Leveraging Employee Advocacy on LinkedIn

What employee advocacy is and why your insurance agency should consider using LinkedIn to help you leverage it.

The world of marketing is everchanging—and the competition is steeper than ever. In fact, digital marketing experts estimate that most Americans are exposed to between 4,000 to 10,000 ads each day!

From logos on t-shirts, billboards along highways, podcast sponsorships, social media ads, tv commercials and more—we're bombarded with brand messaging and it's becoming harder and harder to have yours stand out and make an impact. That's why brand and employee advocacy are becoming key strategies for many businesses. 

What's brand advocacy?

When you're looking for a new product or service, how do you decide which one is right for you? Chances are you do some research, some of which involves looking at online reviews or seeking advice from a friend, family member or colleague.

That's because with so many options and information online—it's comforting, motivating and reassuring to hear from a real person who has first-hand knowledge and experience with a product or service before you make a purchase.

Given the ultimate influence that reviews and recommendations have on purchasing decisions, many companies are leaning into utilizing brand advocates, aka people who are close to or love your brand, to help promote and support their business through word-of-mouth.

What's employee advocacy? 

Employee advocates are brand advocates who work for your organization (aka the members of your team who actively promote your company). 

For example, have you ever shared a job posting from your agency with a friend? Talked highly about your company during a networking event? Mentioned your agency's offerings casually while in a conversation with a friend-of-a-friend? If so, you're an employee advocate already—and that can have powerful outcomes.

According to Hootsuite, "studies show that advocacy from your team can help shorten the sales cycle, attract and develop new business, and recruit top-tier talent. Plus, you can extend your organic reach by 200% and increase profitability by 23%."

One of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to tap into the power of employee advocacy is through social media.

Beyond traditional word-of-mouth, social media—more specifically, LinkedIn—is an ideal channel to help you unleash the power of employee advocacy... and it's free!

While your insurance agency likely has a company LinkedIn page, your team members have the ability to help you magnify your agency, share important messages with your clients and reach potential employees on a much larger and more meaningful level.

According to research by LinkedIn:

• On average, employees have a network that is 10X larger than their company's follower base.
• Jobs shared by employees yield 30% more job applications.
• Content has 2x higher engagement when shared by employees.
• Companies with high numbers of employees sharing quality content are 58% more likely to attract talent.

3 Simple ways you can be an employee advocate on social media:

• Share posts from your company to your personal social media pages, including risk management tips, job postings and company updates.
• Create original content that features your workplace, like sharing a picture of you enjoying a company-sponsored events.
• Engage with the content that your agency posts, especially by commenting, as it can help that content get a boost in the algorithm, so it's seen by more people. 

How to use the "recommend to employees" feature on LinkedIn to help encourage employee advocacy:

LinkedIn has a built-in employee advocacy tool called the "recommend to employees" feature which allows businesses to develop pre-created content that employees can personalize and share directly to their personal LinkedIn pages.

(This is different than reposting content because it appears as though you’ve developed and shared the content yourself, rather than shared another user’s content.)

The admin(s) of your company's LinkedIn page can access and utilize the "recommend to employees" tool by:

• Logging into LinkedIn on the admin-affiliated account.
• Going to your business' page and selecting "page posts".
• Selecting "new post", followed by "recommend to employees".
• Creating posts that you'd like your employees to be able to share themselves.

Admin can also evaluate the effectiveness of this tool and it's usage by employees by going to "analytics" and viewing the "employee advocacy" tab. 

You can access your company's recommended posts by:

• Updating your LinkedIn "experience" to indicate your current place of employment (and making sure it's linked to your employer's page).
• Going to your employer's page and scrolling to "recommendations".
• Browsing the posts created by your team and clicking "start a post" when you're ready to personalize and share it to your page.

Social media is essential to most marketing plans—but not until recently have many companies began to utilize the power of their team members' personal social media pages as an active part of their strategy. But, given the potential power of employee advocacy, it's certainly worth considering. Afterall, it's essentially modern-day word-of-mouth. And that's always going to be effective.