Wat is employee advocacy?

Apostle developed a tool that thrives on using personal branding of employees for your organization. This way you create more involvement, marketing efforts and reach amongst your employees. Which eventually leads to more sales! In this blog we will tell you more about this phenomenon.

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How do you communicatie to the outside world?

In the past, the name of a company played a big role. But due to the fast changing nature of marketing related efforts, the focus has shifted to the image that your company reflects to the outside world. But how do you portray a positive image towards your potential clients and employees? Employee advocacy plays an important role in this.

The people behind the scenes play a very important role. Who can better tell your story than your own employees? We live in a time where influencers and ambassadors are extremely popular. They are the new superheroes. That is why it is essential to ask yourself the following question: how can I turn my employees into brand ambassadors? And how will I ensure that they will tie their own ‘personal brand’ to this?

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Personal branding in broad terms

We will dive a little deeper when it comes to personal branding and the commonalities between employee advocacy. Everyone has a unique personality and specific knowledge to work with. The way someone presents their unique characteristics, is what we call ‘personal branding’. It gives others a sense of who you are and what you represent. When employees commit to your company, it is a unique opportunity to create an authentic and credible image amongst the target audience.

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Reaching corporate goals through personal branding

Every organization wants to be visible and interesting to its potential customers and employees. Personal branding is invaluable in this regard. Are your employees the ones sharing inspiring content? Then your organization will also be viewed in that way. When employees are enthusiastic, they pass it on in their own personal network - a simple, but effective marketing method!

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Employee advocacy as success factor

The bigger role of employees in promoting a brand is also referred to as "employee advocacy". For this to be a success, everyone must have the right goals in mind. It is important that employees have a clear picture of the brand identity. So: what message do you want to communicate as a company to the outside world? If that is clear to everyone, the company can profile itself successfully on social media and start using employee advocacy. Provide fun and inspiring content; employees like sharing something they are extremely proud of. Think about a nice product or a well-written blog. Your company can also profile itself well with a company party or a catered company lunch. Employees who feel personally connected to the company like to share something they are proud of.

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Making use of the right strategy

Based on personal branding and employee advocacy, Apostle has developed the 'social shift method’, in which employees become more involved in the 'branding' of a company. With this we help you and your company in deploying the right people step-by-step to promote your company.

Your employees are given specific tools to identify themselves as a brand ambassador and social influencer for your company. With this a large group of employees will become active ambassadors for your company within six months. Social media is by far the best medium for this. Because every employee has a unique network, the reach of the organization increases and naturally leads to a positive development on the corporate front.

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Apostle as employee advocacy platform

Given the power of social media, Apostle has developed its own tool. This allows employees to easily send and share messages on social media. By actively involving employees in external communication, their internal involvement in your organization grows. Moreover, your reach increases and your social media will be actively used.

Apostle helps you and your employees share authentic and relevant content. It offers a controlled environment with an editorial function for employee advocacy. Messages can be categorized and sent to relevant target audiences.Not only that, the Apostle tool gives you insights into your reach and usage statistics. You can also make use of our gamification features and get insight in the implementation process.

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Easily communicate with your employees and potential customers

Via the app, employees can easily share messages planned by the organization within their own networks. They can also submit messages for publication themselves. By doing this they grow into ambassadors for your organization and contribute fundamentally to the objectives in the field of marketing, sales and recruitment.

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Focus on your audience

For this approach to be efficient, the entire company needs to be represented in the best possible way. It is therefore advisable to appoint a pilot group consisting of employees from all layers of the organisation. They will lead the way in the field of social media. Employees will encourage their department and are responsible for providing input—ensuring that plenty of authentic content comes from within the organisation.

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Analyze the data in a meeting on a monthly basis

To keep the right goals in mind, it is essential to hold regular meetings with your pilot group. A monthly editorial meeting is a great way to achieve this. During these meetings, you can discuss where improvements are needed. The so-called key performance indicators (KPIs) are also discussed.

KPIs are variables that are used to measure the performance of a company, brand or product. This measures the success of a company or specific activity, in this case employee advocacy. The following variables are important for the Social shift method:

• Which employees are active?
• How many messages are scheduled?
• What amount of messages are approved?
• What is the range of the number of shared messages?
• What is the amount of registrations / leads that the messages generate?
• The demographics (male / female, age, region, etc.)?
• Who will finish at the top of the leaderboard (which employee performs best)?

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How will the Social shift method be implemented?

So, how will we implement the Social shit method with the app? Every company is different. A pilot will take approximately 6 months, an investment for the future. We will personalize and customize the method for your organization. In order to achieve this, we will take the following steps:

1. A social media content strategy that matches the organization. By ensuring that topics match the organization, only relevant content is shared. These topics can be divided over the various departments within the organization. This strategy is determined in 1 or 2 sessions with management.
2. Recruitment of ambassadors. This approach is most effective when an organization starts off with an enthusiastic pilot group. One way to achieve this is a personal call-to-action from the director to the employees. Of course, there are plenty of other methods that could work as well for your organization. This approach can be fully adapted and personalized to the organization.
3. Kick-off with participants. For this approach the company explains why they exactly choose this strategy. The method is explained and employees hear what is expected of them.
4. All ambassadors receive a thorough explanation of the Apostle tool: the employee advocacy platform for organizations, but better. The most important and main features: propose relevant messages to the ambassadors that can be posted with one click. Sending in photos, videos and texts so that the communications department can process them into interesting social media messages. By sharing personal stories, the organization becomes more relevant and relatable to many people in the target audience.
5. Workshops and online training. To achieve better results with social media, it is necessary to improve the level of knowledge of the ambassadors. A nice bonus is that employees become more familiar with the digitization of the organization.

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The perfect balance of personal branding and social media in one tool

The combination of employee advocacy, personal branding and social media is the ideal way to put your company on the map. With Apostle it is very easy to involve your employees in external marketing activities. Contact Apostle and embrace the employee advocacy tool that will help you implement this strategy.

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