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Starting an employee advocacy program is one thing. Keeping your employees engaged and sharing is another. On this episode of AMPlify, host Glenn Guadet chats with Kelly Shelton, Vice President of Marketing at Boostability. For Kelly and the Boostability team, employee advocacy was a no brainer but that doesn’t mean it came easily. They have put a lot of hard work and time into delivering valuable content and guidance to their employees that not only raises awareness of the brand but also gives something back to the employees. In his interview, Kelly shares the Boostability secrets to converting your employees into active members of your program and he discusses how to make sure everyone reaps the rewards.

Takeaways:

• Employee advocacy is not just about promoting your company.  It’s also about helping your employees to grow and learn to develop their own online brand as well as hone their marketing skills.

• Side benefit to employee engagement is the exposure to other potential employees.

• When you start an employee advocacy program don’t expect everyone to just jump on board.  IT requires a lot of hard work and time to launch a successful program but the effort doesn’t stop there. You have to bring your content forward and deliver it in a way that makes it super simple for the employees to get to.
  • Spend time on your content that you are asking your employees to share.  It needs to reflect well on them.

• You will have two different types participants –
  • The converted.  These are the more active set (daily or weekly postings and talk)
  • The convertible.  They are only occasionally active (monthly or less in their posts and rhetoric)

• Keep Engagement Up through Gamification of your employee advocacy program.
  • Monthly rewards or challenges based on points earned for each action you take like posting, commenting, sharing etc.
  • Quarterly training with incentives
  • Posters and information all over
  • Random gifts that people can talk about internally and get excited about

• KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to look at potentially to see how your employee advocacy program is doing – Engagement, shares, clicks, traffic, etc. all via reports.  These will vary based on your goals and agenda.

• Number one impactful thing that you can do is TRY IT!  Nothing is more powerful than a happy employee sharing your message.  And you won’t know if it’s the right path for you if you don’t try.

Connect with Kelly on Twitter or on LinkedIn

About Shel Holtz

Shel Holtz, ABC (Accredited Business Communicator), is director of Internal Communications at Webcor, a commercial general contractor headquartered in San Francisco. Before joining Webcor, Shel spent 21 years as principal of Holtz Communication + Technology. In addition to integrating technology into communications strategies, his expertise includes strategic communications planning, change management, organizational culture, business initiatives and communications research. Full bio