It's one thing to build a personal brand or company brand on LinkedIn; it's another to get employees on board to become advocates for the brand. Yet businesses that invest in this area are able to scale their impact and generate business growth. Before rushing in, listen to this episode to learn how you can get started and avoid some of the common pitfalls.
The key moments in this episode are:
00:00:00 - Introduction
00:01:18 - Employee Advocacy - how is it different to building a personal brand on LinkedIn?
00:05:11 - What are the benefits for the business and participants of employee advocacy?
00:12:06 - What's the biggest mistake you come across with employee advocacy launches?
00:15:07 - How do you launch a happy employee advocacy pilot?
00:20:33 - What are the measures of a successful pilot employee advocacy program?
Connect with Andrew Seel on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewseel/
How to run a happy employee advocacy pilot?
Download here -
https://www.wearetogethr.io/how-to-run-a-happy-employee-advocacy-pilot/
ABOUT MICHELLE J RAYMOND
Michelle J Raymond is an international LinkedIn B2B Growth Coach. To continue the conversation, connect with Michelle on LinkedIn and let her know you are part of the community of podcast listeners.
Connect with Michelle J Raymond on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellejraymond/
B2B Growth Co offers LinkedIn Training for teams to build personal and business brands and a LinkedIn Profile Recharge service for Founders/CEOs.
Book a free intro call to learn more - https://calendly.com/michelle-j-raymond/book-an-intro-call-15mins
Social Media for B2B Growth Podcast is a fully accessible podcast. Audio, Video, Transcript and guest details are available on our podcast website - https://socialmediaforb2bgrowthpodcast.com/
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@MichelleJRaymond
#employeeadvocacy #linkedin #b2bgrowth
TRANSCRIPT
Michelle J Raymond: [00:00:00] Welcome everybody to the LinkedIn for B2B Growth Show. I'm your host, Michelle J Raymond, and I am joined by someone who loves talking about employee advocacy as much as I do. Welcome to the show, Andrew Seel.
Andrew Seel: Hi, Michelle. Lovely to be here.
Michelle J Raymond: This is like the first time that you and I have actually had a chance to talk in person about this topic, even though we've exchanged, I don't know, a million comments backwards and forwards on LinkedIn.
So I'm excited to have this conversation and let other people listen in about a topic that I think is probably pretty near and dear to your heart, but how did you get into all things employee advocacy?
Andrew Seel: That's a great question. I've been working on the internet probably since it started actually.
My bald head showing I've been around in this for a while. I got into social media, I was actually working at AOL in The old days in the.com boom. I learned about social then when it was all about forums and chat rooms before Facebook existed.
And then I left there and started my own company around kind of content marketing and Facebook launched. I thought, wow, this is fantastic. And then, Twitter appeared and LinkedIn and everything [00:01:00] and I already got into the whole social media, so we ran and turned it into a social media agency. And then it kind of naturally evolved into advocacy and employee advocacy.
Michelle J Raymond: Now there might be some of our listeners that have heard the term employee advocacy floating around on LinkedIn.
And it's not one that I'd ever heard of until I, spent full time hours on LinkedIn. But what is employee advocacy and how's it different to people building personal brands on LinkedIn?
Andrew Seel: There are so many terms around in this space, employee advocacy, employee influence, personal branding, and you read, read people and no one quite agrees on what, what to actually call it. So to answer this, I would like to step back very slightly.
Employee Advocacy is at its heart when a brand or a company asks their employees to share content professionally or in their work space on social media.
But quite a few Employee Advocacy programs, particularly those using software to manage the activity, they ultimately focus on distributing approved content to employees for them to share. Now, I can see why this [00:02:00] works for brands. They get to amplify their messages. They're in control of what content is shared, you know, it's going to be on brand.
And then what happens is employees sign into the platform, click share and job done. Does this actually achieve anything? Do they get any reach? Do they get any engagement? Is this what employee advocacy is? And I don't think so, because I don't think employees are advertising machines.
Just because they've shared a piece of content doesn't mean it's going to get engagement or reach. It doesn't mean your sales are suddenly going to go up. Because I think what businesses actually want is they want employees who are actually already, influencial in some ways, they have some followers that engage with them.
