Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid Getting Employees Active on LinkedIn ️with Michelle J Raymond

TRANSCRIPT

Michelle J Raymond: [00:00:00] Welcome everybody to Social Media for B2B Growth Show. I'm your host, Michelle J Raymond, and this week, people, it's a bit of a public service announcement. We're going to be talking about how to avoid your employee advocacy program on LinkedIn being doomed before it even begins. I love the enthusiasm right now around businesses wanting to invest in their teams to get them active out on platforms.

I think people have finally started to recognize in the B2B space, the real opportunity that is there to position their employees as thought leaders in the industry. Now, it sounds easy. And again, I don't want to, I don't want anyone to be discouraged by the things that I'm going to share today, but I've put together my top 10 mistakes that I often see the most common ones that you can easily avoid and really set your [00:01:00] program up for success.

Now, if you are not active on LinkedIn or you want your employees active on other platforms I think these mistakes apply no matter where you are. So social media in general, there's a lot of things that come across that it doesn't matter the platform, the technical side of things will, but when it comes to getting your employees active, there are things that we've gotta do the work upfront, and that is gonna make all of the difference.

Why would you bother putting effort into employee advocacy programs? Really simple. Who doesn't want to have an enhanced brand image? The better that your company brand looks out in the world, whether that's the digital world or the real world. And these days, is there really any difference between those two?

The more that you stand out from the crowd, the more that you're known as being the top of the industry, the more that people can recall your brand. There is only upside. You are going to be getting increased engagement. If this is successful, your employees [00:02:00] will be out front and center leading conversations in the industry.

You will go from having posts that are just put out there to posts that are driving conversations. Now, LinkedIn have come out again with updates to the algorithm and they just tell us the same thing again. You want to be known for something. So pick your topic, stay in your lane. They want you to drive conversations.

Okay. That makes sense. And they want you to basically have a targeted community. All of these things I love. I love that the algorithm is going this way. They do not want your team to go viral. They want your team to be leading conversations, which is the goal of having these employees out there and active on social platforms.

You can also have an upside of improved retention and recruitment, depending which side of the fence that you're currently on. So having a great brand online that people, when they're doing their research about potentially [00:03:00] coming to work for you, you are going to get your best impression out there and they're going to see what it's really like to work with you.

Not through an ad, not through a static website, but straight from the employees. And sometimes it's what they say, and other times it's what they don't say. You want to attract the best of the best that just has a vicious cycle that goes on. Get the best employees. You have a better business.

You attract more opportunities. You win more opportunities, more revenue just makes everybody happy. And that's another benefit. Obviously, when you have your team active out here being advocates for the brand, then you can also start to see increased sales and increased opportunities for business growth.

That is the whole idea about this podcast is how do you leverage these tools like LinkedIn and social media in general for B2B growth? That's why we're here today. And of course, empowered employees, typically it's a [00:04:00] sign that they're empowered in every kind of aspects of what they do in the business.

It's reflective of culture and happy employees typically tend to stay around longer, I would imagine. And so there's so many upsides to getting this right. But my list of top 10 things and mistakes that I see probably outweighs that a little bit right now, but it's really easy for you to resolve these things.

Do the work up front and you're gonna have a really successful employee advocacy program. So let's jump into my top 10 in no particular order, but I wanted to give you the things that I see that are just so common. And the first one is the lack of objectives. When people reach out to me and they're keen and they want to get their staff active on LinkedIn.

Absolutely. I can help your business with that. That is what I do. I teach businesses how to get their teams active on [00:05:00] LinkedIn, whether it's the company brand or whether it's personal brands and how the two work together. I love doing that, but what we create together in that space for your advocates needs to align with what the objectives are within the business.

Now what we're doing on LinkedIn in this particular case should be driving outcomes towards a business outcome. If we are just getting active on the platform for the sake of it, because it sounds cool. Cause we've now got brand thought leaders and it's becoming a bit of a word that's getting thrown around.

That's not really an objective. I want to know, are you targeting particular clients? Do you want to see sales in a particular area? These are the kinds of things that you need to do the work up front and mistake number two is absolutely lack of planning. I am not a planner by nature myself.

And so I feel a little hypocritical sometimes when I, bang on about planning, [00:06:00] but it's just absolutely critical. There are people within employee advocacy programs of all different personalities. So even if you have a small group of five to 10 people, You are going to get people that want to know everything inside out before they feel comfortable.

You are going to want to give those people the information so that they don't have anything to worry about. You are going to do the work up front to know what are the goals? What are you trying to achieve? How is that aligning to those objectives that I just spoke about earlier? The work that we do up front here is the work that makes such a massive difference down the track.

It is easy to write some content, give it to your staff and ask them to post it on your behalf. Easy. Does it mean it will work? Does it mean it will help your business grow? Absolutely not. Because the reader on the other side knows that it's not authentic. [00:07:00] It looks like an ad smells like an ad most of the time.

