Your employees are key influencers

Never underestimate the power of influence that your employees can bring on LinkedIn.

Sometimes, even if your company has thousands of followers it doesn't mean that all of those followers will see the content you shared on Social Media. There are many factors that influences the success of a post such as: day of the week, time, content type, keywords, hashtags, people tagged, etc.

As responsible for the social media performance for many years I have experienced great results on organic (or paid) posts shared via employees.

Getting key employees that are active on LinkedIn and that have a great number of relevant connections to your business can positively increase your brand awareness. Connecting with peers, companies and consumers in the industry can further create an atmosphere of trust and legitimacy around your business.

By encouraging your employees to be brand advocates, you are also taking a step in the right direction and making sure that you can promote your company effectively.

The marketing budget is often limited, especially for small business, therefore using employees as influencers can leverage the exposure and lead to sales.

There were some notable findings from Social Media Today for example:

-        Brand messages reached 561% further when shared by employees versus the same messages shared via official brand social channels.

-        8x more engagement from employee-shared content than by brand channels.

-        20-50% of purchasing decisions are driven by peer-to-peer marketing

How about integrating employee advocacy into your marketing strategy? How to start?

1)     Get your employees involved

2)    Give employees access to your company’s marketing calendar

3)    Encourage employees to share updates and valuable content

4)    Send some reminders of important updates posted to engage (like, share or comment)

5)    Provide incentives to employees for participating  

Although I am emphasizing the LinkedIn channel, you can apply the above on other social media channels.

If you have other tips, feel free to share with me!