If you want to increase brand awareness and you aren’t including an employee advocacy program as part of your content strategy, then you’re missing out on a treasure trove of untapped potential. Consider these mind-boggling statistics regarding utilizing your employees as social media brand ambassadors:

• 8X jump in social media engagement when employees share content. (Social Media Today)

• 76% of people say they trust content shared by regular people more than brands. (Post Beyond)

• 88% of employees use at least one social media site for personal use, of which 50% are already posting about their company. (Weber Shandwick)

With numbers like that, it’s clear why you should not only be participating in social media as a brand, but encouraging your employees to engage and share content as well.

EXPONENTIAL INCREASE

Your company branded channels might have a couple thousand followers on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and/or LinkedIn, but what if you could amplify that reach and exponentially increase your impact?

Social media is all about reach, impressions and engagement. Unless you have millions and millions of followers (a’hem, @KimKardashian & @taylorswift13), you typically have a finite number of folks you can organically and immediately reach with a social media post. Most of us regular people don’t have the luxury of posting something to social media and within seconds having thousands and thousands of likes, comments, favorites, retweets, shares, etc. However, each external engagement amplifies your original content, helping it reach new audiences.

All companies, no matter their size, have built-in brand ambassadors in the form of employees who can provide infinitely more reach and possibilities for brand awareness and engagement.

REACH → IMPRESSIONS → ENGAGEMENT

There can be a lot of confusion around the meaning of these social media metrics, particularly “impressions,” which can differ by social platform. Lema Kikuchi, senior data analyst for social analytics firm SumAll, makes it very easy with this memorable “formula”:

For Reach: How many people saw my post?

For Impressions: How many times did my post get displayed?

For Engagement: How many times did people interact with my posts?

EXPAND YOUR REACH

Let’s look at an example. Your company’s branded social media channel has 2,500 followers. Your initial reach for a post is 2,500. Coincidentally, you rely on that follower base for initial engagement as well, as they are the first to see your content. According to Kikuchi,

“The main purpose of social media marketing is to raise brand awareness, which means reaching as many people as possible and growing your audience.”

With that purpose in mind, you can expand your reach by encouraging your employees to engage with your content. As additional people are exposed to and start engaging with the content, it has the potential to expand far beyond its initial borders. If just 10% of those initial 2,500 followers engaged with your content and shared it with their social networks, you can easily see how one piece of content could begin to snowball and gain significant momentum.

When you consider that, on average, your employees have 10X more connections on their social media networks than companies have, that’s a huge amount of new people that can be easily introduced to your brand and start engaging with your content.

YOUR EMPLOYEES ARE TRUSTED, LET THEM SPEAK ON YOUR BEHALF

Your employees’ followers are a great place to amplify your message and increase brand awareness, because those followers already trust your employees due to the pre-existing relationship. You might be surprised to learn that according to the annual Edelman Trust Barometer study:

• a “company technical expert” is trusted by 65% of people

• a “person like yourself” is trusted by 61% of people

• CEO’s are trusted by only 47% of people

• Board of Directors are trusted by only 44% of people

When you really think about it, these numbers aren’t too shocking. It’s no surprise that the corporate-branded channel is going to post and say great things about the company. But when “Bill from Accounting” posts something about the company, it carries more credibility and is seen as more authentic.

It should be clear that your employees are your greatest asset when it comes to social media marketing, and tons of businesses are missing out.

TAP INTO THE POTENTIAL

So how do you start an employee advocacy program — ask! Seriously, just ask your employees to participate and help amplify your brand’s message. Most employees are already active on social media and many times, they just want permission and some general guidance about what’s acceptable. If you don’t ask and don’t set some parameters, employees often think: 

“Will my manager think I'm not doing my job if I’m posting to social media?”

“What if I say the wrong thing?”

“I don’t know what to say.”

Once you’ve assembled a team of employee advocates, now you need to engage them and make sure they’re notified when content is shared from the company branded social channels. Investing in a social media amplification tool is a great idea to help distribute your message to your employee ambassadors. Most systems have a centralized hub where content can be compiled and sent out to advocates who can then, with one-click, engage and share the message.

Can’t, or don’t want to spend the money on a system, go grassroots and stick to good old reliable email. Once a week, send out an email to your employee brand advocates, alerting them to what the company has posted to social media. Make it easy for them and provide hyperlinks to the actual content itself.

SHAPE THE CONVERSATION

Likeable founder, Dave Kerpen said, “first, social media is not free. Second, it won't bring you immediate results. And, third, it can't make up for a bad product or service.” Once you accept those facts and realize that your employees and other people are probably already talking about your brand; it’s up to you to help shape that conversation.

Social media can be a noisy place — we can become overwhelmed by the amount of misinformation and content can easily get lost. However, by asking employees to serve as your brand ambassadors, you’re opening the gates to a whole new level of reach, impressions and engagement.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Skaggs is the co-founder of BODDHI Branding, a creative agency with a vision to authentically and creatively construct stories to help your brand grow. Digital and social media, branding, recruitment and content strategy are all functions Chris has developed building teams, processes and strategies from the ground-up. Dedicated to giving back Chris also co-founded Leighton’s Gift, a non-profit with a mission of turning a tragedy into something positive. He also serves on the boards of a variety of different organizations. A natural storyteller, Chris’ work and experiences have been featured on CNN, Marketing Sherpa, Thrive Global, CBS Radio, Recruiter.com and Glassdoor. Get connected online, @chrislskaggs.