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Employee advocacy: when employees tell the company’s story
Employee advocacy is the strategy through which employees spontaneously promote their company, brand and corporate culture through their personal social channels, above all LinkedIn, and their own networks of contacts. It works when the desire to share comes from the people themselves.
On Friday evening, after the end-of-quarter event, an analyst opens LinkedIn and writes three lines about the day: the team, the project presented, the mood in the room. She posts, tags two colleagues and puts her phone away. No one asked her to do it.
That post reaches a circle built over years of work: former colleagues, university classmates, clients, recruiters, industry professionals who follow her because they know her. The company enters their conversations through the voice of a person they trust.
Promotion that starts with people
People who work at a company know its products, its methods, its colleagues. When they are proud of what they do, they talk about it: a milestone reached, a project delivered, a training day, a new member of the team. They do it from their own profile, in their own voice, in front of their own network.
This spontaneity is the heart of employee advocacy. The employee chooses the moment, the topic and the words, and their story carries a kind of testimony that institutional communication struggles to produce: that of someone who lives that work every day.
Personal networks as a channel
Everyone has a network built over time, made up of relationships of different kinds. A post published by someone who works at the company enters that network with the trust that comes with personal connection. The brand appears inside professional conversations already under way: a former colleague’s comment, a client’s question, a private message from someone curious about the team.
For the company, this means a distributed presence, made up of many profiles and many points of view that tell a single culture. Each person shows a different part of it: the engineer, the HR manager, the salesperson, the intern on her first project.
What it means for the company
Spontaneity grows where people work well. Those who have an environment they are proud of post naturally, and the company culture, the projects pursued with care and the respect for everyone’s skills provide the material for the posts.
The company’s task starts here: building a workplace worth talking about and welcoming those who talk about it, with a comment, a share from the company page, a thank-you.
In short, when people are happy with where they work, they say so. Employee advocacy starts there.
What is employee advocacy?
It is the strategy through which employees spontaneously promote their company, brand and corporate culture through their personal social channels, above all LinkedIn, and their own networks of contacts.
Why does employees’ storytelling carry different weight from institutional communication?
It carries the testimony of someone who lives that work every day. It also reaches networks built over years of relationships (former colleagues, clients, recruiters, industry professionals) who follow the person because they know her, and the trust in the personal connection extends to the story.
Which channels does it work best on?
LinkedIn is the main channel, because it is the space where people build and nurture their professional network. The story can also appear on other channels, through other personal profiles and in direct conversations.
What can the company do to encourage employee advocacy?
Build a workplace worth talking about, with a carefully nurtured culture, projects followed with attention and skills that are valued. Then welcome those who tell the story with a comment, a share from the company page, a thank-you.
How do you measure effectiveness?
You look at people’s spontaneous participation, the variety of roles and teams that share their stories, the quality of the conversations the posts generate (comments, client questions, messages from those interested in the team) and the brand’s presence in personal networks.
