Employee Advocacy And Employer Branding – Bigger Audience More ROI
Summary
TLDRIn this episode of the 'Social, at Scale' podcast, CEO Cameron Craig discusses the synergy between employee advocacy and employer branding, highlighting their impact on talent attraction and retention. He shares data on the effectiveness of employee sharing, emphasizing the power of personalization and the role of recruiters in distribution. The podcast reveals that job posts shared on social media significantly outperform other content, underscoring the importance of leveraging employees as brand ambassadors.
Takeaways
- 😀 Employee advocacy and employer branding together can produce significant results for organizations.
- 📢 Everyone Social is an employee advocacy platform that enables employees to share company content on their social networks.
- 🔢 On average, each employee is connected to about 1600 people externally, making them a valuable asset for content distribution.
- 🌐 Social media has shifted the landscape of communication from one-to-many to many-to-many, making personal interaction and engagement more important.
- 💼 Companies are investing in employee advocacy to have their employees act as ambassadors, sharing content to their networks.
- 📈 The success of employer branding is tied to compelling content and effective distribution, with employee advocacy addressing the latter.
- 📊 In 2022, 250,000 employees on Everyone Social shared content, generating millions of clicks, engagements, and impressions without spending on ads.
- 🏆 Top brands are leveraging their employees to distribute employer brand content because social is where candidates are.
- 🤝 Recruiters are natural partners for employer branding initiatives due to their large networks and social media savviness.
- 📝 When employees share job posts on social media, they generate an average of 32 clicks per share, indicating high engagement and interest.
- 🚀 Personalization of content by employees drives success in employer branding, as it adds authenticity and resonates with audiences.
Q & A
What is the main topic of the 'Social, at Scale' podcast episode?
-The main topic of the episode is employee advocacy and employer branding, discussing how combining these two can produce amazing results for companies.
Who is Cameron, and what is his role in the podcast?
-Cameron is the CEO and co-founder of Everyone Social, and he is the host of the podcast, discussing topics related to social employee advocacy and employer branding.
What is Everyone Social, and what does it do?
-Everyone Social is an employee advocacy platform that provides tools for employees to share company content, including employer branding content, on their social networks.
How does employee advocacy benefit a company's content distribution?
-Employee advocacy helps distribute important company content far and wide by leveraging the networks of employees, from interns to CEOs, who are connected to an average of about 1600 people externally.
What are the two main obligations of Everyone Social towards its clients, according to Cameron?
-The two main obligations are to deliver the best employee advocacy platform, which is simple and drives sustained engagement, and to be the best partner to clients by sharing best practices and data insights.
How has social media changed the traditional concept of brands?
-Social media has enabled many-to-many communication at scale for the first time in history, making people increasingly become the brand, as they interact and engage with other people rather than just consuming brand content.
What is the significance of employer branding in the current business landscape?
-Employer branding is crucial for attracting and retaining talent and is considered a core aspect of every business, not just a trend during hiring sprees.
What are the two key components of employer branding success mentioned in the podcast?
-The two key components are compelling content, which includes stories and experiences, and distribution, which is crucial for reaching a wider audience and generating higher ROI.
Why are recruiters important partners in employee advocacy initiatives?
-Recruiters are important because they typically have larger networks and share more content than other employees, making them effective at distributing employer branding content.
What type of content has been found to generate the highest engagement when shared by employees on social media?
-Job posts have been found to generate the highest engagement, with an average of 32 clicks per share, making them a top-performing content type for distribution.
What is the primary reason companies invest in employee advocacy, as discussed in the podcast?
-Companies invest in employee advocacy to enable their employees to serve as external ambassadors, helping to share content with their networks and increase the reach and impact of the company's message.
