Social Media a Huge Player in Employee Advocacy

There is no doubt that we live in a social media dominated world. Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter are all popular forums to get the word out. Even President Trump is an active Twitter user with two heavily utilized accounts. Businesses, too, are seeing the benefits of social media and many have started encouraging employees to participate often.

JEM Consulting & Advisory Services recently announced results from its 2017 State of Employee Advocacy survey, it’s second such report.  The intent was to see how businesses choose to implement social media and other forms of employee advocacy and what impact programs are having on growth.

Perhaps surprisingly, 82 percent of respondents said they have an employee advocacy program in place, while 77 percent implement social selling.  These figures represent sizeable growth of 25 percent and 30 percent, respectively, speaking to the potential impact of encouraging employees to become part of the overall marketing and sales process.

“We attribute this shift to the increased variety of industries and types of organizations adopting employee advocacy, as well as the expansion of business objectives for these programs. As retail, travel and entertainment companies, educational institutions, government, NGOs and nonprofits adopt these programs, it’s not surprising that they are using more consumer-facing social media channels, rather than a strictly B2B or B2P channel such as LinkedIn,” says Jen McClure, CEO of JEM Consulting. 

The numbers are only expected to continue to rise in 2018, with 26 percent of those participants currently do not have an advocacy program in place indicating an intention to implement one. In the first year of the survey, the main adopters of the practice were primarily private and public companies in professional services, advertising, marketing, public relations and technology. In 2017, the range has significantly expanded to include financial services, healthcare, pharmaceutical and biotechnology, legal, retail, manufacturing, travel and entertainment, as well as professional services, advertising, marketing, PR and tech.

Of the three primary social channels, 76 percent of respondents say Facebook is their primary outlet with Instagram at 62 percent and Twitter at 56 percent.  What’s apparent is that businesses who have embraced social advocacy also have adopted a multichannel approach. It makes sense, since one of the keys to employee advocacy is encouraging them to leverage their preferred social channels.  Perhaps not surprisingly, LinkedIn had all those channels beat with 100 percent of respondents engaged a year ago, though it has seen a decline in 2017.  

From an implementation perspective, companies tend to leverage their HR departments to drive social media activity and gauging by this year’s numbers, 2018 will be an even more social year.

Does your company have a social advocacy program in place?