Employee Advocacy vs Engagement Pods: What’s Real on LinkedIn?

A fun topic today is employee advocacy really just an engagement

pod with a company logo on it?

G'Day everyone.

It's Michelle J Raymond, and I hope that you're all having a wonderful

week wherever you are in the world.

And this week, listeners, we're gonna have a bit of fun with this one, and it

was sparked by a LinkedIn post that I saw that really grabbed my attention.

Now the person has since blocked me.

Like I don't even know what's going on there.

I thought we were just having a backwards and forwards

conversation, but here we are.

So I thought we would continue the conversation here on the podcast.

So what was the post?

The post was essentially capturing some information that the person had

seen where a brand was going on, about how great their marketing strategy

was because essentially what they did was got their team when they did a

post, drop it in a Slack channel, and then the whole idea was all the other

employees would then swarm to that post and then like, and engage and comment.

Now on the surface that sounds like employee advocacy to me, but the person

was most upset because they said, this isn't good marketing, that we should

actually leave it up to the audience to decide whether the content is good or not.

So IE put the post out there.

See what the audience reacts, without the help of all your

teammates and go from there.

Now there's pros and cons to everything in life, and I thought

it would be a bit of fun to have this discussion in today's episode.

When we get to the end of the episode, I'd love to hear from you.

What do you think?

Is this a great marketing strategy?

Is it employee advocacy?

Or is it an engagement pod with a company logo on it?

Let's get into this right after this quick word from our podcast sponsors, Metricool.

Let's start with what I think an engagement pod is, and I think that's a

great place to start, 'cause not everybody knows what they are or that they exist.

But essentially for me, an engagement pod is a group of people most likely going to

be strangers that have no real relevance.

Set up a reciprocal arrangement, normally these are paid groups

that they wanna be a part of.

Where each time you do a post, they will engage with your post.

And these are done on scales of anywhere from small groups.

It could be a group of friends, say 10 or so people all the way up to

manufactured pods that are closer to hundreds, even thousands of people

that pay to be a part of these groups.

And it's all designed around gaming the algorithm.

So the algorithm typically in the past has always loved that if your

post goes live, the more people that engage quicker the more that

it would show it to other people.

'cause it seemed like that post was popular and resonating.

Now I'm gonna park it to the side right now that LinkedIn is wiser to this.

All the social platforms are, and they have things in place where this isn't as

effective as what it was historically.

But let's just park that idea just for a minute.

. But ultimately, when we're talking about engagement pod behaviour,

what they're after is reach.

So they don't care about relevancy.

It's about how can I look as popular as possible so that I don't have to deal

with the fact that as I'm sitting here, my post has got zero likes and the next

post that I saw in my feed, they've got hundreds, they've got 50, they've

got 80, like whatever the numbers are.

Like let's be clear.

When you're starting out on LinkedIn, it feels awful.

So if you get an invite from somebody to say, come and join my community.

We all support each other.

Doesn't that sound amazing?

Like of course, like I'm on team community, don't get me

wrong, but engagement pods are really just run for money.

The thing that you need to understand listeners, is that some of those

let's call them famous, or are they infamous, faces that you see on

LinkedIn that consistently get hundreds of likes every single post without

fail, with the same people turning up?

What do you know?

It's a sure sign that this is probably linked to an engagement

pod of some description.

Now, I don't care what names they call 'em, you can come up with a fancy name.

The idea behind them is exactly the same.

So if that's an engagement pod, what is employee advocacy meant to be?

Because I think that's important that we have a look at that as well.

'cause that could also be a term that some of you aren't familiar with.

So think about employee advocacy like within any one company, the idea is

that you would get your employees out there and active on the platform,

posting content around the brand, or topics related to the brand, but

they're adding their own perspective.

And also, at the end of the day, representing the company brand.

And the reason that employee advocacy is something that I am really on

board with is because we know when it comes to platforms like LinkedIn,

organic reach on the company page is down in the minimal percents

versus posting on personal profiles.

That's where the connections are.

That's where community is built and that's where the relationships can

be formed, and ultimately that's what we hope will be is the answer to

getting more business from LinkedIn.

That's the whole point of it.

So it's more about thought leadership, allegedly, and not just engagement.

So how can your brand and your employees lead conversations in the industry?

But I think there's a really uncomfortable question that comes up when we talk about

employee advocacy and this person's post that I genuinely wanted to know where

the line would be drawn between teammates helping each other, which we would expect

within a business as part of the culture anyway, versus engagement pod behaviour.

Like what is the difference?

And I think the question that we need to have a look at, is if the goal of your

employee advocacy team is just to get everybody to go and like the posts, that

looks a little bit suspicious to me.

So let's take this to the next step and have a look at how this

actually played out in this example.

I've got a question for you.

If your employee advocacy program is basically built, drop a link to the post

in the Slack channel and you can insert whatever tool you like to use instead

of Slack and everybody go and like it.

Is that really advocacy.

Or is it just an internal engagement pod?

And I want to, before we go past this, just acknowledge the reality

of what's going on for businesses.

With organic reach being lower, I actually do think that you need some

level of coordination within the business.

I don't think in 2026, and I see it with my clients, that you can have

everybody win all running off by themselves, like LinkedIn is a team sport.

I'm on the record saying that over and over.

You know how I feel about the Power of Two, it's business brands and

employee brands working together.