Outlines
🗣️ Employee Advocacy and Employer Branding Overview
Cameron, CEO of Everyone Social, introduces the podcast episode focusing on employee advocacy and employer branding. He discusses the synergistic relationship between the two and their impact on business outcomes. The episode aims to share examples, data, and trends observed in the field. Cameron invites listeners to connect with him on social media platforms and explains that Everyone Social is an employee advocacy platform designed to enable employees to share company content on their social networks, leveraging their personal networks which can average around 1600 connections per employee. The company's mission is to provide the simplest and most engaging platform for clients, facilitating easy and continuous content sharing by employees.
🌐 The Evolution of Branding and Social Media's Impact
This paragraph delves into the historical context of branding and the significant shift brought about by social media. Traditionally, brands communicated through one-to-many channels such as mail, telephone, radio, and television. However, social media introduced a many-to-many communication paradigm, fundamentally changing how brands interact with consumers. The paragraph emphasizes the growing importance of employer branding, especially in attracting and retaining talent, despite economic fluctuations. It also highlights the dual components of successful employer branding: compelling content and effective distribution, noting that many companies focus more on content creation than on distribution, which is crucial for reaching a wider audience.
📈 Data-Driven Insights on Employer Branding Success
The speaker presents data from Everyone Social's user activity, showcasing the power of employee advocacy in employer branding. In 2022, their platform facilitated around 2 million shares of employer brand content, generating 5 million engagements and 7 million clicks. This resulted in approximately 300 million impressions without any advertising spend. The key findings stress that top brands use their employees to distribute content, employer brand content performs exceptionally well on social media, recruiters are vital partners in this process due to their extensive networks and sharing habits, and sharing job posts on social media yields high engagement and clicks, making it an effective strategy for talent attraction.
🤝 The Role of Recruiters in Employee Advocacy
The paragraph underscores the importance of collaboration between employer branding efforts and recruiters. Recruiters, having large networks and a propensity for sharing content, are identified as key allies in distributing employer brand content. Their social media presence and activity can significantly amplify the reach of job postings and other company-related content. The speaker encourages involving recruiters in employee advocacy strategies to maximize content distribution and leverage their social influence.
💼 The Surprising Effectiveness of Shared Job Posts
This section reveals the effectiveness of sharing job posts on social media, a practice that yields an average of 32 clicks per share. The speaker shares anecdotes and data indicating that job posts are among the top-performing content types on social platforms, often resulting in high engagement and impressions. The personalization of content by employees and the sharing of opportunities are suggested as key drivers for this success, as job posts represent life-changing opportunities that resonate with both sharers and their networks.
🚀 Conclusion: The Future of Employee Advocacy and Employer Branding
The final paragraph wraps up the episode by reiterating the importance of employee advocacy and employer branding as continuous and integral strategies for organizations. The speaker emphasizes that employees are the greatest distribution asset, and their networks can be harnessed to promote company content effectively and authentically. The episode concludes with an invitation for feedback and a reminder of the benefits of employee advocacy, such as high efficiency and quick implementation, positioning it as a cost-effective solution for content distribution in comparison to paid advertising.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Employee Advocacy
💡Employer Branding
💡Social Media
💡Personalization
💡Recruiters
💡Content Distribution
💡Engagement
💡Impressions
💡Job Posts
💡Brands
💡ROI (Return on Investment)
Highlights
Employee advocacy and employer branding together produce amazing results for clients.
Cameron, CEO of Everyone Social, discusses the importance of employee advocacy platforms.
Definition of employee advocacy as tools for employees to share company content on their social networks.
On average, each employee is connected to about 1600 external people, making them a valuable distribution channel.
250,000 employees on Everyone Social sharing content from over a hundred countries.
Employee advocacy's role in delivering the best platform and being the best partner to clients.
Brands have evolved from one-to-many communication to many-to-many through social media.
People increasingly interact with brands through social media, making employee advocacy crucial.
Employer branding is table stakes for attracting and retaining talent in any organization.
Success in employer branding requires compelling content and effective distribution.
Employee advocacy solves distribution challenges by leveraging employees' networks.
2 million shares from Everyone Social generated 300 million impressions without ad spend.
Top brands use employees to distribute content because social is where candidates are.
High-performing employer brand content is personalized by employees sharing it.
