2017: Employee Advocacy Impact Study

Marketers have a lot in common when it comes to employee advocacy. Sometimes it feels like the same, predictable employees share company news and insights. Other times we have a huge win and it feels like the whole company is engaged and fully supporting our efforts.

"Employees who are passionate about their workplace are typically much more highly engaged. Passionate and engaged employees are your best customer advocates. Research shows that companies with very high levels of employee engagement can have 3x higher customer satisfaction ratings."Mark Somol Founder, Zeal

Most of the time, however, employee advocacy efforts hit limits we’d all like to overcome.In fact, LinkedIn reports“In an average company, only 3% of employees share company-related content but they are responsible for driving a 30% increase in the content’s total likes, shares, and comments.”The Marketing Advisory Network set out to find out what’s holding employees back, and more importantly, what can be done to break through the barriers and drive more engagement. To achieve that goal, we went right to the source – surveying 499 employees from a wide range of organizations.We found some remarkable truths.

  • Just like we have buyer personas, we need to develop employee personas. Many factors influence an employee’s motivation and desire to advocate on behalf of the company.

  • Millennials aren’t the only ones who get social. Gen X employees are very sophisticated in their digital sharing.

  • Those organizations that document social media guidelines have higher rates of employee advocacy

We encourage you to dig deep into the study results where we answer many additional questions such as:How does employee tenure effect social sharing?Does publishing a personal blog indicate a higher propensity to share company news & insights?What motivates employees to share more?

Brand Building, Marketing Best Practices, Social Marketingemployee advocacy, social marketing