And what do people do with ads on LinkedIn? We scroll on by that is what we do when it comes to ads on LinkedIn. Quite often the problem with this, you know, created content does not get the tone of voice of the employee. So if you meet me and I talk a certain way and I use certain language and I, basically how I would talk to you in a real life conversation doesn't match up with what's going on in the type of content, it just feels icky and people don't want that. They want to know what the employee has to say. So I'm all for helping them, coaching them, maybe providing a library. But just think about it up front, how can you support that person to find their own voice? And planning is definitely one of those things.

Now, number three, if we come into the mistake here, this is something that I think [00:08:00] if mistake number three happens and you don't do this, the whole program has very little chance of success. And I mean, a tiny bit of success. And if it is successful, it's because someone in that business is working 10 times harder than the average person to make it successful.

And what is mistake number three? It is not getting the buy in from the executive team or the leadership team. I don't care what you call it in your business. It could be the CEO or the Founder. It could be the board of directors. If you don't start at the top and get their buy in. You do not get the resources that you need.

You will not have that leadership team leading by example. And the employees in the program will look to them to say, you know what? If it's good enough for me, why aren't you doing it? But the worst thing that can happen is they look and go if they're not doing it, I'm not doing it either. [00:09:00] The other thing is that if the executives don't give buy in, they won't support it with resources.

They won't support it by acknowledging the work that these advocates are doing for the brand. And I think that is a bigger problem that you can have. And also if we flip it, cause I'm an optimist at the end of the day, is that if you can get your executives, your leadership team to jump in and be involved, that can just be when they walk past somebody in the office, that's part of the program, and they've seen the content that they say, thank you.

That they acknowledge that they saw it. And this is the thing I don't think programs have built into them enough is other people acknowledging the work that's being done. Most times when I'm talking to businesses, their employees that are being part of these programs are not being paid anything additional to take on this responsibility.

Hopefully they're volunteered and I'll get to that a [00:10:00] little bit later, but ultimately they're taking this on as additional to the work that they're paid to do. And that's a big deal, right? It's not something that comes natural to people. Most people that I work with are so fearful of LinkedIn. I don't care what your status is.

I don't care what your job title is. There is a very small percentage of people that also want to put themselves out there. The fears that go through their head, we talked about it when we wrote the LinkedIn Branding Book. The first section in our Brand Squared System is all about Mindset.

Why? Because both Michelle and I, we recognize that with all of our clients, if we don't get that mindset right up front, it all just falls over. So if you are part of a leadership team, you have to lead by example and, liking and commenting on an employee's post, goes a long way. If you're a page admin, you absolutely should have a task [00:11:00] on your list to do every day to support those employee posts.

That's a bonus tip that we have here. The other thing that can happen, a mistake number four is what we're up to is that you can often see in these programs that they're done with just the company in mind. It realistically is the company saying, Hey, we want more people to go and post our company content because we know that if our employees post, it'll probably be seen by more people.

And that's great, but who should you be focused on? I'll give you the tip, it is your target audience. Whoever they are, wherever they are, all of your actions need to have those in mind. Now you'd be quite surprised and I'm not surprised anymore, but maybe you will be. That most people, when I asked them during our sessions to write down the top 10 clients who they would love to work with and in a B2B space, often we have those dream clients that we [00:12:00] wish our business could do work with.

They don't even have that list. They can't give me that list, so we can start to do things like customer research. And it's really important that you have these things in mind, because if we go back to those earlier mistakes, like planning and not having clear objectives, how will you know when you've achieved something within this program, that success, right?

It's all well and good to lump it all in together and say, we just want to grow sales but you can't build a really targeted strategy on that. So knowing your audience, knowing who you're going after and who you want new sales from is such a game changer. And again, I shouldn't be telling people things that are going.

Oh duh, Michelle, like that makes total sense. It does, but I don't know, I'm yet to have people really come to me and say, we want to go after these customers, we need a LinkedIn strategy to help us get there. And that's when I can do my best work with these [00:13:00] businesses.

Mistake number five is over complicating things in the initial pilot. There's a lot going on when someone gets started and active on LinkedIn. Now you might have some people in your pilot program who are already active on the platform, but chances are, you've got a good percentage of people who have been just observers on the platform and now they've got to get out and start to get active.

Now, these people have a lot on their plate. Their head will be going in all kinds of places. I can't write. Should I be doing this? This is a waste of my time. And the fears will kick in. If you start over complicating things about, putting up silly restrictions. You can't write this. You can't do this.

You must use these words. You must use these images and having really tight and restrictive processes or things that are just so complicated and overwhelming that everyone's lost on what they should be doing. Start small, [00:14:00] start easy and work your way up. Now I'm not saying don't have some guardrails up.