Recruiters are key partners in employer branding due to their large networks and sharing habits.
Sharing job posts on social media generates an average of 32 clicks per share.
Employee advocacy is a quick and inexpensive way to utilize employees as distribution assets.
Encouraging personalization of messages for greater results in employee advocacy.
Employee advocacy is efficient compared to paid ads, with higher engagement rates.
Transcripts
welcome to another episode of the social
at scale podcast uh for today we're
going to talk about something that is
one of our favorite topics here at
everyone social employee advocacy and
employer branding the two together
produce some pretty amazing results for
our clients and I want to talk through
some examples some data some Trends
stuff that we're seeing and hopefully a
bunch of stuff that you can actually put
to work at your company
by way of introduction I'm Cameron I'm
the CEO and co-founder of everyone's
social and Cameron brain
um if you would like to connect with me
please go ahead and do so I am on
Twitter and Linkedin are the two main
places that you can find me
and what is everyone's social uh
everyone's social is an employee
advocacy platform
if you're unfamiliar with employee
advocacy or need a little bit of a
refresher that is totally fine we Define
it as tools for employees to share
company content your content your
employer branding content included to
their social networks the idea being
that everyone in your organization has a
network from the intern to the CEO
they're connected with all these people
outside of your organization on average
each employee is connected to about 1600
people on an external basis and if you
give them content to share ask them to
share give them some simple tools to do
so they will do it and they will help
you distribute your important content
far and wide
so that is what everyone's social is
what employee advocacy is to give you a
little sense of uh kind of order of
magnitude because we're going to talk
about some data we have about 250 000
employees on everyone's social sharing
content from over a hundred different
countries worldwide and we are very
fortunate to work with many of the
world's top organizations companies that
range from very fast growing kind of
hundreds of employees all the way up to
those with over a million employees and
we see our responsibility as kind of
twofold one is to ensure that we are
delivering the best employee advocacy
platform to our clients
and we Define the best as being the
simplest and the one that drives the
most sustained engagement amongst their
people so a platform that their people
your people are going to want to use
they're going to want to use on a
repeated basis that doesn't get in the
way of all the other things that they
need to be doing on a daily and a weekly
basis but that makes it so easy that
they just continue to share your content
uh to the maximum extent possible so
that's kind of obligation one is to
deliver the best platform obligation two
is to be the best partner to all of our
clients
us being in our position we get to see
all of these programs we get to see what
works what doesn't uh best practices
tons of data a lot of that's what I'm
going to highlight here in today's
episode and it's also one of the things
that our clients ask us ask us most
frequently is what are our other clients
doing so I'm here to share that with you
all as well today
so before we get into particulars I
think it's important to kind of take a
big step back and understand some of the
underlying trends that make employee
advocacy relevant and in particular make
employer branding
uh a very successful kind of compliment
to it together they produce some
absolutely fantastic results
everything that employee advocacy has to
do with relates to Brands and brands are
not what they used to be brands have
been undergoing a significant kind of
change and transition over the last few
years and uh without kind of getting too
much on a soapbox I think it's
instructive to think about Brands and
marketing and communication really over
the last hundred years
um going back to kind of the early part
of the 20th century when companies
wanted to Market or communicate all the
way up to kind of the Advent of social
media they did that by way of their
brand through a one-to-many
Communication channel right so if we
kind of start at the early 1900s and
kind of zoom up to near present we had
things like you know mail uh we had
things like telephone radio television
billboard advertising and then of course
with the the Advent of the internet we
have more advertising options we have
content marketing we have search
uh all of these things right but they're
all one-to-many and this is why brand
has been so important you know in terms
of
a vehicle to promote uh your message and
your content under over the last hundred
years the thing is social media is
completely changed the game social media
is the first time in the history of
humanity where we have a means by which
we can communicate with people on a
many-to-many basis at scale
and increasingly people are the brand as
the result I think at a very very basic
level we people want to interact and
engage with other people
when we are quote interacting with a
brand really we're just consuming what
that brand is putting out a brand is not
a person yes there may be some social
media manager behind kind of the brand
handles or whatever but at best it is a
