocacy program and include all the necessary details.

You can set up Slack and email notifications to alert your team and advocates when new posts are up and ready for them to share.

Next, invite your advocates by uploading a CSV file of their names and email addresses. You can also input the information manually.

You’ll see details and tools for your advocacy program on the platform’s Advocacy dashboard.

Click each program to view more details, such as: 

• General information and key metrics
• Published advocacy posts
• Activity
• Leaderboard
• Advocate details

You can also access Settings, invite advocates, and create advocacy posts. 

Creating advocacy posts with Vista Social’s social media publishing feature is a breeze.

The platform lets you do the following:

• Schedule new social media posts to your social profiles and make them available in the Content section for your advocates to share, like, repost, and comment
• Choose a previously published post to add to your Content section and make available for your advocates to engage with
• Schedule advocacy-only posts that will be made available for them to share on their personal social media profiles

Create and customize your advocacy post accordingly.

Use Vista Social’s awesome AI Assistant that instantly generates or refines your post descriptions and taglines. 

You can schedule a time to make your advocacy posts available to your advocates or save them as drafts.

Vista Social stands out for its all-in-one social media management and employee advocacy platform. 

Plus, the platform allows your advocates to customize your advocacy posts before reposting or sharing them, giving them authenticity and that unique flavor. 

Vista Social’s other social media management features include the following:

• A social media engagement tool. It features a Social Inbox that centralizes and simplifies managing, viewing, tracking, and responding to your comments, mentions, messages, and reviews
• An AI-powered hashtag generator
• Social media analytics that automates and simplifies extracting insights and generating reports
•  Automated post approval workflows 
• A link in bio tool with customizable and brandable landing pages called Vista Page

What are the FAQs on employee advocacy marketing?

How can marketers win with employee advocacy?

Employee advocacy can open opportunities for your business to boost organic sharing and engagement, raise brand awareness, generate leads, grow referral traffic, and attract potential talent.

Must read: Top LinkedIn Automation Tools for Lead Generation

How can your company empower employees to advocate for your brand?

Allow your employees to share content that resonates with them and their audiences and networks. 

Equip and trust them to represent your brand positively while allowing creative freedom and personal expression.

Doing so helps enhance your brand’s authenticity and credibility.

How does employee advocacy support social media marketing?

Employee advocacy can amplify your social media marketing efforts by expanding your brand’s reach through your advocates’ authentic voices. 

It can humanize your brand, making it more relatable and engaging to your target audience and potential clients. 

Ready to implement your employee advocacy marketing strategies?

Marketing and promoting your brand through employee advocacy can level up your social media initiatives. 

The approach also offers a cost-effective and organic way to expand your brand’s reach, strengthen your company’s credibility, and, ultimately, drive conversions and sales. 

Kick off your employee advocacy marketing efforts with reliable tips and tricks and sophisticated tools like Vista Social.

Create your Vista Social account now.