I'm not saying don't help these people stay within some lanes to really make sure that everyone achieves what they're doing. But ultimately what I don't want to see is just a long page of rules, more and more rules about you can't do this. You can't do this. You must do this at this time on this day.

Flexibility really has to be built into some of this. And if you don't overcomplicate things and you start off small and start off simple, it really is going to set this program up for success. Why? Because you're setting the employees up for success and this will keep them engaged and wanting to continue with the program.

 Number six, and I think sometimes mistake number six is the one which is where you can end up really doomed from the beginning and that is underestimating the resources [00:15:00] required for these types of things. Whether that's somebody that's writing content or whether that is the amount of time that people need. For some businesses, you may need some technology to support you to get this program rolled out.

For smaller businesses, you may not, but here's what happens is that people think, Oh, just write a post, it's easy. Takes a couple of minutes. It takes a couple of minutes for someone that either doesn't care, uses ChatGPT and sounds like everybody else, which is not something I would encourage or advocate for, but what can happen is, if you don't give people the time to complete this, if you don't give them the support, if you aren't making this whole process manageable, then what will happen is again, people get busy.

No one's sitting around twiddling their thumbs these days. Everybody's running really lean. And here's what happens. All of a sudden I've got a choice. [00:16:00] I'm in the program. I've got a choice. Do my job, I'm getting paid for Or do this employee advocacy thing on LinkedIn, where it's just a nice to have in my mind.

Where am I going to spend my time? I'm going to spend my time where I feel most comfortable. Give people the time and resources to be successful, support them where they need support. How do you know what they need? The only way you will really understand that is to ask them. Never assume. Even when I write posts and I've been writing content on LinkedIn for coming up to a full decade soon, not that long away.

And it takes me time. Now I enjoy writing. I know my subject matter inside out. I'm always researched. I'm in communities where I'm always learning. And it's easy for me and it still takes me, some of my posts are probably half an hour. Some might be 10 minutes. Some of them take me probably an hour when we look at the research and learning that [00:17:00] I've got to do on certain things, or I might be creating a video.

And this is the thing just start off simple and really just block people's calendars is a simple way that you can give them those kind of resources. Now, this comes back to where we were getting that executive buy in to make sure we got the resources that we need. There is no point, on one hand, we're saying, give the employee advocates, give them the time.

And then their line managers are saying, no, they can't go and do that. I need them for X, Y, Z. And this is where the conflict begins. And when the conflict begins, the person stuck in the middle. Where are you going to choose keeping your boss happy or where, maybe this is where your bonuses get decided.

This is where your pay rises might get decided. Or maybe it's the person in marketing who's running this advocacy program. Which one are you going to choose? Now it's not a reflection on the [00:18:00] person that's part of the program. We just need to understand a bit of human nature because after all, these are humans in this program.

Number seven is, I'm just going to throw it out there. Mistake number seven is poor communication. What are the expectations that you have for people? And I think some of this starts up front with having a really strong Social Media Policy. And by strong, it also needs to be clear and understandable. And not just one of those things that reads like.

If you do something wrong, you're basically going to get sacked. If you do this on social media, we have every right to terminate you. When I read a lot of these social media policies, they put the fear of God into you. They are written to protect the company. And I get it from that perspective, right? If I'm the company and I'm in HR and that's my role to protect the company, I understand it.

But maybe there's two parts to these policies. [00:19:00] One, which is the in depth detail and one, which is a summary on a page, which says, you know what, these are the kinds of things that we want you to be mindful of. I've seen some people, just put it simply don't say something on LinkedIn that you wouldn't want your mom to, listen to or read or, whichever way it is.

And, that's, just a simple kind of way of looking at it, but find your version of that. Find your way that everyone is on the same wavelength. They're on the same page and they have complete understanding of the expectations of what's happening and having this in writing so that everybody's on the same page comes back to that lack of planning upfront.

If you don't do the planning, then people will either just be flapping about. They'll be overwhelmed because there's too much to do. They'll skip steps because they didn't realize that, certain points were important.

Number eight is probably important when it comes to the longevity and success of the employee advocacy [00:20:00] program, and especially getting people active on LinkedIn and social media platforms.

And mistake number eight is ignoring user feedback. Has your team put their hand up and said, you know what, I'm trying this. It doesn't work, or I don't like doing this, or I need some help with that. Listen to them. The more they feel heard, the more that you can give them the resources that people might need. And that could be investing in training.

It, you know, It kind of blows my mind that there are companies out there that are essentially expecting people to understand how to, be successful on these platforms. Now I've been using it day in, day out for 10 years. And there are some days where I'm scratching my head.

I can only imagine when someone's just getting started, what it's like. It's no fun. And again, no one wants to look like they don't know what to do. Understand what it's like for people to start new things. I'd also say that as part of your planning process and the [00:21:00] feedback process, a really amazing tip that I can give you is to make sure you understand what's in it for the employee.