So when they share brand content, they actually look at it, that's why companies use influencers, isn't it? They're often not going about it in the right way. And I think this is where personal branding comes in. Which is the other term you mentioned, and what employees really need to do and businesses need to empower them to do is to build their personal brand.
They need to build a network or a community of like minded individuals on social media. I actually prefer the term professional brand rather than personal brand in this context. It feels a bit more in time with what's [00:03:00] going on. You're building a community of like minded people around your professional interests, your expertise, your role.
So for me, Employee Advocacy Is best achieved by empowering your employees to build their personal professional brands and encouraging them to reach out and help people professionally, their customers, prospects, job candidates and so on.
Michelle J Raymond: Professional branding, I love that term. When I think about these programs and the clients that I've worked with people think you magically wave a wand and then all of a sudden people will just want to naturally go out there and just share just because I don't know, maybe they've had some training.
What are some of the challenges that you see come up at that very early stage?
Andrew Seel: That's a great question. I think one of the biggest challenges is actually people getting started. I think a lot of training focuses on sometimes the kind of technicalities of it all, how to write a post, how to, I don't know, set up your LinkedIn profile, which are all important parts of it.
But I think they often forget Or don't address the barriers that people have. And these are [00:04:00] more, things around, it's the fear of, people talk about imposter syndrome, but just, the fear of suddenly being in front of people, some people aren't used to it and they may be used to it on a personal level, with their friends on, you know, Instagram or something.
But when it comes to professional context, people often seize up and they just don't know what to say, or they don't know how to say it, or there's a real fear of getting it wrong. And I think people need to address those barriers to really support people through that process and really encourage them.
I think often the training is here's some training, off you go and do it. And I think it's much more about actually supporting and being with people, day in, day out, ongoing. And I've seen that, just going in as a brand and liking a post someone's written or commenting on it or, sending them some private, encouragement.
Those are the things that people, and we've worked on programs participants come back to say, Oh, thank you for that. I really appreciate that. That's the thing that made a difference or from another manager or from someone else. And I think those are the mistakes that are often made.
Michelle J Raymond: Yeah, I can vouch for that one as well. It seems to be more of a tick and flick. Yes. We got the trainer in now off you all go, [00:05:00] go forth and conquer. And the people that were already doing it just continue along on their merry way and the others slowly but surely drift off back into the distance where they feel much more comfortable, like you said.
But what are the benefits for both the business and for the participants, i. e. the employees in this case, of employee advocacy?
Andrew Seel: I think the great thing about employee advocacy is there are wins for both sides, if it's done properly, for the business and the employees. If it's working well for the business, it's an amazing opportunity to build trust and connection with customers, with prospects, with, job candidates.
The often cited Edelman trust barometer, says people trust people like them more than, say advertising or even the brand in most cases.
And employees on social media active is it is the perfect opportunity for this. But to be honest, it's more than that, I think really it's it's the opportunity for your business to be a truly connected organisation. And I mean, this kind of connected on all levels internally and [00:06:00] externally, because ultimately, employees, no longer work in silos.
They're not, in their little different units. They need to connect across the business, and customers are pretty much these days using social media to make the buying decisions before they've even looked at your website or even contacted you in any way. It's all happening before you, you get there in that sense.
And I truly believe that the trust side of it is built from, the B2B side from hearing from subject matter experts. It's not just the sales team going out there. It's hearing other voices in the organisation. That's the kind of things that build trust.
But on the other side, I think the fundamental thing, and again, probably this is a mistake sometimes people make, is that when you start an employee advocacy program, you need to focus on what's in it for the employees, because, after all, they're the ones doing all the legwork, really, aren't they?
Michelle J Raymond: I have to laugh when people say, Oh, look, they used to post and now they don't.
I go what was in it for them? And they're like, Oh, nothing really. What? So the marketing team can meet their KPI or the leadership and development team, whoever it is, what was in it for the actual [00:07:00] individual on any level? And it's not always monetary, but if they can't connect those two dots, what are you going to do when everyone's busy?
