ultimate buyers guide to employee advocacy solutions · 2018-02-28 · the ultimate buyer’s guide...

The Ultimate Buyer’s Guide to Employee Advocacy Solutions

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__ Contents

Introduction 3

Is Your Enterprise Ready for Employee Advocacy? 4

Selling Internally 6

Selling to Executives 7

Selling to Marketing 11

Selling to Human Resources 14

Selling to Legal 16

Selling to IT 18

Overall Timeline 21

FAQ 22

Getting Started 23


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__ Introduction

THE WORLD OF WORK IS CHANGING

Enterprises are now realizing that employee engagement is at the forefront of

successful operations. Companies with engaged employees outperform those

without by up to 202%. Nearly 31% of all high growth enterprises now have a

formal employee advocacy program, and 86% of employee advocates credit

their involvement with the program as having a positive impact on their career.

Employee advocacy isn’t a buzzword, nor is it a “maybe next year” idea. It has

become a must-have for any enterprise wishing to reduce the length of their

sales cycle, increase employee engagement, and build brand trust.

Despite this momentum in the market, many enterprises don’t know how to

implement a formal employee advocacy program. With a growing number of

platforms and vendors, it can be difficult to navigate the procurement process.

This guide will walk you through how to speak to your colleagues about employee

advocacy, address concerns that each department may have, and will offer

additional resources to help develop your social business strategy in 2017.

Let’s Get Started!

http://www.dalecarnegie.com/employee-engagement/engaged-employees-infographic/

http://www.dalecarnegie.com/employee-engagement/engaged-employees-infographic/

https://hingemarketing.com/uploads/hinge-research-employee-advocacy.pdf


http://learn.postbeyond.com/11-steps-to-enterprise-social-media-advocacy

http://learn.postbeyond.com/11-steps-to-enterprise-social-media-advocacy


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01 Is Your Enterprise Ready for Employee Advocacy?

Employee advocacy is not a campaign-based social media tactic, it’s an

always-on internal communications strategy that will evolve over time and

continue to scale with your enterprise.

With that in mind, it’s imperative to conduct an internal audit to determine

how prepared your enterprise is for this program. Be critical, and ask yourself

the following:

ü Who owns internal communications at your enterprise?

ü What is your current social media policy for employees?

ü Are your employees allowed to share company content?

o What are the guidelines around that?

ü Do your employees feel engaged and empowered?

o How are you measuring engagement?

ü What is your current content strategy?

o Do your employees engage with your content?

These questions are meant to provoke some internal analysis. The fact is, some

enterprises aren’t ready for an employee advocacy program. They may have

more work that needs to be done on the content or employee engagement

side. Here are a few common scenarios we’ve seen:

http://blog.postbeyond.com/guideline-learn-how-to-create-an-employee-social-media-policy/


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Leadership does not see the value of social media and is not willing to invest

The organization is very slow to adopt new

technology

The employees are highly disengaged and talent retention needs drastic improvement

Lack of an established content marketing strategy

If one or more of these scenarios sounds familiar, don’t worry. Organizations

will vary in terms of readiness, but if you’re even considering whether

employee advocacy is something you should invest in, you’re in the right place.


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02 Selling Internally

Different business units will have different questions surrounding an employee

advocacy program. When sharing your ideas with colleagues in different

departments, put yourself in their shoes! The next sections will highlight some

of the most common objections each business unit has, and how to address

them. We’ll walk you through what matters to each department, what you’ll

need to prepare, and when you should approach them for employee advocacy

procurement.


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Employee advocacy stems across multiple

departments, and can help align communication

and goals. It’s a commitment to both employee

engagement and improved internal

communications.

03 Selling to Executives

We’re often asked by the C-Suite how an employee advocacy program will

impact the bottom line. They may ask...

What are the benefits of having a socially engaged leadership team? Why does it matter?

How will this contribute to our overall strategic goals?

77% of buyers are more likely to buy from a

company whose CEO uses social media.

It allows executives to keep up-to-date with

what’s going on at the company, in one

centralized dashboard.

https://www.scribd.com/doc/249863818/Infographic-Social-Employee-Advocacy

https://www.scribd.com/doc/249863818/Infographic-Social-Employee-Advocacy


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What’s The ROI?

How Much Wil l It Cost?

