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Jason White, vice president of SEO and SMM at DragonSearch, recently joined AMP UP Your Social Media’s host Glenn Gaudet to discuss his view on employee advocacy and how it plays into overall SEO from an agency perspective.
“Marketing is owning the data and realizing the importance of connecting tools. Marketing is driving new tool adoption.”
Jason shared how he introduces clients to the concept of employee advocacy.
- Education – Start with content. Establish your bloggers and get started with a small group of advocates, preferably 20. Give a lot of feedback and coach. Start with a webinar to help them optimize their social profiles. Invest in the employees and they will invest in the program.
- Establishing your blog authors – Leverage your blog authors as part of your employee advocacy program. This will provide a jumpstart to get their content to the right people as organic reach on social media declines. Using these advocates as blog authors will build up their authority on search as more traffic is directed. As the employee gets more followers and posts you will see the brand website start to rank for employees branded terms.
- Trust – Win the trust of different groups through building out the blog and showing success. As people speak about the program excitement is built. People will start to come to you wanting to be part of the program.
Jason would love to hear from you! Connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter.
About our guest
Jason White is VP of SEO and SMM at DragonSearch. Along his journey, Jason has built a toolbox of experience in Pay Per Click, Email marketing, media buys, corporate events, and has worked both in-house and at an agency (he LOVES agency life) performing Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing. He fell into his career as an SEO and appreciates how his role evolves as the field changes because it allows him to draw upon his core skill sets, creating holistic campaigns that deliver results. A constant learner, Jason is always seeking improvement and freely shares his knowledge.
The value of a strong employee advocacy program to a brand is absolute. It places workers in the driver’s seat and allows them to advocate the brand and the workplace on social media. That said, an employee advocacy program can only work if employees indeed are willing to do their part. So how do you encourage employees to share brand content on their personal networks, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media platforms. Incentivization of employee advocacy programs has proven to be a fantastic motivator, but it should be used carefully as unregulated incentivization can actually be counterproductive.Sadly, many companies don’t know how to properly incentivize their employee advocates, causing morale and performance to plummet.Through learning from past experiences, we’ve come up with a few unique ways to keep brand ambassadors motivated.