Are Your Employees Advocates for Your Brand?

LinkedIn have recently launched their next generation of LinkedIn Company Pages which, they say, have been rebuilt from the ground up to make it easier for companies like yours to adopt constructive conversations with LinkedIn’s community of more than 590 million members.  Click here to find out why these changes should matter to you. Why should you encourage your employees to be brand advocates?

Your LinkedIn company page will often be among the first place where prospective clients will visit to learn more about your business. Content has 2 x higher engagement when shared by employees and on average, your employees have a network that is 10 times larger than your company’s follower base.*

My team and I support companies as an outsourced service managing their LinkedIn marketing strategy. If you manage your company’s LinkedIn company page strategy, here’s my top tips on how to encourage your LinkedIn employee brand advocates:

• Define your social media policy, explaining what is okay for your team to share and what is not okay. By offering some guidelines will help them feel more confident in sharing your aims and objectives.
• Do not assume your employees know how to use LinkedIn. Offer training as some will be more active and knowledgeable than others.
• Get everyone engaged by setting set up a LinkedIn engagement pod or a WhatsApp group. We use WhatsApp and have seen this work extremely well.
• Encourage everyone by asking for news such as birthdays, work anniversaries, team news, projects they are working on, in fact anything which is relevant, including videos for those confident in doing so. Featuring employees giving an insight into your culture offers a look into the brand’s people and personality and LinkedIn pages are a great way to reflect this, especially if you are recruiting.
• Celebrate new business wins, client reviews, together with any PR coverage, any good news story alongside nicely designed, branded imagery. Striking visuals are key to separating your page from your competitors.
• Position yourselves as a thought leader by posting useful content that positions your brand as an authority in its industry.
• Consistently monitor employee engagement for maximum effect. Ways you can do this are by identifying Company Page metrics, measuring success such as the number of employees participating, the reach of your messaging; shares, likes, comments, new followers and click-through-rates (CTR).
• I would also add that you may want to consider an incentive by offering a prize for team member of the month/quarter in terms of how much they have engaged.
• Evaluate what is working, what isn’t and make the necessary changes to improve. Any form of marketing should be treated with a ‘test and measure’ approach and feedback from your employees will also play a crucial role in your plan.

I hope that you have enjoyed reading my tips for encouraging LinkedIn Employee Brand Advocates in your organisation. If you would like to discuss your future social media requirements, bespoke to your company, please contact me on 07752 539719 or 0161 826 7181 or email info@bizwizuk.co.uk.