MARKETING Cost Per Lead

• Trusted expert employees

generate greater referral

traffic, leads, & conversions

• Employees engaged in social

media create links to your

content, which boosts SEO

• Customer satisfaction can

increase when trusted

employees are accessible

and responsive

SALES Sales Market Share

• Influence and relationships

online drive sales

• Employees engaged in social

media impact consideration

and preference, thereby

conditioning the market into

a favorable selling

environment

• Create new customer

interactions

• Enable affiliate, partner, and

supplier interactions

HUMAN RESOURCES Productivity Talent

Acquisition Retention

• Leverage external talent

through crowdsourcing

• Decrease reliance on paid

recruiters

IT Productivity Efficiency

• Increase transparency that

decreases time to find our

distribute information,

knowledge and insights

BRAND / PR Share of Voice Sentiment

• Increase share of voice by

extending the reach of the

brand

• Develop more stronger

relationships with

influencers

• Protect the brand in times

of crisis or criticism

FINANCE Costs

• Reduce spend on media

• Decrease costs of content

development and

distribution


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Employee advocacy helps improve communication, reduce operational costs,

and helps generate leads that result in revenue over time – not to mention the

positive brand sentiment that is built by the trust of your employees.

Of high growth firms with a formal employee advocacy program surveyed...

Other measurable benefits include:

ü Reduced cost for social media training

ü Reduced time spent on internal communications effort (more

streamlined knowledge transfer)

Cost structure for this type of software usually depends on the number of

employees in the program, the various integrations, and location-specific requests.

Do our competitors do this? Yes, they do. Leading companies use employee advocacy to their competitive

advantage. Hinge Marketing reports that 31% of high growth firms have a formal

employee advocacy program in place.

What will adoption look like? Depending on the size of your business, a pilot program may be appropriate.

If a pilot is put in place, a segment of employees (brand ambassadors) are

REPORTED INCREASED BRAND VISIBILITY

REPORTED INCREASED BRAND RECOGNITION

REPORTED INCREASED WEB TRAFFIC /

INBOUND LEADS

77% 65% 44%







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carefully selected to participate in the program. The program manager will

work closely with the vendor’s implementation specialist/customer success

manager to ensure that goals are met, and that a company-wide rollout is

attainable based on the pilot results.

What to Prepare:

1-sheet showing stats and logos of other companies using employee

advocacy software.

ROI calculator and projections of how employee advocacy can help

strategic goals.

https://blog.postbeyond.com/download-employee-advocacy-roi-calculator/


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04 Selling to Marketing

Most marketing teams have some familiarity with employee advocacy, which

is great! However, there are a few concerns here regarding messaging and

content. Your marketing department may ask…

Why should we use a platform when we’re already investing in paid media? Friend and family referrals are more trusted than advertisements. In fact, more than

eight in ten (83% to be exact) of global respondents say they entirely or mostly trust

referrals from friends and family, making personal referrals the single most trusted

form of advertising. This is contrasted with 70% of respondents who trust brand-owned

channels. Your employees are therefore the most credible source of information for

people who are unaware of your brand. Employee advocacy isn’t meant to replace paid

media, but instead, it’s meant to complement your existing paid strategy.

Employee advocacy isn’t campaign-based the way paid is, so results and KPI’s

will be different.

Some platforms can calculate Earned Media Value to demonstrate the cost savings.

What if the employees get our brand messaging wrong? Your social media policy can outline at a high level what’s appropriate to share

on social media. Employee advocacy platforms typically come with a suggested

caption for each piece of content. Each piece can be edited by the employee to

reflect their own voice, or can be left as the suggested caption.

Why would employees care about this? Position this to employees as an opportunity to build a personal brand online.

http://www.nielsen.com/ca/en/insights/reports/2015/global-trust-in-advertising-2015.html

http://www.nielsen.com/ca/en/insights/reports/2015/global-trust-in-advertising-2015.html


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Explain that this isn’t a tactic for them to blindly share your message, but to

engage with your unique content and add their own voice to it.

Benefits advocates receive from employee advocacy

(Source: Hinge Research Institute in Association with Social Media Today)

How does this integrate with our current tech stack? Most platforms come with integrations to CRM software, email marketing

software, intranets, etc. Some of the most common integration requests include

Salesforce, Pardot, Yammer, Sharepoint, Microsoft Single Sign-On, or Google

Analytics. Platforms can often offer a direct API integration or an integration

through UTM Campaign tracking.

Your platform should be as accessible as possible to encourage the maximum

amount of activity from users. It should integrate with your current marketing

stack and be accessible across devices with minimal effort for users to log in

and share content.

