The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocacy

Neal Schaffer: 0:04

Welcome to maximize your social, actionable 10 minute advice on how your business can maximize your social media presence. Now, the host of maximize your social social media author, speaker, consultant, and founder of maximize social business. Neal Schaffer. Hi, there this is Neal Schaffer and welcome to a another episode, or should I call them additions? I never know. But this is the podcast called maximize your social? Well, I'm really excited today to announce a lot of you may have read one of my free ebooks or samples of my books. And it's been a while since I put out a new one, I'm actually working on a few. And I'm really happy to announce that the newest free eBook resource that I have is now available for download. It is called social marketing, how to build an employee advocacy program. Some of you that have heard me speak or have spoken me recently, I've been talking about this new ebook that I wrote, which is coming out. This is actually an ebook that I co authored, together with a platform provider for employee advocacy, called people links, great company, great people. And I think we authored or co authored the definitive book on employee advocacy. Now, for some of you who may have heard the buzzword or may have heard the word or maybe it's the first time you've ever heard it. The idea is that companies often look outside the company walls for influencers, or fans, or people that they can try to influence to talk about them in social media, while some of their biggest fans are working for them inside their company. So the idea of employee advocacy is how do we yield? Or how do we harness the power of our employees to help our word of mouth marketing and social media? And to give you a better introduction to the ebook, you know, part of it is, how can marketers make their company stand out in the incredibly crowded social media landscape, this is one of the reasons why we hear a lot more about employee advocacy. And a lot of it is actually coming from the marketing department, even though it's questionable as to what organization actually should be in charge. But often it is marketing where it begins. And, you know, it's really no surprise, you know, most strategies in social focus on the brand entity, and overlook the power and the influence of the employee use of social networks. And, you know, you may not realize how huge of an oversight that is, there's one survey that said 88% of employees use at least one social media site for personal use. And of those 50% are already posting or have posted something about their brand or company that they've worked out. So you can imagine that as a huge word of mouth marketing opportunity. And the more employees you have, and the larger their social graph, the bigger the opportunity it is for your company. Whenever I present on employee advocacy, I always show the slide of Prudential Financial, and the fact that they have 15,000 employees on LinkedIn. And on average, each of their employees has, I don't know, 160 connections, meaning that in theory, if there was one message that every employee on LinkedIn shared, that that message could potentially go out to 2.1 million connections. Now, those are not unique connections, there may be some overlap there. But the interesting note about overlap is that there have been different studies that have found that overlap between employees, networks and networks that follow brands have very, very little overlap. So like less than 10%. So the potential there, from a theoretical perspective, right is huge. So the reason I partner with people links is they have a similar perspective on the world of social media that I had, I first met some of their executives, it was actually at the social shakeup, presented by social media today, back in the autumn. In Atlanta, I think it was September of last year, and we've kept in touch actually did a webinar together. And that really led to let's create something that is, you know, that has some third party objectivity, which I bring to the table. And that can really be used by anybody that wants to create their own employee advocacy program. So as you go through the ebook, and to give you further description, you know, the book starts with really getting you to understand the potential and the value that employee advocacy has have, which I just sort of hinted at here in the beginning of this podcast. It then goes into talking about how employee advocacy has special meaning, or special benefits for people in sales or socials. Selling. And if you are interested in social selling, you know, I think the book is going to be interesting to you, as far as you understanding how you should be requesting your own internal departments to create content for you to share, to help you yield your own thought leadership and to keep in touch with people in your industry, right. And in fact, if you're in sales, and you don't have such an employee advocacy program in place, and you may have been talking to the marketing people about creating content, you may want to share this ebook with them, and say, this is sort of the platform that you need, because it'll make it a lot easier for you. The eBook then goes into helping you actually define your employee advocacy strategy, you know that I'm big on strategy, obviously, using the notion of the three eyes to help build your program. And you'll have to read the book to find out what that is. So there's also a very, very important section on sourcing content for employees to share. And this is where I think a lot of companies break down because marketers want to get those calls to action out there. But employees are like, you want me to post this blatantly self promotional tweet, on my profile? Are you crazy. And this is where there is a lot of, you know, misunderstandings that happen, or a lot of failures, or only a very, very small percentage of the people that have signed on to be part of the program, actually go out and post a tweet, or a LinkedIn update, or what have you regarding it. So really happy about the content that we created for the source and the content. We also talk about the measuring of success of your employee advocacy program, how do you know how well you're doing something that's very, very critical. And it really ends talking about this evolving relationship between marketing and sales. And in fact, this evolving relationship between social selling, and employee advocacy that we see both people legs as well as myself through my own clients, and, you know, companies I meet at my speaking events, what have you that we see evolving? So, you know, there are some that say there are three types of media, you know, owned, earned and paid. And with the advent of employee advocacy, maybe this is a fourth type of media, employee media or employed media. So it's really when we think about those top 15 trends in social media that are going on this year. And it's going to be the topic of a blog post that I'll be publishing soon. The employee advocacy without a doubt is one of those trends. And I think that if you are a social media marketer, this is an ebook, regardless of your experience with employee advocacy, I think that this ebook holds value for you. And it's absolutely free. So what are you waiting for? Now, I'm starting to sound like an advertisement. That's not cool. So let me take a step back there. So in order to gain access, and I will try to publish this link on the maximize your social.com podcast page as well. But it's actually really, really easy to get access to there is a form and to access the form where it will be available for immediate download, you need to go to get that to GE T right dots maximize social business, which is the site that I am the founder and editor in chief of.com/employee advocacy slash, I don't think I need to go through the painstaking detail of telling you every single letter that's a part of those words, the benefit of a podcast is you can rewind and play it back again until you get it, you should also start seeing some tweets and Facebook posts and what have you from me as well. But once again, it is get dot maximize social business.com/employee advocacy, slash comp that makes sense. If you try to access it, and you can't get ahold of it, you don't see any tweets or anything from me, reach out to me, I will send you the link directly. Anyways, this is a short and sweet, perhaps to some of you introduction, employee advocacy. But I really am happy of the work that people links and I created for this ebook. And I really, really hope that you spend a few minutes to go in, download it and read it and I really await your feedback as well on the book. So that's it for today, everybody. Hey, is there any book you want me to write about? Let me know, like I said, I plan to publish a bunch of them. I have one specifically that I hope to publish in the next few weeks. And really, I want to provide more educational resources to help empower what you all do in your social media, for your own business, as an employee of a business or as an agency or consultant for other businesses. So feel free to reach out to me. That's it for another edition of Maximizer social, wherever you are in the world. Make it a great social day. We'll talk to you again soon. Bye. Bye, everybody. Thanks for listening to maximize your social. We appreciate your iTunes subscriptions, ratings and comments. If you would like to appear on this show or recommend content, please contact Neal Schaffer at Neal at maximize your social.com make it a social day.