one-to-many communication right like
social media teams at any sized
organization are often very small
they're not going to be interacting with
every single person that has a question
uh or a thought or wants to engage
and frankly they couldn't even if they
wanted to
um they couldn't do it at a personalized
level but this is why so many companies
are investing in employee advocacy to
enable their people
to serve as external ambassadors to help
share their content to their networks
and this is uh something we're going to
get into a little bit further as we go
along here
so uh going just slightly deeper what
we've seen over the last year the last
year has been a real Watershed year I
think for employer branding and we see
even though right now a lot of companies
are kind of pulling back on hiring
there's been a lot of layoffs
we see employer branding as just table
Stakes for any organization that is
looking to attract talent to their
organization looking to retain Talent
and uh we think it's just going to be
increasingly important really on a
consistent basis going forward this is
not a flash in the pan Trend something
that only becomes important when
companies are on hiring sprees employer
branding is core to every business and
we'll get into some of the reasons why
but we've seen the basics of success
what is what is employer branding
success look like what are the inputs
what are the primary ingredients from
our Vantage how we work with our clients
there's really two components there's
compelling content
you know the stories the content the
experience all the stuff that you're
producing
um and then there's distribution
the problem is we see most companies
over focusing on on the content side on
the production side and the reason being
is that we can control content
production right we can put money
towards it we can engage an agency we
can devote our time our team's time to
producing it there's milestones and at
the end you know we have a work product
we have we have content that we've
created
distribution is where things get harder
they get trickier it's less defined it's
less within our control the problem is
though distribution is totally connected
with the value that we're actually able
to produce for our organization
the value we're able to generate from
our content that we've invested in
producing producing is directly
correlated to the size of the audience
that we're able to distribute it to the
smaller the audience the lower the ROI
the bigger the audience the greater the
ROI and distribution is what employee
advocacy solves and it's part of the
reason why it goes so well with employer
branding initiatives
so let's look at some data over the
first few quarters of 2022 this is what
uh our users on everyone's social those
250 000 folks were were able to produce
when sharing employer brand content so
we had around 2 million shares uh from
everyone's social to social networks
those shares generated around 5 million
engagements so those are on platform
actions things like likes comments
retweets replies Etc if the share
included a link a URL those shares
received around 7 million clicks not all
shares include URLs of course you could
share an image or a video or GIF or
something like that but if it included a
URL that generated around 7 million
clicks and in total those two million
shares generated around 300 million
impressions so significant distribution
zero ad dollars spent right these are
clients that bought everyone social put
their content in it asked their
employees to go there and help to
promote it and share it to their
networks and they did it and this is
what resulted right nearly 300 million
impressions on around 2 million shares
just tremendous
and so the key findings that we had
as it relates to employer branding are
fourfold first the world's top brands
are leveraging their employees to
distribute their content and we'll talk
a little bit more about that employer
brand content outperforms on social
anything related to an employer brand or
hiring Talent interaction is just
tailor-made for social people want to
share it and they want to consume it
which is wonderful number three
recruiters should be your closest
Partners recruiters are awesome they're
having kind of a tough go of it right
now just because of the pullback on a
lot of hiring but recruiters were
already on social before social really
mattered from an employer brand
perspective they have big networks they
share more than any other type of
employee that we see within an
organization so they should be your
partners we'll talk a little bit more
number four what happens when employees
share your open wrecks on social we
think you'll be really surprised by that
so number one why are the world's top
brands activating their people to help
to distribute their employer brand
content
first off they know social is where
candidates are something like 70 percent
of gen Z in the workforce found their
current role through something on social
a post a piece of content something
shared by one of their colleagues or
friends these companies also have an
acute need for top talent
example I have I recently had an
experience meeting with a large consumer
goods company large cpg company
that actually has a CMO devoted to
employer branding I was meeting with her
and one of her colleagues and they asked
what I thought their company did or you
know when I heard the name what did I