First thing you're going to throw away is the thing that's got nothing in it for you. Over the shoulder. Forget employee advocacy. So yeah, absolutely. I'm on board with that one.
Andrew Seel: It's so true. And you can see it happening so often. But, the other side of this, the big question I'm often asked is why would employees do it?
Because it is hard as you're saying to turn up week in week out and put yourself out there when it's perhaps it's not your business per se, you're not in the sales team. I haven't got these kinds of sales targets, why should you be there?
The way to ask is why wouldn't they do it really? And for me these days to be able to build your influence on social media, to build your personal professional brand, it's got so many benefits to the individual. It's around building your personal visibility that's internally and externally, especially with big companies, you can really build your visibility across the organisation, building your professional network, learning from, your peers, others, perhaps a bit ahead of you in the industry.
It just leads to opportunities. From a personal level, you know, now i'm talking [00:08:00] to you, which is fantastic. You meet so many interesting people.
I look back, when I was Younger because I think visibility is a big thing and I really wish I'd done more of this when I was younger. People have been doing it for longer than me and you think wow, they've really built something here. I just think it's so valuable.
I was chatting to a senior team member of a big bank recently, and he was moaning about other people in their business. They're really active on social and they seem to get noticed more by the management and stuff like that. And he felt, they're not even as good as me, and they're getting spotted.
I think, it's his motivation for getting out there and being seen a bit more, and it really helps.
Michelle J Raymond: And that's got to be hard in hybrid working arrangements that we've got now. Sometimes you're at home, sometimes you're at the office. These days, that ratio is probably more at home than in an office. So how do you get noticed?
And I really noticed for me personally, the power of building my own brand when I was back as an employee is that I got noticed by the head of, about five levels up. I worked in a company that had about 15, 000 employees spread around the world. And it was like all the way up the [00:09:00] food chain that knew who I was because I'd built an amazing community.
I was creating content and I literally did my best to connect with nearly as many people at that company as I possibly could. And I made sure I connected with those kinds of people and it brought me opportunities that I would otherwise have never been noticed for, in my role in a new company. And it's just brilliant.
But Andrew, there's people out there that are listening going it's great to build up the employees and then they leave. I think that fear factor comes into how many resources get given to the program, whether it's actually really going to be successful, cause it's going to be endorsed and backed by the right people.
What do you say about those business owners, management, CEOs that are sitting here listening, going, yeah, but what if we do this and they leave, what would you like to say to them?
Andrew Seel: That actually is one of the most commonest fears cited, is that well, they're being seen and other people are going to see them and they're going to poach them.
I actually think the opposite will [00:10:00] actually happen in the first instance. I think that if you are empowering your team members, if you are supporting them to really be their best selves and, share their expertise and engage in it and be good at what they're doing. I think they're much more likely to stay. I think the opposite will happen really.
On the other side of it is other prospective candidates see that you're a business where people are given this opportunity. So I think that it leads to more positive opportunities for you. But if obviously some people do leave. People move on through their career and at some point people will leave.
What will also happen is if they leave and feel positive about you they go on being advocates, they go on talking about you as a business beyond being that. So they will say I used to work in this great place and blah, blah, blah, and it's. The whole thing just feels much more positive and grown up.
I read somewhere, people treat their employees as grownups, they act like that. Give them the responsibility. Don't, Don't lock them away.
Michelle J Raymond: Again, Going back to my own experiences when I first started, I got approached with so many different jobs because I was getting that attention. But I [00:11:00] didn't leave the company because of that.
It wasn't until later on when something in the background wasn't working out for me on different levels that all of a sudden those jobs became more attractive. It wasn't the reason that I left. And maybe that's the reason that I became aware of the opportunity, but it was certainly not the reason that I left.
I think there's more to lose by not embracing this, by not supporting your team, because I think it shows a culture of distrust. And I think that's a bigger issue that you're going to have with your employees and a reason that they'll leave.
So I think before we move on to the next questions, we have to all as listeners this week, I ask you, put that fear aside, park it, put in a little neat little box to the side so that you can learn about the benefits from Andrew.
I just think that there's so much bigger than any fear could ever be. The additional reach, the additional brand awareness, the additional discovery of, lead opportunities. Attracting top talent so that you get the cream of the crop that wants to work for you. So much upside.
