Starting your employee advocacy efforts can be quite challenging. You need a structured approach to turn your employees into brand advocates.

This blog will walk you through the step-by-step process of creating an advocacy plan. We’ve also rounded up the top tips to help you ace your advocacy plan and the challenges (and solutions) you should know as you implement it.

Read on.

TL; DR—How to Create an Employee Advocacy Plan

We’ve listed the steps so you can have a quick overview before we discuss them further in the blog.

1. Set your goals and KPIs
2. Train your employees
3. Establish social media guidelines 
4. Find an employee advocacy software
5. Consistently monitor and refine your strategy

With these 5 steps, you can craft your employee advocacy plan.

Not sure where to start? LinkedIn is the most important social platform for prioritizing employee advocacy.

At Crackerjack Marketing, we have helped 125+ clients use their LinkedIn profiles to build connections and thought leadership. We will help you create a clear advocacy plan backed by data-driven strategies to ensure your employees’ posts drive engagement.

Partner with us and take the first step to crafting a winning LinkedIn advocacy plan.

Ready to make your employees the best LinkedIn brand champions? Connect with us today.

What is an Employee Advocacy Plan?

An employee advocacy plan is a structured strategy for helping employees promote your company’s brand, values, and products on social media.

A well-executed advocacy strategy helps your employees:

• Positively share their work experiences
• Align their messages with your brand values
• Become experts when sharing company messages

How Employee Advocacy Impacts Brand Growth?

Let’s now move on to employee advocacy benefits. 

When employees actively promote your company, it can have a lot of impact on your brand:

1. Expands Organic Reach

When employees share company content, the company can reach new audiences without spending money on paid advertising. Ultimately, organic reach can help you boost your brand awareness, trust, and credibility.

2. Boost Employees’ Loyalty

Employees actively participating in an advocacy program are 27% more likely to feel connected to their company and 15% more likely to feel connected to their co-workers. 

This leads to increased engagement and higher employee retention. When your employees are loyal and happy, they will naturally advocate for your company and build better customer relationships.

3. Builds Trust and Authenticity

Employee advocacy helps you to humanize your brand and build trust from customers and potential stakeholders. 

When your team shares thought leadership content and behind-the-scenes posts, prospects can get genuine insights into the company culture, products, and values.

4. Improves Your Brand’s Recognition

Typically, brands report increased visibility among the benefits they receive from an employee advocacy program. 

Content from your team members, like testimonials and product demos, acts as social proof.

5. Increase Lead Generation and Conversions

According to the LinkedIn statistics above, 57% of brands that engage in social marketing will likely see an increase in leads and conversions. 

The study shows that when employees share relatable company posts, their followers are more receptive, and they can generate qualified leads and shorten the sales cycle.

Considering these benefits, you should create an advocacy plan right away. But before that, let’s see what goes into an advocacy plan.

Key Components of an Effective Advocacy Plan

Here are the components of an effective strategy to get you started:

• Problem: You should know the problem you want to solve to build the foundation of your advocacy plan.
• Objectives: You must have brief statements about what you want to achieve in the short term. Your objectives should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).
• Goal (s): You should always have clear short-term and long-term goals so everyone in your company knows what you’re trying to achieve with your advocacy plan.
• Metrics: Your goals should include metrics to help you track your progress and indicate when your goals have been achieved.
• Target Audience: Your plan should identify your target audience so you can determine the best content and tactics to implement.
• Content: You need to have a compelling message for your target audience.

How to Create an Effective Employee Advocacy Plan

Let’s tie all the above components together and create a killer employee advocacy plan.

Follow these five steps:

1. Set Your Goals and KPIs

What do you want to achieve? Do you want better engagement with your prospects, improved employer branding on LinkedIn, or attract top-tier talent?

Outline your objectives for starting your program and the incentives participants will receive when they join. You should also mention specific KPIs for each objective, including social media reach and engagement rate.

2. Identify and Train Your Employees

Once you’ve set your goals, you should identify and enroll the right advocates in the program. 

You should also give them hands-on guidelines and demos that show what needs to be done. Your employer advocacy leaders should address questions early on, ensuring no hiccups upon rollout.

3. Establish Social Media Guidelines

You should establish clear corporate social media policies that outline the do’s and don’ts of your advocacy program. 

The policies should list your brand style, colors, tone of voice, company logo, and hashtags. 

4. Find an Employee Advocacy Software

Now, pick the best employee advocacy tool that suits your strategy. 

For example, choose Sociabble if you want gamification features and want to encourage your employees to submit content for approval. On the other hand, select Hootsuite Amplify if you wish to have social media management and advocacy capabilities on one platform.

5. Consistently Monitor and Refine Your Strategy

List the metrics you want to use to track your goals. They can include brand mentions, total reach, number of impressions, and conversions. 

By monitoring these metrics, you can understand the content that resonates with your audience. You can also see how your employees engage with the program and whether they see its value.

Use the insights to refine your strategy, such as adjusting your posting times or focusing on the best-performing content types.

Creating a successful advocacy plan requires consistent planning and effort. Do you need help creating one for LinkedIn? 

At Crackerjack Marketing, we can help you:

• Create an advocacy plan that aligns your employees’ LinkedIn profiles with your corporate goals.
• Craft customized content that is professional and engaging.

Reach out to us to strategize how to use your advocacy plan to build thought leadership!

Best Practices for Employee Advocacy Success

It’s not enough to create an advocacy plan and forget about it.

These best practices will ensure you run your program successfully:

1. Encourage Authenticity in Content: Encourage your employees to create engaging company content without sounding sales-y. There should be a balance between crafting relevant posts and injecting some personality.
2. Get Regular Feedback: Use channels like surveys and polls where your employees can share feedback and ask questions. Use these insights to improve your advocacy program.
3. Create a Positive Company Culture: You should foster an environment where your employees feel they belong and trust you. This will motivate your team to share their positive experiences with your company. 
4. Recognize and Reward Employees: By using rewards and incentives, you can gamify the advocacy process to keep your employees engaged. For example, acknowledge your team’s contributions using public shoutouts.
5. Have a Content Plan: You should have a content calendar to maintain regular postings. You can incorporate different content types, such as photos, videos, blogs, employee spotlights, and company news.

As you implement these best practices, remember that you might encounter some common barriers. Below, we’ll show you how to overcome them.

Common Challenges in Employee Advocacy and How to Overcome Them

Here are some common hurdles you might face when implementing an employee advocacy plan:

Legal Repercussions

If you work in an industry like law or healthcare, it’s challenging to ensure employees don’t share content that doesn’t comply with industry regulations. Ultimately, this might tarnish your brand, or you could face fines and legal action.

Solution: Pre-approve content, ensuring it complies with your industry guidelines.

Crafting the Right Content

Curating quality, relevant content for your employees to share regularly can be challenging. It can also be challenging for them to deliver company content authentically.

Solution: Implement simple training to empower your team members to create impactful content. Alternatively, create and share pre-approved content.

Reluctance to Embrace Advocacy

Some employees don’t want to share work-related content on their social media channels. They can also be reluctant to use new advocacy tools instead of traditional communication tools.

Solution: Establish an excellent company culture and show your team how employee advocacy can help them build their personal brand.

Lack of Motivation from Employees

A common challenge is when your employee engagement declines. For example, there might be a drop in the posts your team shares, and your team might not engage in the comments their posts receive.

Solution: Use gamification to boost your employees’ participation and incorporate rewards to motivate them.

Misaligned or Inconsistent Messaging

Another challenge is creating and sharing content that doesn’t align with an employee’s expertise or creating posts that don’t resonate with a specific audience. Besides, your employees might share inconsistent brand messages, confusing prospects about your brand’s offerings and values.

Solution: Encourage your team to personalize company content for their specific audience. Also, share your corporate social media policy to ensure all the messages align with your brand identity.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) 

Here are all the common questions about employee advocacy program plans answered:

What Platforms Are Best for Employee Advocacy?

Check out our top 3 employee advocacy platforms:

1. Oktopost: Best for B2B businesses to grow their social presence.
2. Haiilo: Best as a social intranet advocacy tool that aligns communication of the entire workforce.
3. Sociabble: Best as an all-in-one solution for employee engagement, fostering internal communications, and enhancing employee advocacy.

What Types of Content Work Best for Employee Advocacy?

These types of content work best for employee advocacy:

• Fun content, like life at your company
• Company news and industry news
• Product-focused content
• Thought leadership blogs
• Job postings

Can Employee Advocacy Impact Recruitment Efforts?

Absolutely!

Employee advocacy allows team members to authentically share their experiences, promoting your company’s culture and values. Ultimately, it can attract potential candidates. 

Employees also have the potential to engage a global audience and appeal to diverse talents.

Conclusion

As we’ve seen, an employee advocacy plan is a powerful tactic that you should leverage. Start by setting clear goals, selecting and guiding your employees, and establishing social media guidelines. Also, remember to choose an employee advocacy tool and refine your strategy.

While the benefits of advocacy for brand growth are clear, some challenges can prevent you from rolling out your plan. So, make sure to apply the solutions we’ve listed.

Interested in crafting an advocacy plan but unsure where to begin?

Let’s start with LinkedIn. We can help you develop a strategic plan so your team knows when and how to share engaging content. We can also create ready-to-share LinkedIn content that positions your executives and corporate teams as thought leaders.

Let’s talk and discuss how to create a LinkedIn advocacy plan that drives real impact.