what did I think that company was and I
thought about their products I thought
about the brands and they said yep yep
that makes sense well we actually think
about ourselves as a tech company and I
think if this cpg company is a tech
company everyone is a tech company and
that's what we see across all of our
clients not all of our clients are tech
companies we're lucky to have a lot of
great tech companies as clients but
we've got biopharma we've got Financial
Services we have shipping and Logistics
we've got Professional Services we've
got manufacturing industrial all sorts
of stuff it's an increasing diversity of
of companies that are investing in
employee advocacy and they all think
about themselves the same way that cpg
company thinks about themselves they
think about them as Tech as tech
companies because they need that Talent
they they need the same talent that the
tech companies have been focused on for
for a longer period of time
and then thirdly these companies
understand that the landscape has
changed right it used to be an advantage
for a remote organization like
everyone's social uh in terms of you
know we need Engineers we need people in
other roles well if we can hire on a
remote basis we don't have to compete
against Google and apple and Amazon and
others that are centered in Regional
hubs the Bay Area Seattle New York Etc
that's completely out the window with
covid with remote work hybrid work none
of this is going away and those
companies have fully recognized at this
point that not only can they hire people
on a remote basis but it opens up huge
new Talent pools uh so everything is
more competitive and for many of these
companies their ability to attract this
Talent is potentially existential right
if they can't get the right people to
fill these roles they won't be able to
produce the growth that they need so
these are the primary reasons why we see
top brands activating their people to
help with the distribution of employer
brand content
so number two let's talk about some
examples and if you're just listening to
this
uh of course I will explain it um but if
you're watching it there's a video uh
companion here as well that
um I'm highlighting some actual posts so
these are eight shares
um eight High performing shares that we
took from our clients and in particular
these eight shares garnered something
like 8 million impressions just eight
individual shares generating over 8
million impressions for their company
and their company's content and just to
give you a sense of kind of like what
this you know what was the focus of this
content
um
and what made them outperform we had a
CEO update from a multinational
conglomerate we had a head of diversity
inclusion talking about a return ship
program we had a personal update from a
sales leader at a large real estate
brokerage company
we had one on company values one on
product certification one on Innovation
and then one on company performance
now what made these pieces of content
these employer branding pieces of
content really perform was that in every
single case this was someone at this
company it could have been the social
media manager could have been the CEO
could have been an engineer these are
just highlighting some of the roles of
the people that that are that are on
this uh on the screen they took the
content that their company had produced
and they personalized it themselves so
they wrote their own spin on it they
added their own view on it and that's
part of as we'll get into a little bit
further here in a minute really what
drives kind of top performance is at the
at the Baseline just simply getting your
people to share your stuff
that is going from zero to one
getting your people to then personalize
it or getting as many of you of them as
you can to personalize it or even going
further and having them create their own
content around their experience or
something that they're working on or
innovation or how they're performing the
market Etc having them create content is
kind of the ultimate but point being
personalization Drive success
and let's move on to the next one so
recruiters number three getting close
with your recruiters so as we think
about employer branding how do we
maximize the distribution of this
content that you have invested in
producing that you're going to continue
to invest in producing
who in your company is you know should
you go to to help to kind of kick start
this process get your get your stuff off
on the right foot recruiters represent a
population of people within your company
that you definitely want to be engaging
with for two primary reasons one they
have a bigger Network than anyone else
so looking at everyone in everyone's
social from CEOs to Engineers product
managers head of marketing marketing
managers comms folks
um
HR sales people sales leaders etc etc
of any particular role recruiters have
the largest Network and it's it's more
than 6X the average so the average
employee on everyone's social has around
1600 connections recruiters have over 6
000 uh direct connections on average
when they sign up for everyone social
they also share more so the average
employee shares
about 20 to 25 percent less than the
average recruiter so point being here is
recruiters are already on social they
know social they are probably some of
the most social native people in your
organization you give them content and
some simple tools to share it and
they're going to do it and when they
