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Microsoft tweeted today about their new tablet. I think it was a tablet or a laptop, something like that. I don’t honestly remember. I was flying through my feed on Twitter and saw some ad for something. I mean it wasn’t really an ad, but the company tweeted it so I figured it was promotional and kept scrolling. This 20th century advertising is not only uninteresting, but worse, it is entirely forgettable.
Businesses need to find a better way to connect with customers.
One powerful solution is turning your professionals into advocates, or “employee advocacy.” Employee advocacy is one of the hot marketing strategies of 2017 because companies can get powerful results with minimal effort. Employee advocacy is defined just like it sounds; it’s the concept of having your employees share support for the company’s brand or products. They aren’t selling, its more like they are preaching. Sharing with their network what they love about who they work for and how they help people.
Here is how it works for a large company. Take Microsoft, they currently have 94,000 employees. If each one of those employees has a network of (a modest) two hundred people between LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, that’s 18.8 million people. Nowadays, when you’re talking to one person, you’re talking to one thousand.
Let’s use a more realistic example of employee advocacy at work. How about an accounting firm with one hundred employees? Using employee advocacy, let’s say half of the people at the firm post something to their networks of two hundred people. That’s ten thousand touches. That’s twenty times the exposure as the firm alone and it’s from a person the viewer knows, not an accounting firm.
Employee advocacy is the best way to gain recognition for real expertise. No firm wants to use their employees as promotional tools, but they want them to be known as experts in their fields. Don’t tell your accountant to post “Get your taxes done for dirt cheap!” but rather an intelligent article on “The Top 5 Ways to Maximize Your Tax Return.” The first comes across as a sales pitch, the second comes across as useful information with no strings attached. Posting quality educational content of this variety is a win-win for the accountant and for the firm. The accountant stays top-of-mind with her network and the firm gets the exposure for its expertise. Who’s more likely to hire an accounting firm: a stranger off the street who sees an ad or someone already in the accountant’s network?
Nobody wants to be sold to, and nobody wants to read another advertisement. What do people want? Answers to their questions and help solving the problems that keep them up at night. If your company and team starts sharing great educational content, not only will you help people and gain recognition, but you’ll make sure your tweet or update won’t be ignored.
Jeffrey Beacham is an Account Executive at ClearView Social, the leading employee advocacy platform for the legal, accounting and recruiting industries. ClearViewSocial.com helps firms get their employees sharing great thought leadership in a single click. Email jeffrey@clearviewsocial.com to Get A Free Demo today.