How can you tie what you're doing back to what they want to achieve? When you understand these things, you can keep connecting those two dots. And that is what will keep people engaged. And I just love when employees are not just doing it for the business. It is when I see the business is supporting the employees to be successful.

There's no fear that they'll get poached. There's all the resources that they need. There's the acknowledgement and support. These are the things that will help your program to be successful.

And number nine comes around. A mistake I see is that there's a distinct lack of flexibility in these programs sometimes. I'm all for putting up those guardrails, like I said, but there will be times when you have people in your teams that don't fit within those [00:22:00] guardrails, perfectly every single time. And it's important to understand if something's not working, what can you do to change it and not just get in that fixed mindset.

And especially when the program's starting out, it's important to learn, as a business and as a group, how to communicate, like we said, to talk about what's working and what's not working. So you can have some flexibility and not just a really rigid and say, no, but we have to do it this way.

I'm not really sure you have to do it any kind of way, because if you have a look, there's 1 billion people on LinkedIn and we're all got our own style. And the more that you can help people embrace their own style, again, the more successful your program is going to be.

Number 10 is the most important thing that I can say to people on this podcast in this episode today. And probably why I wanted to do this episode so much is please mistake number 10 is do not [00:23:00] force your staff to participate in these programs.

It is a waste of money. It is stressful on them. You are better to put your resources into places where you will get a return on that investment. Now that doesn't mean because somebody says no right now, or now it's not the right timing. Doesn't mean that as time goes on and they see what the program's all about, that they won't change things.

So rather than try and get everybody involved, I recommend that you start off small, ask for some volunteers. If you don't have volunteers, then you can start having conversations and asking people what's in the way from them volunteering, you might actually discover that you've got some people within the business that are really active on other platforms.

So for instance, they might be great at making TikToks, great at making Instagrams, photos or reels or content like that. But the thought of being active on LinkedIn petrifies them. Now we can work with that, but until you have [00:24:00] conversations with people to understand what's going on for them, it will feel like you are literally dragging them kicking and screaming.

And how long do you think that lasts before everyone just says, oh it doesn't work. I don't blame you for thinking that, but I absolutely can assure you that when I'm working with my clients and we get these teams active, it is just amazing to watch and it's becoming more important, especially as competition on the platforms gets fiercer. We are seeing on LinkedIn specifically that Company Page content is not shown as much as personal posts.

So if you do not have budget for advertisement, or you don't have a huge team that can support those posts, then you really need to get a really great program up and running.

So if we were to summarize this episode and my actionable tip is definitely start small. My second tip, because I can have a second one today is [00:25:00] definitely planning upfront and being realistic with the goals that you're trying to achieve and then in the timeframes. Just because you've got lots of people active and because you've invested in training does not mean overnight they will go viral and turn into these amazing, thought leaders on LinkedIn.

Give people time and space to achieve what you set out to achieve. I've said it probably a million times, on this podcast is that platforms like LinkedIn, it is the tortoise, not the hare that wins the race.

It is the slow and steady, consistently showing up. The employees that become thought leaders, are those that are supported over the longterm. Not just a sprint upfront. That's helpful of course, but you don't want them to burn out that enthusiasm really quickly.

So for me today, I hope that's helped people. Like I said, it's something that is dear to my heart. I love helping employees get active on [00:26:00] LinkedIn. To see people go from nervous and sitting on the sidelines to be able to get them active. And that can be from not wanting to do anything at all to all of a sudden liking and commenting. And then over time, they might even do a post here and there.

Be mindful that not everyone is going to dive in the deep end. But if you can get people to move along from where they are, that's an absolute winning strategy and one that I love.

If I can ever help your B2B business get active on LinkedIn, if you're wondering, how do I work the company page and the personal posts together, that is my specialty, that is what I love. You can see, when we wrote the LinkedIn Branding Book, it's all about the power of two. How do you bring these things together?

And that's the real opportunity. Never on LinkedIn do we want to cut off the company page and brand or the personal page and brand. We want to bring them together. Those synergies that [00:27:00] come from bringing those two forces together is where the amazing results go, because you're working as a team, You've got a culture that backs that up and it's just amazing.

So this is, I think the real ticket to more sales and opportunities in 2024 in a tough market. How do you stand out? You work as a team and you just support that team to have a successful advocacy program. So on that note, until next week, I've really enjoyed this episode because I'm pretty passionate about it. So I hope you've enjoyed it too.

One quick thing, if we are not connected on LinkedIn, please come across, let me know that you enjoyed this episode. It's Michelle J Raymond, the details are always in the show notes, and this is a genuine request to come across. Connect with me so we can continue this conversation and you can get more updates like this on a daily basis.

So until the next time cheers.