25.7%

26.4%

37.8%

44%

45.7%

45.7%

47.2%

48.6%

50.4%

76%

87.2%DiscoverNewCareerPaths

GenerateNewRevenueStreams

AccesstoMoreJobOpportunities

RecognizedasaThoughtLeader

DifferentiationFromPeers

MoreOpportunitiesforReferrals

DevelopSkillsinHighDemand

OpportunitiesforProfessionalPartners

AttractandDevelopNewBusiness

KeepUpWiththeIndustryTrends

ExpandProfessionalNetworks

https://postbeyond.com/demo/


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What to Prepare:

Audit of current marketing stack and how an employee advocacy

platform would integrate with it

ROI Calculations

Full evaluation of current paid media strategy and its results/ROI

Case studies that showcase how employee advocacy increases organic

reach and helps to generate inbound leads

https://blog.postbeyond.com/download-employee-advocacy-roi-calculator/


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05 Selling to Human Resources

COMMON CONCERNS

Human Resources will be concerned with how this program will impact employees at every

level. Their concerns will be focused on employee wellbeing, recruiting and employer

branding, and might include questions like:

Will employees be doing more work? And does this mean extra compensation?

No, as this should be an opt-in program. Employees will be

voluntarily spending time on the platform, and as such, can

spend this time either on or outside work hours. Since the

program is voluntary, this would not require extra

compensation.

Is this part of their job description?

Not necessarily. Some client-facing roles (sales, public

relations) may have more of a stake in developing their

personal brand online. For behind-the-scenes employees, it’s

an opportunity to develop thought leadership skills.

How will this improve our employer brand?

Employee advocacy represents a shift in workplace culture

(Future of Work) that encourages employees of all levels to

share and engage with content.


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Our employees don’t like being tracked or monitored. How will this program be any different?

Although employees can be tracked down to the individual

level for sharing, this isn’t a necessary component of the

program. Most platforms will make it easy to measure a

program’s success at a high level that takes an average of

participant engagement.

Your enterprise will be more approachable, have a stronger brand, and

attract/retain top talent.

What to Prepare:

Review current employee handbook (specifically: policies around social

media use on work hours)

Refer to case studies that position employee advocacy programs as key

drivers for talent acquisition and social recruiting

Research the growing importance of employee engagement and

employer branding


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06 Selling to Legal

COMMON CONCERNS

Given that there are certain regulations around content sharing and copyright infringement,

your legal department will ask some important questions surrounding content ownership,

intellectual property, and laws around employee engagement programs. They may have

concerns like these:

There are laws around incentivizing employees to perform tasks. Is this program in violation of these laws? If your region has laws prohibiting incentivization, there are ways to make your

employee advocacy program opt-in only without any reward or incentive. This will

ensure that there is nothing but personal motivation that encourages employees to join.

Depending on the verbiage (“bonus” vs. “prize”, for example), there may be

other ways to reward employees that are legally sound. Legal would be

involved in every step of this process.:

What is the process around onboarding? How are employees made aware of what they’re obligated to do (or not do)? Program managers should make it explicitly clear to their employees that this

is an opt-in program, and they are in no way obliged to share content or say

specific things if they aren’t inclined to. Remember, the idea is to encourage

organic sharing.

Does sharing third party content violate any copyright laws? This is largely dependent on where your enterprise is located. We’ve

encountered many regions that state you must have a disclaimer for third party

content, in which case this would be made clear to the employees. Most


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platforms will have an “edit” feature for each piece, so any necessary

disclaimers can be added.

What if our employee defames the company on social media (or edits the content to say something unsavoury)? Realistically, this can happen regardless of an employee advocacy platform.

Employees are always free to share whatever message they please on their

social media pages. Social media policies should outline what type of content

to share on social media. Your enterprise may also wish to have a formal social

media training process that requires the employee to acknowledge (in writing)

that they’ve received proper training.

What to Prepare:

Review copyright guidelines for every region you plan to scale your

employee advocacy program to.

Evaluate your current System of Record

Content audit (how your enterprise currently shares third party content,

and what disclaimers are made, if any.)


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05 Selling to IT

COMMON CONCERNS

Security is first and foremost for any IT department. When any employee information is being

shared (particularly social media profiles), it’s imperative to have a platform that is secure

and handles sensitive information with caution. The answers will be largely dependent on

your chosen platform, but should address:

What access does the platform have to personally identifiable information (pii)? Unless the information is stated in the body of a piece of content, the platform

should not store any additional information (metadata).