So we're going to go into [00:12:00] these next bits. But I also wanted to know before we jump in, before we go ahead first into these things, what's the mistake that people can avoid when it comes to the launch of employee advocacy programs?
Andrew Seel: Great question, Michelle. I think the biggest mistake people make is not actually committing budget and time to it. Now employee advocacy is a very cost effective way of marketing, but it's not free. And even if you manage it all in house, you're not using software, you're not using, an agency or content agent or something like that.
You still need to put time into it. You need time to manage it and you need to ensure there's time for your employees to actually do it because, it's only going to deliver results if you actually allow the time for it.
And we sometimes work with companies where, the management, the leaders are very keen to launch a program. Employees want to get involved. But they don't have the time discussion with employees, how long is it going to take to do it properly and when are they going to do it, because everyone's busy already in their jobs and, so often as when push comes to shove, the [00:13:00] time thing raised its head, it's deprioritised and it all falls off.
I see it time and time again, we do coaching, we run programs and that's the thing that comes up all the time. You need to have that time discussion. You need to allocate time for them to do it within their role. It shouldn't be shoved to their evenings or weekends, if they want to do that, it's fine.
But, it shouldn't be something that they're sitting going. I just don't have time to finish. I'm too busy, and if it's important, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing properly. And the second one is budget. If you want to help your team share expert content, put aside some budget to help create that content.
And I don't mean, add style brand posts using stock shop imagery, which I know is guaranteed to make their followers have a private eye roll moment. The budget to do some research, for some insight for them to share or for them to go to an event where they can share learnings, that kind of thing. Put something aside to really help them demonstrate their expertise and help them help their audience.
That's what's going to really make it successful.
Michelle J Raymond: I've watched some marketers roll their eyes and start rocking in a corner. When the [00:14:00] first thing I say to them is we're throwing pretty much all of your branding out the window because the more it looks and smells like an ad, it's just going to come across an ad no matter who posts it. And nobody talks like that. Nobody writes like that. Nobody, creates images like that personally.
So if you want to really help, we have to strip those things back. And those stock images, I'm telling people right now, do not get one of those tick all the boxes, stand around one laptop, one person of every colour at a boardroom table or some post it notes on some glass. No, let's not do that.
Andrew and I both say no, like it's a flat no on that one. No entering into discussions about this, just don't do it.
I'm all for boundaries and guidelines. I get it. You've got to protect your brands. It's the thing that is part of why your business exists and why you make the money that you do and attract the clients that you work with.
But there's also how much is too much. And, I guess that's probably a whole conversation for another podcast [00:15:00] episode altogether. Let's go onto the happy side because one of the things that I love about your content is that you talk about how do you launch a happy employee advocacy pilot?
I take that as being not people that are doing it under duress because somebody in some other team decided that it was a good idea. And then everyone got pushed under the employee advocacy bus. How do we make this experience happy for everyone? Andrew can't wait to learn this part.
Andrew Seel: Thanks, Michelle. Yeah, I'm really passionate about this actually because I think, ultimately, it's very simple in one sense, happy employees become happy advocates. It ultimately comes from the culture. If they're not happy working where you are, or as you say, if it's all been done in duress, and no one's had those time conversations, it's all quite stressful. It's gonna be much harder to get people to talk positively about your brand online.
As you mentioned, Michelle, we've created a guide around this as well. You can have a free guide you can download, which is called How to Launch a Happy Employee Advocacy Pilot. I first launched an employee advocacy program back in 2014.
And along the way I've seen ones [00:16:00] that aren't happy. I won't name any names, but some that haven't been, that haven't been too happy experiences for employees, I think. And I think that you have to focus on making this a really positive, fun experience, Really. Yes, it's got ultimately serious kind of aims, but it needs to be a fun, fun experience.
I often look to Dan Pink for some inspiration on this. I'm sure many of you come across Dan Pink. He talks about the idea of autonomy, mastery and purpose. And I think these are great starting points for developing a happy pilot, and people excited to do it.
So the autonomy one is, is a good starting point. Give your team autonomy. We talked about empowering them empower them to talk and share in their own words in their own way that feels right to them.