And I don't think that just 'cause teams work together that automatically,

that means manipulation, which is kind of what this person was implying.

And I could see where they're coming from and to be fair if that's your only

part of the strategy is like, and comment on a link that you've been given, I

can see where the person's coming from and I actually agreed with them and

I a little bit bummed that we didn't get to continue that conversation.

Where does the line get drawn between what's just engagement pod behaviour,

liking and commenting for the sake of it, versus what employee advocacy really is.

Listeners, this is where I draw the line on the difference between the

two, and I would love to hear from you.

Where would you draw the line?

And for me, I think it really comes back down to the intent behind the behaviour.

When you join an engagement pod, which hopefully after listening to this, you

run the other way, and certainly, you know, we are not aligned in our values.

If you do wanna join one.

It's all about manufactured engagement or forced engagement.

You pay, you have to do this, and quite often we'll see generic comments, or these

days even worse, those AI comments like, can we not I've had enough of those, even

more than generic, you know, great posts.

Thanks for sharing that type of stuff.

They never add any real value and the conversation is pretty

limited and you can tell because it's not around a topic, right?

And LinkedIn's new feed is designed and built around topic alignment.

So engagement pods of people from all over the world in all different

industries for unrelated topics is really not going to be very helpful.

So what's the flip side to this?

If we are looking at intent.

Well, I love the idea of employees amplifying the brand.

It takes a lot to get an employee to do this.

I don't care even how easy people make it out, that hey, just drop the link and

everyone's gonna run over and engage.

Like, no, it is not that simple.

I've worked with too many people and too many businesses to know

that that's not as simple as it is.

I think the difference then becomes the thoughtfulness or the intent as well

behind the comments that people leave.

Are they adding to the conversation?

Are they sharing their experiences?

Are they finding a way to get involved that actually moves that

conversation forward rather than just commenting for commenting sake..

And I think, you know, it does for me really come back to, is it a real

discussion and is it real expertise, not just something that's manufactured by AI?

So if I had to draw the difference behind the, the two things for me,

it's definitely, one about intent, two about authenticity and three, I think

engagement pods are about, you know, gaming as opposed to a well run employee

advocacy program is about distribution.

How do you get good content seen by more people that would

be interested in that topic?

This is something that I know the line is gonna be different for everybody, and some

of you might say, you know, on the surface it doesn't seem like any difference.

For me it's about intent.

So drop it in the comments, let me know.

How do you draw the line?

What things are you gonna factor in?

If I use an employee advocacy tool, does that automatically

make it employee advocacy?

Or is it the behaviours that we're judging?

I don't know.

I'd really want to have this conversation 'cause I think it's an important one.

And as you know, I have in my headline over on LinkedIn Company Page Led

Growth Scaled with Employee Advocacy.

So I'm a big fan of this, but definitely for the distribution and not for gaming.

We have zoomed right in on the difference between engagement pods and

employee advocacy, but I want you to zoom out a little with me right now

and have a look at the bigger picture.

When I talk about the Power of Two and that is company pages and employees

working together for those greater business goals, whether that's

brand awareness, whether it is new leads, whether it is signups for

your newsletter, like I don't care what the thing is, but I absolutely

believe that the goal of employee advocacy is not likes and not comments.

It is visibility.

It is credibility.

It is genuine conversations, and it's those sales relationships

at the end of the day.

And I like to look at it, that when you get this right and support people to want

to go out there and put themselves out there and create content, and you create

a culture and an environment where your teammates want to support you while you

do that, then what happens is you actually naturally get a great conversation and

people that actually want to engage.

When people do it willingly, and I'm not talking in the beginning where

it's a little bit weird for everyone and there's maybe incentives in place.

I think that's a smart move because it is a big deal to get people

to put themselves out there.

And so I'm not anti that side of things, but genuinely I want them to

feel like they wanna be a part of it, not that they have to be a part of it.

A quick test for you to figure out the impact of these programs.

If your employee advocacy program disappeared tomorrow, would anyone

outside your company actually notice?

And if the answer is no, then it might just be an engagement pod with payroll.

Yeah, let's sit with that one for a minute.

And it comes back again to why is the company doing this?

What is the intent behind the company?

Are they forcing people to be a part of this?

Guilting, shaming, uh, you know, all kinds of, behaviours that

ultimately make people feel forced that they have to be a part of this.

And if it's only your team that's engaging in posts and not anyone outside of that

circle, then you have a problem as well.

So I do go back to the original post that I can't see anymore and

I can't link to, unfortunately, 'cause I'm blocked as I shared.

But I actually genuinely believe that there was an important point in that

post, that if you don't let people outside of your employees engage, or

they feel overwhelmed or feel like it's just a party for your team and they stay

back, then that can be equally damaging.

And I know it doesn't look great because you don't get as many likes and

comments and impressions potentially.

But sometimes we have to think, why are we even doing this?

And if the answer is for your audience and being in service of your audience,

which is what I will always come back to, then that's the most important thing.

So measure who else is getting involved in the conversation.

Listeners, as we wrap up today's episode, I'm gonna leave you with my final

thought on where I sit with this one.

Helping your colleagues to amplify their good ideas isn't gaming LinkedIn,

so for me, it's not an engagement pod, but I also challenge you to take a look

and see are the only people engaging with this content, your coworkers?

If the answer is?

Yes.

You might wanna ask a few more questions.

Until next week, cheers.