Empowering Employees to be Company Advocates on LinkedIn

In our digital world, we are all in a position to be considered thought leaders. That’s why it’s so important that we all become aware of and share in the responsibility of using our social voices as professionally and respectfully as possible.

This is particularly important when it comes to LinkedIn, the most prominent social media platform for professional networking. LinkedIn is where we go to post or search jobs, as well as connect with, share content with and follow content being shared by a range of people and other companies, including current and potential clients, past and present work colleagues and contacts, business partners, industry bodies, prospective employees, professional groups and past and future employers.

By connecting our current employer to our individual LinkedIn accounts, we are essentially taking on the responsibility of representing the company we work for. This means that our actions on LinkedIn should be in line with the company’s values. That’s why many companies share LinkedIn guidelines for employees or employee advocacy best practices.

Keeping these values, guidelines and best practices front of mind when interacting on LinkedIn will mean you are engaging with the platform in a way that has positive impacts on both your individual networking and career development, as well as the social profile of your company.

The benefits for the employer

It is common knowledge that flying under the social radar is not part of a good business strategy. A strong presence on LinkedIn is vitally important, with the well proven key benefits being:

• Business development – generate direct leads, generate greater share of voice
• Client relations/customer service – share engaging content that resonates with clients, increase client referrals, provide another communication channel for clients
• Human resources – establish the company as an employer of choice, attract new employees
• Public relations and issues management – build meaningful relationships with opinion makers and influencers, manage issues and crises.

But companies must be aware that they cannot go it alone in achieving these benefits through their corporate LinkedIn account only. In fact, they will see more benefits sooner if they acknowledge and act on the fact that their employees’ advocacy on LinkedIn is central to their success.

The power of the individual on LinkedIn 

In a competitive and currently highly dispersed business environment, employee advocacy on LinkedIn is important for every company. This is because LinkedIn has found that content shared by employees has 2x higher engagement versus when shared by a company. It also found that salespeople who regularly share content are 45% more likely to exceed quota, and enterprises that are social are 58% more likely to attract top talent and 20% more likely to retain them.

Whether your organization employs 10 individuals or a team of thousands, it’s important to understand the collective value that these people bring to your brand’s identity, reach and success.

Strategies for making employees a company’s best social advocate

While many employers are aware of the power of their employees’ voices on LinkedIn, often it can be a challenge for companies to work out how to get employees regularly engaged on LinkedIn.

There are a number of possible approaches – from the simple and low cost, through to the more advanced and higher cost. Here are a few examples:

• Ask your employees to schedule some time in their calendars once a week for 10 or 15 minutes so they are encouraged to stay active on LinkedIn as part of their role.
• Recruit some LinkedIn champions to encourage and support other employees to get active on LinkedIn.
• Share some suggested LinkedIn copy and images with employees via email or another internal communication platform on a weekly or fortnightly basis, so they can simply copy and paste to their own LinkedIn.
• Have an internal or external marketing team take over select company executives’ LinkedIn accounts to ensure these often well-connected but busy employees stay active and engaged on LinkedIn.
• Incentivise employees to be as active as possible on LinkedIn through company recognition or prizes for the employee(s) who shared the most or received the most responses to their posts.
• Invest in a platform such as Hootsuite Amplify to make it easier than ever for your employees to access approved posts and share them with their LinkedIn networks.
• Consider a gamification platform that motivates employees to compete with each other on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is an incredibly powerful tool for your business if you know how to leverage it. If you would like to learn more about how to turn your employees into motivated LinkedIn advocates, contact Mulberry.

 

Corinne Nolte is Communications Director – Technology at Mulberry Marketing Communications, an award-winning full-service B2B communications agency based in Chicago, London and Australia. She is committed to delivering strong communications strategy, content, thought leadership positioning, media relations and digital marketing for B2B clients.