share it they're going to share more of
it than anyone else and they're going to
share it to a larger Network so this is
quarter distribution recruiters are
ready to go
definitely involve them in your overall
distribution plan as a part of your
employee advocacy effort and Number Four
The Humble job post so what happens when
someone shares one of your open wrecks
to social
um a link to one of your listings on
your on your career site
this blew our mind uh so we had a lot
like a lot of great things a lot of
things that we've learned over the years
it wasn't something that began with us
prescribing this to our clients it was
something that we saw our clients doing
that informed
our understanding of you know where the
real opportunities were they our clients
kind of took us to this place is what
I'm trying to say so over the over the
first part of 2022 we started to dig
into what was the all the different
kinds of employer brand content and just
content in general that our clients were
sharing to social that their employees
were sharing
and there were a lot of job posts being
shared
um and job posted turned out or some of
the top performing content being shared
from everyone social by performing I
mean every time someone shared a job
post to social it generated more clicks
and more engagements on average than any
other type of content and when it comes
to clicks every single time a job post
was shared it generated an average of 32
clicks per share which let me tell you
that is a multiple of the average that
is just tremendous
and again for anyone who's looking at
the video I have an example of a pretty
atypical job post so this this would be
a highly personalized example it's not
even a job post it's a post that this
person wrote they attached a photo to it
talking about this role that they're
opening up on their team it doesn't even
include a link to a form for anyone to
fill something out she's just basically
saying hey if you're interested or you
know someone who is have them send me a
direct message
and you know it's an example of kind of
a top performing version of a job post
over a hundred engagements uh a
significant number of clicks and
Impressions but again even if your
people are just simply taking links to
job posts on your career site and
sharing those on social we see an
average of 32 clicks per share which in
our view is like that means everyone
should be doing that all the time and I
think the reason why they perform so
well is everyone loves to share an
opportunity right a job is something
that has the potential to change
someone's life and it's so much more
impactful than a blog post or a video or
something like that I mean we all like
sharing and consuming that kind of stuff
but people really like sharing
opportunities and their networks also
like consuming them right everyone is
looking or thinking about at some level
what is their next move going to be you
know where's their next opportunity how
can they better support themselves their
family how can they achieve their career
ambition so these are some of the more
kind of fundamental Reasons Why We
Believe job posts being shared on social
perform so well
so that is it uh for today's episode
some of the primary takeaways I think
around employee advocacy and employer
branding why they work so well together
why we believe this is not a one-time
Trend we think it's going to be kind of
table Stakes for any organization as
your people are your greatest
distribution asset uh every single
person in your organization has a
network all of them are interested and
willing to share and help promote your
content trust drives authenticity drives
results the more you encourage the more
you promote your people
personalizing their messages to social
the greater the results you're going to
see and ultimately you can do this
quickly and inexpensively like we are
fully on board with the idea that
everyone out there right now is being
able is being asked to do more with less
and that fortunately for for us and for
the employee advocacy world is really
one of the underlying kind of tenets of
employee advocacy this is this is not
ads right this is about taking existing
an existing asset your people and giving
them some very simple tools to help to
help enable them to distribute stuff
that you've produced your content to
their networks
um
when we compare the results of employees
versus paid ads we're looking at
multiples higher efficiency in terms of
what employees can drive versus what you
would have to spend to do that through
something like paid ads and you can get
up and running very very quickly
so thank you for joining me for another
episode of the social at scale podcast
um we talk about themes like this Trends
uh generally I try to have at least a
few customers on uh every week to talk
about their programs and so forth
by all means please feel free to connect
with me please feel free to give me your
feedback we'd love to hear more of of
what you would like to hear and look
forward to having you back on a future
episode
thanks for listening to this episode of
the social at scale podcast if you
enjoyed what you heard please be sure to
subscribe if you didn't enjoy it please
let me know you can access past episodes
on our site at everyonesocial.com
podcast as always please feel free to
connect with me directly on Twitter or
LinkedIn and look forward to seeing you
next time
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