Employee advocacy framework - How you work with the 4 decisive points

Employee advocacy framework

When we talk about employee advocacy, there are a number of focal points that are important to deal with in relation to setting the stage for the employees who participate in the ambassador corps for your company.

The points are:

• Storytelling
• Content process
• Hashtag types
• News criteria

So let's start with the first point, namely the good story.

Storytelling

We humans love a good story and we like to tell the good story to our friends. We call this the word of mouth method. The premise in this context is that storytelling takes place in private.

When we talk about employee advocacy, the premise is slightly different. An employee who privately uses their Instagram account and communicates diligently with their followers may be challenged if the employee suddenly starts creating professional content. Is the target audience ready for it?

One way to tackle this is for the employee to tell their followers about their journey to becoming an ambassador for your company. Then the followers can look forward to seeing the results of the new things that are about to happen in the employee's life. The same technique is used by influencers who go from student life to perhaps becoming parents. It is a change that most followers are interested in, but there is also a risk that some followers will fall away. That knowledge is a good starting point for the dialogue you have with your employee, so that you have a healthy conversation about this.

How is the good story created?

A good story must:

• Be authentic
• Have a personal touch/a personal angle
• Match the social media used by the employee. Here, special consideration is given to the format (stories, length, use of music, etc.)
• Focus on what the employee finds interesting

Content process

There are different approaches to creating content and thus content on social media.

Examples of approaches:

1. Create new content
2. Share content
3. Be inspired by the followers
4. Recycled content

Let's start from the top:

1. Create new content

Here, the employee creates all the content. It could be telling about the journey to becoming an ambassador, or what I would have liked to have known, before I was employed by the company.

2. Share content

Here it can be an advantage if you use an employee advocacy tool, but it can still work without it. If you use Slack, Excel or similar in the company, it can also be used.

If there is a good support culture in your ambassador corps, there may be some synergies to be gained here as well.

For content that is shared by the employee, it is very important that there must be a personal angle. Otherwise, it seems untrustworthy and irrelevant to the followers on social media.

3. Be inspired by the followers

When the employee is well into marketing your company, some interesting dialogues can arise between the employee and the followers. It could be that the followers would like to see your fitness room, or gain insight into what the lunch plan is.

4. Recycled content

If the employee has made a video that relates to a certain season, the video can be reused by the employee after a year has passed.

Hashtag types

An example of a hashtag is #commercial.

Before you start with a strategy for the use of hashtags, you must do some research on Instagram. You can do this easily by using the search field.

In this test you can choose to search for words that relate to:

• The company's branding strategy
• Specialist knowledge (your expertise)
• Campaigns in relation to looking for labour, for example students, interns, trainees and graduates

Hashtags can be divided into four categories:

1. Fire
2. Campaign
3. Trends
4. Contents

If we take the categories and unfold them, we can see that:

• Branding hashtags can help strengthen your company's brand, for example #cocacola. When you own your business or a given product, this hashtag will be unique. If you work for a large international company, the employees abroad will also be able to interact more easily with the employees in Denmark
• Campaign hashtags have the same advantages as branding hashtags, in that it is a unique hashtag. It can be a hashtag that you use in the company
• Trends hashtags are hashtags that have a greater reach. For example, #metoo has been used more than 3 million times on Instagram and #blacklivesmatter more than 26 million times as well as #sustainability more than 13 million times
• Content hashtags can be used by the employee to mention locations; Describe a certain lifestyle such as #urbangarden or a product in your company

News criteria

When we talk about news, we should also talk about relevance. The fact that there is news that Ferrari has just come out with a new sports car is probably not of interest to the reader if you are climate conscious and focus on the green transition.

When your colleague chooses to use news, it is therefore essential that you choose based on the following news criteria:

• Actuality
• Importance
• Identification (can the employee recognise themself in the story)
• Sensation
• Conflict

And emphasis must be placed on the fact that several of the criteria must be met in order for it to be useful news.

Let's take a concrete example from the time when the coronavirus was at its worst and an employee made a post. The employee can then ask themself the following questions. Will my post be:

• Current (yes)
• Significant (yes)
• Identifiable (yes)
• A sensation (maybe)
• Dealing with a conflict (yes)

Now, the coronavirus crisis lasted for a long time, but as a general rule, news tends to be short lived. Therefore, the employee's timing means everything in this context. If the employee is two weeks late for something that is breaking news, then an item falls completely to the ground. That is, the followers do not bother to interact with your employee.

If you have a marketing department, you can possibly get one of your colleagues to talk about newsjacking and timing.

It doesn't matter when your ambassador corps puts their posts online either. Even if a fire breaks out at 3 in the morning, there are not many readers for a breaking news event at that time. Via their company profile on Instagram, the employee can see when the followers are most active.

You have now gained insight into the four most important points when you have to set the stage for the electors in the ambassador corps in your company.

The next step is for you to train your ambassador team. You can read more about that here: