If you’re reading this, you already know that social media presence and activation are important to your business’s success.
Let’s face it - we all check social media in some way shape or form. Need an address? Facebook probably has it. Looking for a vendor recommendation? LinkedIn has you covered. Thinking of redecorating your office? Hello TikTok and Pinterest!
And while some brands are social-famous (we see you Wendy’s, National Geographic, and BarkBox), most of us are not. Dream-worthy budgets and amazing filters aside, it's all part of a bigger, broader strategy to gain reach, awareness, and engagement. And their tactics can be replicated by businesses big and small. Let’s take a look at 10 ways you can leverage your employee advocacy platform to help grow your social media reach.
1. Get Executive Buy-in
An employee advocacy program needs executive buy-in. When your program incorporates voices from the C-suite, it has a dual benefit - employees are compelled to follow in their footsteps and audiences like to hear from the C-suite, driving authority. Plus, when the C-suite is engaged, it tends to drive followers, thereby increasing engagement and reach. Think about it - people want to hear what many executives have to say so give the people what they want.
2. Focus Your Efforts on the Right Places
Have you done a deep-dive analysis of who your audience is? And I’m not talking about those edge cases, the people who kinda fit your ideal customer profile and are willing to buy. I’m talking about the ride-or-die audience – the ones that know, unequivocally, that your product or solution moves mountains for them and it's considered a ‘must have’ in their business.
Those are your people. Where do those people live, breathe, gain information, research, and engage? This is where you need to focus your attention. When you speak to the problem you solve, in an arena where others have the same problem, people start taking action. They engage with you, they point others in your direction, and you connect with all the right people. All else may drive some engagement - the edge cases - but fall flatter than engaging where your people truly are.
This holds true with your employee advocacy efforts. Drive your team right to the posts on social media they can engage with. Give your Members content they want to share with their network and where it makes sense to share it. Give them opportunities to engage and be engaged with. Not only will it boost their personal brands, but your employees also love acknowledgment both from your company and their networks.
3. Be Human
Yes, I see the irony of being human with an employee advocacy program that helps you scale your social media presence via automated tasks but hear me out.
Say you came across this post on LinkedIn.
Say your company also happened to have just released a study that addresses this exact topic and it's jam-packed with stats that can add some real value here. Using your GaggleAMP platform, you can grab the link to this post, pop it in GaggleAMP using the ‘Post Comment’ activity, and the appropriate person can provide a comment on the post.
With the ‘LinkedIn Post Comment’ activity, it's done entirely in the employee’s voice, just like if they found the post on their own and answered it.
Check this out in action 👇
And don’t forget, give to get. You can’t just sprinkle your content into the world and expect everyone to fall in love with it. You need to engage and comment on other people's content, too. Just be yourself and encourage Members of your program to share openly.
4. Hello, Evergreen Content
Evergreen content is content that is accurate, timeless, and easily sliced and diced into other content, like email, social media, or paid promotions. Since evergreen content is not time-bound, trendy, or seasonal, it’s content that is always available to promote within your employee advocacy efforts.
Evergreen content also allows teams to work smarter, not harder. It takes time to write amazing content and it deserves to be regularly promoted and revisited. With really great evergreen content, different teams and business units can share their spin on how that content would benefit their audience. Remember, focus on the value of the audience it is served to. It goes a long way.
Take for example this LinkedIn post from Intercom.
The company chose to share a piece of evergreen content that aligned with a use-case of its software. But, this piece of content can also be shared by the customer success team with an angle of how they solved an inappropriate conversation. Likewise, their sales department might take an angle on how their product solves this uncomfortable position.
A good evergreen piece of content can be an immense staple for your employee advocacy efforts and reshared often.
5. Learn Your Best Performing Content
There’s nothing quite as satisfying as seeing content you worked really hard on succeeding. Your first ‘view and like’ might just make you a little excited like Bob here, but it really does pay off to understand your best-performing content so you can do more of it.
The content you serve should speak to your audience and they’ll reward your efforts with a like, a share, a comment, and hopefully the coveted follow. Plus, when running it alongside your employee advocacy program, it tells you which social networks give you the biggest bang for your buck and which activities are most popular with your Members.
