3 Simple Steps to Building a LinkedIn Strategy for Employee Advocacy

Without brand awareness, you have no leads. Without leads, your company will struggle to grow.

Getting your name out there and building your reputation are multifaceted problems with a wide variety of solutions.

ONE of those solutions is publishing consistent, strategy-driven content to your website. That’s what we do for ourselves and our clients.

But what if we told you that you could activate a company-wide strategy without tapping into your marketing budget?

We’ll show you how simple it is to build a LinkedIn employee advocacy strategy that keeps everyone engaged.

Quick Takeaways:

• Getting your employees to engage and share company content (AKA employee advocacy) on their LinkedIn profiles can free up your valuable time and resources.
• If used intentionally, LinkedIn can be a strong organic lead and talent generator for your business.
• You and your employees don’t have to be social media wizards to make this happen!

Why LinkedIn is superior for social sharing

We all crave trust in relationships, and business relationships are no exception. We hope that you’re already publishing helpful, informative content to your site. But even if you have random creative ideas to share, why not open up the discussion to your LinkedIn community?

Anyone can publish short tips and pieces of advice, but not everyone can establish credibility like you can.

We recently came across this report on marketers’ use of LinkedIn.

LinkedIn’s the place to be for your content marketing efforts. But in case you needed any more proof, here are some golden nuggets:

70% of the buyer’s journey is complete before a buyer even reaches out to sales. 

Translated: You have no time to waste! Position yourself as a thought leader and engage with your community to start widening your reach.

97% of all B2B marketers use LinkedIn for content marketing. 

Translated: We’ve got them right where we want them (in the least sleazy marketing way possible).

The decision makers, industry leaders and people just like you and me are all in one place. So? They’re just waiting to find the best solution to their problem. Extend a welcoming hand!

Employees are 14x more likely to share content from their employers than any other type of content on LinkedIn. 

Translated: Build it, and they will come.

Let’s talk about the few simple steps you can take to activate a LinkedIn sharing strategy for your team.

1. Share the facts with your employees

The first step of your LinkedIn employee advocacy plan is to share the facts with your team. We’re all out here consuming content and wishing we could be the next big talk of the town.

What we often fail to recognize is that there are far fewer players in the space consistently creating the content that’s getting pushed to the top of the algorithm.

If each member of your community shares their expertise, you’ll have a wide variety of spokespeople and real-life examples to cater to the requests of potential clients or questions from your leads.

Here’s some more benefits that are worth mentioning:

• Employees become recognized as thought leaders and authority figures in the industry
• Company content reaches relevant audiences
• Brand awareness increases
• Company’s LinkedIn page following grows
• Lead acquisition costs decrease
• LinkedIn can be a new avenue to push your evergreen content

Of course, these efforts will benefit your organization as a whole, but your individual team members’ professional and personal networks are sure to grow, as well.

They’ll be more visible to your audience and accessible to people who may have never come across your company or your personal profile.

And when all of those decision makers are praying to a god that won’t talk back, YOU will be talkin’ the talk. Because you already know you can walk the walk!

2. Anticipate some push-back from your employees

If you’re lucky enough to have an engaged, high-achieving team, you should anticipate hesitation from most of them. And especially if they’re not already on the platform.

They’ve all got tons of projects going on, unexpected fires to put out throughout the day.

They might believe that spending their valuable time on social media feels counterproductive. Or maybe they see it as someone else’s job. Isn’t this a job for the Social Media Team? Marketing?

You know what they say, “not my monkey, not my circus.” But there’s plenty of space for more creative thinkers on LinkedIn.

And it requires far less effort and talent than doing a headstand on an elephant’s back with a glass bottle on your feet. And far less risk!

Here’s what else they’re realistically thinking:

• “I don’t have time to create LinkedIn content”
• “I have no idea what LinkedIn’s algorithm is or how to optimize a post”
• “I’m not social media savvy”
• “I don’t know how to find content that’s relevant to my role”
• “No one uses LinkedIn other than to job search”
• “I have a billion things to do today”
• “This sounds great in theory, but it’s not sustainable”
• “I’m just far too <busy, stressed, strapped>”

I know it because I fall into the same boat! So meet them where they’re at!

I’m secretly using this article as an opportunity to light a fire under myself to engage more intentionally on LinkedIn. Not because anyone’s forcing me, but because I believe in the power of publishing consistently on LinkedIn and beyond.

You certainly don’t have to hold their hand, but let us help you build the path…

3. Provide clear avenues for easy implementation of LinkedIn strategy for employees

Option #1: There are tons of automation tools that you could utilize to automate social sharing.

One company, SocialPilot, did my job for me and compiled a list of 13 social media automation tools to choose from. Gotta love a list of competitors, especially with pros and cons.

We personally use Hootsuite for ourselves and for a number of our clients.

As you can see, the LinkedIn post isn’t spammy or filled with junk, and it certainly isn’t long or intimidating. Hootsuite has some customization features that can be tweaked based upon your preferences, too.

If you do go the automated route and invest in a platform, I’m sure that you’ll find one that fits seamlessly into your workflow and makes LinkedIn activity a non-issue for you and your team.

Option #2: Post manually.

There’s tons of dialogue around how to post most efficiently on LinkedIn. And that research can very easily be done on an individual basis in no time.

But we just recommend starting somewhere. Get into the rhythm of posting on LinkedIn, respond to any comments from your followers, tag other thought leaders to spark a conversation.

Eventually, you and your employees may begin to feel the real-time value of carving out the time to do something for yourself, all the while contributing to the bottom line of your company (in small but mighty ways).

If you are ready to get more traffic to your site with quality content that’s published consistently, check out our weekly content marketing service. Set up a quick consultation, and we’ll send you a free PDF version of Michael’s books. Get started today–and generate more traffic and leads for your business.