Employee advocacy: how to engage your staff?

For a company’s content to become noticeable and engaging, it is not enough to produce and distribute it on a large scale. You also need to engage your internal teams. These people are the most likely and the most legitimate to talk about you, as they know and share your values.

Whether it’s for your social networks, your product presentations or your events, engaging your teams to speak and interact with your content will be a great weapon. And what better tool than video?

If you want to get your people more involved in your social networks, read our article on this topic.

What is employee advocacy?

According to the French website definition-marketing, employee advocacy is the mechanism by which a company or a brand mobilises its employees to become ambassadors not only in their professional life, but also sometimes in their everyday life, particularly on social networks.

The concept of employee advocacy must be a win-win situation, everyone should benefit from it: 

• Companies: digital visibility, employer brand, legitimacy;
• But, also the employees: highlighting skills, speaking out, individual business performance.

In a world where the audience wants more interaction, despite the omnipresence of screens and digital, companies cannot be satisfied with press releases or having their managers speak. If your employees have come to join you, it is because they believe in your values, and want to share them.

But many companies find it hard to engage their employees, and some don’t even seem to understand what’s at stake. So, how do you convince them?

It’s no longer about your employees sharing, but creating content themselves

For a long time, many companies simply asked their employees to share corporate content on their social networks.

Companies have, more or less, enforced a way of doing things, with the logic of having a totally controlled communication. This was probably their mistake. By giving strict and restrictive instructions, they probably limited their employees’ desire to speak out.

From the notion of employee advocacy, we quickly move on to employee generated content, i.e. content created by your employees themselves. If the members of your company feel that you trust them, that you want to hear them speak and express themselves with a minimum of constraints, they will be more motivated and will participate more spontaneously. It’s a bit like with books: if you are forced to read one, you lose the pleasure. However, if you follow your instinct and choose the one you like, you will be more inclined to buy it and read it.

According to the French website digital corsaire, employee generated content has at least 5 advantages: 

• More effective communication, because the voice is more important and democratised;
• Everyone is free to speak, because everyone feels they can give their opinion;
• Improved learning for new recruits, especially if employee generated content includes training;
• Innovative recruitment marketing, because future candidates will feel inspired by your employees;
• Enhanced content productivity. Once the concept is launched, other employees will want to play along.

Some examples of employee advocacy at Pitchy

During lockdown, we encouraged the Pitchounes to send us their stories about their routines during this particular period that turned our lives upside down. The idea was for them to advise our community on: 

• a recipe to prepare while quarantined,
• a song,
• a TV show
• a book,
• an outfit,
•  etc…

Check out the quarantined interview with Sounita, Digital Marketing Manager at Pitchy: 

Interview with Simran, International Marketing Coordinator: 

We also have Jimmy, our International Sales Manager 😉

Do you want to encourage your employees to create their own videos without being pros? Request a demo of the Pitchy solution.