Gaggle Managers can see the details of Activities they’ve sent to the Gaggle, by platform, to evaluate Member engagement, reach metrics, and activity spread by activity completion, all within the Activity Summary Report on GaggleAMP.
6. Post the Right Types of Content
Not only does learning about your best-performing content matter, it also matters to post the right types of content. In fact, jumping on a bandwagon and promoting the wrong types of content can be devastating, ruin your brand perception, and anger your audience, all of which detract from your goals.
As a matter of good practice, brands generally should avoid:
- Political content
- Overly promotional content
- Jumping on trends or viral content that is off-brand
- Negating hashtag research or correcting grammar issues
- Posing the same exact content on every network
Sure, it may be tempting to skip a few steps but when you do, you might find you’re committing a major social gaffe, turning away even your biggest advocates. Don’t believe me? Ask Celeb Boutique after their #Aurora hashtag incident, or that time DiGgornio advertised their pizza on a hashtag about domestic violence.And while these are particularly cringe-worthy incidents, they’re not alone. Not everyone can be the Wendy’s account where the occasional burn gets praise. Do your research and take the time to ensure the content promoted by your company is accurate, just, and well executed. It will save you time and face in the long-run.
Did you schedule something in your Gaggle you need to rescind? You can remove an activity from the Member view so that it is no longer able to be performed. Further, a Gaggle Manager can stop all Activities from being performed at any time by choosing ‘Pause Gaggle for 24 Hours’ under the Gaggle Settings tab in the Manager view.
7. Focus on Helping, Not Selling
Think about that last time you needed to do something and how you learned how to do it or research it. Maybe you turned to YouTube or TikTok to figure out how to do a home renovation project or a complicated task at work. Or Twitter, Facebook, or (gasp) even Google to get the answers to a question, like ‘What is Employee Advocacy?’ All of these methods are simply seeking answers to a question.
When you focus on helping, not selling, people are more attuned to your message. No one really wants to feel like they are being sold or pitched to, but are very receptive to help and solve a problem or question they have. Plus, when your content is helpful, they are more willing to engage with you and share your praise with others.In an excellent example, Kathleen Norton is the face behind the TikTok account Miss.Excel. If you have ever had a question about Excel, she likely has a tutorial on it, and while her website clearly sells an Excel course, her TikTok content does not. It’s all about helping and it shows, amassing over 843k followers and almost two million likes to her content!
8. Collaborate With and Tag Others
Tagging those you collaborate with is vital to a healthy social media presence. It helps gain coverage of your message while building an audience for your product or service, thus growing your social reach.
Some instances where it makes sense to tag others on social media might be a co-branded webinar or training, a sponsorship or promoted post or speakership, or even when they have been mentioned in the content you are sharing. Just be sure to use the right tag and use it only for relevant, helpful content.
This not only captures the attention of the company and person tagged but also that of their audiences. And considering many of our social networks, especially on LinkedIn, are made up of people like ourselves, there is a pretty good chance that someone in that collaborative network might see your message and have it resonate with them, too.
9. Stay Active
Social media can be a labor of love but it is absolutely a two-way street. Staying active and consistent on your social networks shows your commitment to building your community. But it’s more than just posting on your social media – you still need to be social on social media.
Comment on other people's posts. Share other people's content. Engage in a poll, share your perspective, tag others that can help shed light on a subject you can’t. Engage often and meaningfully.
Did you know that GaggleAMP has over 50 different activities to serve your Members? It makes engaging and staying connected on social media a breeze. Learn all about our activities in our Knowledge Base.
10. Ask for Engagement
When in doubt, simply ask for engagement. A like, a comment, a retweet - they all increase visibility in your network as well as in the networks of those who engage. It doesn't have to be complicated either and can be a great way to also stay active yourself.
Asking for engagement on a post like this might open your eyes to new connections and also start engagement in your comments section.
Likewise, a comment can help drive engagement by driving more eyes to it, so the next time you see someone with a job posting, give it a little nudge. Comment on the post or share it with your network – it certainly helps broaden your exposure.
If you need some help growing our social media reach using GaggleAMP, or even some advice on playbooks to run for different networks or departments, our customer success team is always here to help.