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

Don’t jump in blindfolded.

Establish a carefully crafted plan before running an employee advocacy program.

Not having an employee advocacy plan is just crazy. It’s like going to war without a plan of attack, leading to defeat 100%.

Yikes!

That is why you need a plan to guide your employee advocacy efforts, from identifying goals and developing a content publishing strategy to establishing performance tracking methods. 

Continue reading to uncover the steps and best practices for building an employee advocacy plan. 

What you will learn

• Why you need an employee advocacy plan
• 5 Easy steps to build your employee advocacy plan
• Develop a solid employee advocacy plan like a boss

Why you need an employee advocacy plan

Developing a strong employee advocacy plan is crucial for the following reasons.

• Clear direction. A well-defined plan gives you a clear employee advocacy roadmap, including an outline of your goals, strategies, and expected outcomes. It helps ensure everyone is on the same page 
• Alignment with your business objectives. An employee advocacy plan ensures your efforts align with your overall business objectives, whether raising brand awareness, boosting employee engagement, or generating leads
• Quality control and consistency. A structured plan includes training and content guidelines. These ensure consistent messaging and alignment with your brand voice and content, which help maintain your content’s quality
• Effective resource use. A comprehensive plan helps you allocate your employee advocacy resources efficiently, from your tools to your content and monitoring efforts. It helps you sustain and scale your program accordingly
• Ensure proper risk management. Developing a plan helps prepare you to spot, mitigate, and handle potential negative feedback, legal compliance issues, and other scenarios

5 Easy steps to build your employee advocacy plan

While your employee advocacy plan can depend on your goals and program, you can easily start building it with the steps below. 

1. Facilitate and promote workplace positivity

You must establish workplace positivity before getting your employee advocacy off the ground. 

Why? Because you need to engage employees to encourage them to share authentic content about your brand. 

Establish a workplace and environment your employees appreciate and even enjoy. 

One of the best ways to do this is to understand and address your employees’ fundamental needs, such as:

• A clear purpose and mission
• Easy access to necessary equipment, tools, and resources
• Clear expectations
• Open lines of communication
• Regular recognition for achievements and contributions to the company

Put a premium on employee satisfaction, and you’ll have willing champions who will shout out your brand from the rooftops. 

Additionally, foster a culture of advocacy to encourage, empower, and motivate your employees to promote your brand positively and genuinely. 

2. Set your goals and KPIs

Determine and convey the purpose of your advocacy program to your employees before asking them to advocate for your company. 

After all, setting goals provides a clear direction for your advocates, eliminates ambiguity, and helps you determine the measurable social media Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). 

You can break down your employee advocacy goals by department or business process like this:

Sales:

• Increase the number of referrals by 10%
• Increase the number of closed-won deals by 20%
• Reduce the time to close a deal by 5%

Marketing:

• Increase social media engagement by 5%
• Increase social media reach by 5%
• Increase website traffic by 15%

Human Resources:

• Increase the number of qualified applicants by 10%
• Increase the number of referrals by 15%
• Increase traffic to career website by 20%

After identifying your employee advocacy program’s goals, determine the KPIs you want to track and measure, including the following:

• Top contributors
• Advocacy post engagement rates
• Organic reach of your advocacy posts
• Employee advocate-generated website traffic
• Impact of your program on your overall brand sentiment

Identifying your goals and tracking key metrics help ensure your employee advocacy initiatives align with your company values and overall business objectives. 

3. Identify your platforms and channels

Like your social media marketing strategy, you must consider where most of your brand’s target audiences and followers are. 

After all, sharing advocacy posts with audiences likely to engage with them increases your program’s chances of succeeding. 

The platforms where you implement your advocacy program can also depend on your goals. 

For example, if your program aims to attract potential hires, you should tailor and publish your content on LinkedIn instead of more casual and entertainment-focused platforms like Instagram. 

You shouldn’t limit the number of channels where your advocates share content. 

However, it’s crucial to specify platforms to streamline content planning, preparation, creation, and distribution. 

Also, consider the social media channels your employees already use. 

It’s easier to encourage advocates to share content on their already active channels than to get them to join new ones. 

4. Develop a content distribution and publishing strategy

How you share and publish your employee advocacy content can lead to success or failure. 

That is why you need to nail your advocacy content distribution and publishing to boost engagement and increase your program’s chances of succeeding. 

Streamline and supercharge your content planning and publishing with Vista Social. 

The social media management platform offers reliable and advanced features for managing profiles, content, engagement, and your advocacy program. 

The platform’s Employee Advocacy feature lets you connect your social media profiles, set up your advocacy program, add advocates, and create and publish content seamlessly.

After creating your advocacy post, save it as a draft for further review or schedule it to be available for viewing and sharing by advocates at a specific time and date.

Once available, advocates can customize the posts to make them more authentic and relevant to their audiences. 

The platform’s advocacy content creation and sharing features reduce barriers to content publishing, making post sharing for your advocates quick and easy. 

5. Establish tracking and measurement methods 

Sustaining your employee advocacy program involves finding gaps, iterating what’s working, and constantly enhancing to improve performance. 

You’ll need reliable tracking and measurement methods to determine what’s working or needs adjustment. 

With Vista Social, tracking and measuring your employee advocacy program’s KPIs and overall performance can be quick and easy. 

The platform’s Employee Advocacy feature includes analytics tools to help you track and measure the performance of your advocacy posts.

The feature’s measurement and optimization tools give you data and insights into your program’s generated leads, web traffic, and event registrations (among others).

The platform can track metrics such as your number of advocates, posts, shares, reach, and engagement. 

It can also track your employee advocacy program’s earned media value and includes UTM parameters for campaign tracking. 

You can leverage these insights to optimize your advocacy content strategy and measure your program’s impact effectively. 

Develop a solid employee advocacy plan like a boss

Begin your employee advocacy initiatives with a robust plan to steer your strategy, support advocates, manage implementation, and mitigate risks.

Also, use Vista Social to supercharge your efforts, from planning to performance tracking and measurement.

Create your FREE Vista Social account now to experience the platform’s awesome employee advocacy and social media management features.