How to Harness Employee Advocacy to Enhance Employer Branding

For employees to share their positive experiences in the company, you have to start from within. Because when your workforces love the culture, they will talk about you — unpromoted.

So, your first focus should be to:

Employee advocacy begins with the hiring process. A well-structured hiring and onboarding experience helps new employees feel informed, engaged, and connected from the start.

Leverage an email sequence software to build a supportive email funnel delivering key information at the right time—guiding candidates through the hiring stages, sharing pre-boarding materials, and introducing company values before their first day.

These emails ensure consistency, reducing uncertainty and helping new hires integrate smoothly into the workplace. When employees experience a clear, organized onboarding process, they are more likely to feel positive about their workplace, increasing their willingness to advocate for the company in their professional networks.

Conduct surveys, host town hall meetings, and set up anonymous feedback channels to understand employee engagement within the company.

The surveys will also unveil issues. Maybe your team expects a better work-life balance or career growth opportunities. Work on improving these before launching your Employee Advocacy program.

Leadership buy-in is vital for any company-wide initiatives. The visible involvement of senior leaders directly impacts participation and commitment at all levels.

Encourage the authority figures to share their perspective. Even better if executives could share employee achievements and employee-generated content online.

Boost employee engagement and morale before launching the advocacy programs. Start mentorship programs and recognition initiatives. Galvanize your workforce to share their experiences and celebrate milestones internally through company newsletters and dedicated Slack channels.

Also, incentivize employee referral within the company. Use recruiting software to streamline the referral process. This will allow your employees to easily refer candidates, track their progress in the program, and earn incentives. The result: motivated employees who want to advocate for the company and open positions, thus enhancing both your employer brand and talent pipeline.

All the above steps will set the foundation for positive external storytelling when your employees take it to their near circles and social media.

However, strengthening your employer brand is at the forefront. A well-executed employee advocacy program can do much more than just that for your company. Therefore, begin with a clear vision of what you want to accomplish.

For example, your objectives can be:

• Higher employee engagement
• Driving more traffic to your website
• Boosting sales through employees

With the aim clear, flesh them out as SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound). More importantly, the program should be planned on a small scale and then expanded. This will bring the initial errors in the program or company to light. Thus, you can quickly fix them before rolling out the second (scaled) phase of the program.

Ideally the employee advocacy program should include everyone—which it eventually will. However, it’s best to choose the right ambassadors in the beginning. These will be the employees (or departments) you trust to share a positive and authentic brand messaging.

Some initial ambassadors based on your program can be the following team:

• Marketing and communication
• Sales
• Human resources

You can also ask for volunteers to become your most active ambassadors. This will let you diversify the company ambassadors. Who knows—you might find the most interesting voices in the most unexpected places.

With the ambassadors shortlisted, it’s time to train them. Obviously, their opinions and takes have to be authentic. However, it’s better if they understand the purpose of your new advocacy program.

Plus, you have to equip them with the right tools and confidence. However, instead of overwhelming them with rigid rules, make the process easy and engaging.

Train your employees through branded virtual training sessions. Use embedded video meeting SDK to host the on-brand sessions within your internal platforms. This will also give you room for:

• Live demonstrations
• Interactive Q&A
• Breakout rooms for hands-on learning
• On-demand access

Compelling content is at the core of employee advocacy. With a content strategy, your ambassadors will always have something unique and valuable to share without it feeling like extra work.

Therefore, plan a content calendar with evergreen content. Preload them in your internal content library in different forms—articles, videos, case studies, and more.

A brilliant way is to maintain a “Best of the Month” section to feature standout company updates. This will give your employees thought-out ideas on what to share.

Add 3-5 new content pieces per week to ensure the content is relevant. However, don’t pressure your employees to post every day. Instead, encourage organic posting. Even better if you can get them to co-author blog posts or contribute to newsletters.

Great work in setting your employee advocacy program in motion! But, to ensure it’s actually impacting your employer brands, you have to consistently measure and improve. More than that, the program will provide you with in-depth analytics to monitor.

So, here are five primary factors you can monitor:

• Employee participation: Employee invited vs. joined, active employees, frequency of involvement over time.
• Content performance: Most-shared content types, engagement levels (likes, comments, and discussions sparked), and growth in brand mention and social shares
• Brand reach: post impressions, increased social media followers, and surge in brand’s direct searches
• Referral traffic and conversions: website traffic from employee-shared links, increase in job applications, and growth in sales leads

Earned Media Value, or EMV, is another factor to estimate the financial worth of the organic exposure your brand receives through employee advocacy. By calculating, you can demonstrate the big bucks your programs are bringing in. Thus making it easier to gain leadership support for expanding the program.

An employee advocacy program needs a lot of planning and execution. Plus, it takes time. From defining the goals and choosing the ambassadors to training the employees and tracking results, it’s a long process that needs patience to grow.

However, once set in motion, the advocacy program will be one of the best things you can do for your employer brand. Add all the other benefits you’ll get from the program (like improved employee engagement, brand reach, and sales) and you’re in for a ride to success!

So, give the program time to run and stick. The positive returns will soon start pouring in.