It comes back to the personal brand to give them the trust to build their personal brands and not make it this situation where you're so controlled and so managed that the whole thing becomes a pretty miserable experience really. They're just these, advertising machines pressing click. No one [00:17:00] wants that.
And secondly is the mastery one. Help them be great at this. There's nothing worse than plugging away and feel like you're not getting anywhere. Cause you know, it can take a while to build, build your influence on, I don't know, say LinkedIn. Don't just provide, one off training and leave them to it. It's more kind of relationship to relationship, you know, provide ongoing support. Be there to inspire them.
And I mentioned this earlier, help them for the long term. And it doesn't need to be some big ongoing training course, but it's just, little comments and advice and support and so on. And this needs to come through the organisation really from leadership and other people, colleagues supporting each other as well.
And the third thing is purpose. Ultimately, if you're not clear why you're doing it and employees aren't clear why they're doing it, it's not going to end well, really. It's a difficult one, actually, for many businesses, because if we're all honest, the reason that we're doing this, we're running this program is we want more engagement and we want more business.
We want more sales, and, there's nothing wrong with that at all. That's what pays the bills. But if people are just [00:18:00] sharing product or service information, branded content all the time, it just doesn't really work, in the main.
So I think having a purpose that gives beyond this, which gives people something to talk about, something to get excited about, the opportunity to find others who feel the same. I think this is really where employee advocacy programs can come in into their own.
Michelle J Raymond: I think that so many businesses assume that employees, everyone knows how to post. Everyone knows what to do on LinkedIn. Cause really, how hard can it be? You just type a few words and put on a picture and away you go.
And in many cases it could be that easy if you enjoy writing or you're not fearful for all of those reasons that you mentioned earlier. I have had some conversations with people recently where they haven't been active because their LinkedIn profile was rubbish. So they didn't want people to come and have a look at it. So then they wouldn't post.
There's all kinds of things that get in the way. I've had many conversations with perfectionists. I had one just today with someone that is [00:19:00] super smart, is an industry leader in their particular space. And just when it comes to LinkedIn is an overthinker, perfectionist of an art.
They want to get it exactly right and just get stuck on the wheel and then gets too hard basket. I'm busy. I'm going back to do what I'm really good at. And this happens on all different ways. There are other people have anxiety. There are people with English as a second language.
There can be all kinds of stuff going on for people, why they don't want to get active and then can be other people that are super keen that just need to be guided so that they don't go too far off the rails. I think when you trust people, I think that's the basis of what makes a happy program, like you said.
You can't go into it thinking that people are going to take advantage of the program, or, you take advantage of the employees. If there's distrust, then like you said, all those other things that you need the accountability, the training, the support network that goes on afterwards, it just falls by the wayside, very quickly in my experience, especially if the CEO is not on [00:20:00] board.
I think they hold a specific place in these programs that they have to be supportive. This can't be just something that you say belongs to some other team. Everyone's looking to you leading by example, and so you then decide how many resources, which we've said multiple times throughout this episode be it time, be it money, be it attention, like whatever it happens to be.
So many different things to consider because we're talking about people at the end of the day. No two people are alike and how you go around LinkedIn, everybody does it their own way.
I love the things that you've raised, but how do we know, or how do you measure successful pilot employee advocacy programs? How do you actually say, you know, what we've done good. Is it by the numbers of impressions or posts, or is there something more to it than that?
Andrew Seel: Another great question. This is the big one for many businesses, is it actually working? Now, I think if you're using a software platform, because, you can measure social media metrics, like engagement reach on an individual profile.
But if [00:21:00] you've got, a whole team of people doing that, it's quite hard to measure without using a employee advocacy platform. So like our platform, the together platform. From those, you're able to pull in the combined social media data and see the combined results of what everyone's doing.
So that's a great starting point. But I have to be honest, I think in the early days, we're talking about pilots here is that Often numbers are going to be a bit smaller in the early days, and if the leadership have in their head, they're going to be switching on this alternative advertising route. It might be in for a bit of a shock, in the pilot phase, in terms of the numbers aren't quite the same as the advertising, because these things take a bit of time to grow.
I look at it a bit differently, really, rather than focusing on these kind of numbers, engagement, reach and so on. In the early days, if the business can show their team, their employees the value of employee advocacy.
If they can show that there's something in this for them, those people or a big chunk of people will sign up to the program. Because this is a big one for a lot of people. Will they start to share regularly and will they start sharing quality posts?
If you come to the [00:22:00] end of the pilot and you have a set of engaged, excited people who are starting to build their personal professional brands, you're well on the way to be able to get in front of the right audiences at scale, as you move through this.
So I actually start on a kind of basic level, really, getting people to share is the most important thing, really. And then you can start looking at the metrics.
Michelle J Raymond: How long do you give to watch something like this start to take an impact? So is there a timeframe that you would recommend? Is it three months, six months, 12 months? Let's set some realistic guidelines for people here.
Andrew Seel: Yeah, that's a good one. I mean, Definitely three months is an absolute minimum. I would say longer, I'd say at least six months, really not because It would take that if everyone was active and so I think you can start building, reach and engagement reasonably quickly.
I think just the nature of because it's essentially, it's a change management situation where you're having to change a number of things in the organisation and get people to think in a slightly different way.
Things just crop up that slow it down, getting everyone booked in for the [00:23:00] training or getting everyone's profiles aligned or whatever it might be. Just allow a bit of time to, give yourself the best chance of success really. And at the beginning, it always takes a little bit longer to get started than you thought it did.
That's just the nature of these things. So I would say definitely give yourself six months, to test this.
Michelle J Raymond: That's about a number that I would say as well. I don't think three is long enough to actually see anything. And I think 12, I don't think any business would sign up for something that they weren't going to see results for 12 months. But I think six months is probably the fair assessment.
Now we've covered a lot of ground and this is your favourite topic, but if you were to leave people with one last actionable tip that they could take away from today's conversation? What would it be?
Andrew Seel: The thing that comes to mind is actually something that really holds people back from or businesses back from getting started in this at all because often the leaders or, the person who own this kind of space in the business aren't necessarily on social themselves, or they're not particularly active.
And this actually can become, in my experience, [00:24:00] quite a big barrier to doing the whole thing at all, really because, if they're not regular sharers already, they're in the same position as all the rest of the team, really.
They have the same barriers, feelings of imposter syndrome or whatever else that's holding them back and perhaps they feel even more self conscious because they feel I'm setting up this program, so therefore I should already be a big influencer and people are going to be looking at me and going, why haven't you got, a hundred likes on that post or whatever. So it's dealing with that issue, really.
So it's trying not to let that hold you back. I would recommend people start getting on LinkedIn. In this case start sharing. Don't feel self conscious about it, if the posts don't receive loads of engagement immediately, keep going and, share your journey as well. That's a good way of doing it is that talk about, what you're doing.
And this really, you mentioned, the CEO is a special place. And so I do think it's important that the leadership are, not everyone has to be active, but some of the leadership are active on social and partaking in the program and doing it. I think that's a big thing.
Yes, to summarize, get on there yourself and see what it's all about and that will help inspire people.
Michelle J Raymond: Don't be afraid to have some fun, learn as you go. [00:25:00] Like we all started somewhere. We made all the mistakes. We just kept going. That's the only difference between people like yourself and I. We started at some point, we made those mistakes and we just kept going and realised that no one else actually cared. It was just us in our own heads.
But I love what you shared there. We've had so many great actionable tips today about how people can get these employee advocacy programs up and running with happy employees, most importantly.
So I'll make sure that I share all of those details for the information that you've shared today. It will be in the show notes so that people can also reach out and connect with you on LinkedIn.
Let us know that you listened to the show, what your key takeaways were. That is why we do this so that we can actually build our communities and reach more of you. So thank you, Andrew, for all of your words of wisdom today. I really appreciate you joining the show.
Andrew Seel: Thank you so much, Michelle. It's been an absolute pleasure. It's been really lovely speaking to you in person. So thank you.
Michelle J Raymond: I know. And hopefully this is the first of many times.
So to all of our [00:26:00] listeners until next week, I appreciate you joining us. Cheers.