If the platform stores PII in any space, this should be deletable upon request of

the enterprise.

Where is our data hosted? Are any activities related to hosting outsourced to a third party? Some platforms will host enterprise data in a cloud-based system (like

Amazon Web Services), which is a secure method for hosting. Other platforms

may own their own data center.

How is data stored or transmitted? All data that is stored should be encrypted and require a private encryption key

to access.

Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols should be used when transmitting

data over computer networks.


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What is the authentication process? Although single sign-on (SSO) is preferable, the platform should also be able to

work with your existing password policies. If, for example, your enterprise

requires that employee passwords be changed every 90 days, the software

should be able to work in this capacity.

What are your testing procedures? The platform should perform regular security tests (Blackbox testing) to ensure

that the software is secure. The vendor may also wish to perform regular Code

Review tests to ensure that their code is sound.

What is the incident response process? How do you prevent incidents from occurring? Registry in the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) is recommended as a way

to keep informed with new security concerns. Additionally, if your vendor is

hosting with a cloud-based solution, they should be registered for regular

security updates in the form of a database or newsletter with their hosting

service. A strategic incident response process (or indeed, disaster recovery

process) should be strategically outlined during procurement.

How often do you perform backups? Vendors should perform backups regularly and offer full “restore to point in

time” functionality to ensure that no data or content is lost in the event of a

failure. If using cloud-based hosting, the provider should have a full recovery

framework.

Is this platform available in an enterprise app store? Yes, your platform should be available in an enterprise app store.


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What to Prepare:

Review your enterprise’s current Information Security policy

Review current password policies


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06 Overall Timeline

Critical evaluation of current workplace culture, employee

engagement, and employer brand

Internal audit of all current social media and employee

engagement strategies

Consult with HR and Marketing

Calculate what the ROI would look like for your enterprise

Build excitement with executives to gain their support (buy-in)

Compare different vendors and schedule product demos

Work with vendor’s Customer Success team to establish a full

implementation and rollout plan. This will include identifying the

initial brand advocates, program branding, and establish clear

program goals and associated metrics.

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07 FAQ

WHO SHOULD CONTROL THE PLATFORM? The platform is usually managed day-to-day by someone in the marketing

department (social/digital). HR and Communications teams are usually involved

in content curation, and Legal should be involved for strategy and planning.

HOW LONG DOES IMPLEMENTATION TAKE? The first steps of your program (training the program manager, filling the

content library, launching to the initial brand advocates, etc.) can take

anywhere from 4-6 weeks. Full implementation, however, may be extended

to a year or more to fully get the program running at its maximum capacity.

WHAT IF THE ADOPTION RATE AMONG EMPLOYEES IS LOW? Although some large enterprises are now skipping the pilot phase in favour of

a company-wide rollout, we recommend identifying a small portion of brand

champions who are adept at social media sharing and already highly engaged

and beginning your program with them. This will give you an idea of what type of

content is most successful, and what your employees care about when it comes

to an advocacy program, thereby increasing the chances of successful adoption.

Your vendor’s Customer Success team should assist in identifying the best

adoption strategy to ensure that the program is running to its maximum potential.


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__ Getting Started

A complete digital transformation is a big step for any organization, and habits

don’t change overnight. But with the right tools and support, you can gain an

advantage over your competitors by adopting early.

There’s no longer a question of whether employee advocacy is necessary for

your enterprise. The question now is whether your enterprise is ready for it.

“I think tools like PostBeyond are becoming more important. It’s now a question of having a tool

that’s accessible anywhere that gives you the right information at the right time. These are the

types of tools that are becoming more vital not only in terms of how the world of work is changing,

but in terms of how people expect to engage with companies and receive information.”

Mark Jordan - Director of Digital Projects, Brand Strategy & Communications, SickKids Foundation

Use this guide to take a close look at your current enterprise operations.

Where do you stand in terms of readiness? Will your enterprise be a leader in

the changing world of workplace culture, or will you be left by the wayside?

Want to learn more?

Website | PostBeyond.com

Email | [email protected]

Phone | (888) 948 4969

REQUEST DEMO

http://postbeyond.com/

mailto:[email protected]

https://postbeyond.com/demo/

ultimate buyers guide to employee advocacy solutions · 2018-02-28 · the ultimate buyer’s guide...

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