"The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing" es una guía de para involucrar al personal con la estrategia de Social Media Marketing de una empresa. La guía fue elaborada por Social Chorus.

1. The Definitive
Guide to Employee
Advocate Marketing
A SEVEN STEP GUIDE TO ENSURE SUCCESS

2. 1The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing
Overview
Step 1: Make Your Plan
Step 2: Identify and Invite Your Most Social-Savvy Employees
Step 3: Train the Core Group of Advocates
Step 4: Launch the Program and Engage Your Advocates
Step 5: Raise Internal Awareness About the Program
Step 6: Measure Success
Step 7: Grow the Advocate Marketing Program
Conclusion
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The Definitive Guide to
Employee Advocate Marketing
A STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO ENSURE SUCCESS
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3. 2The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing
Overview
WHAT IS AN EMPLOYEE ADVOCATE?
An advocate is one that argues for a cause, a supporter or
defender. Advocates are passionate about your brand and talk
it up to anyone who will listen. When it comes to your brand,
your employees fit the advocate description better than anyone
else. It’s likely they’re already promoting your brand on their own
social media accounts and providing their friends with insider
knowledge about how awesome your products or services are.
However, when it comes to formal Advocate Marketing programs,
employees can often be overlooked.
Employee Advocate (n.):
A socially engaged employee who creates and shares their
employer’s brand content on their social networks.

4. 3Millennials as Brand Advocates
Why employee advocates?
When your employees share content,
they reach ten times as many people as
the posts on your brand’s social pages
do. This expanded reach is powerful,
because 77% of consumers are more
likely to purchase a product when a friend
recommends it.1
Since employees are more
familiar with your brand, their friends and
other consumers consider them trusted
resources. In fact, employees are trusted
more than company CEOs.
Advocate Marketing programs have great benefits for employees
too. These programs can empower and engage employees, improve
their personal brands, as well as help them build new skills. Your
employees are already your greatest asset; by empowering them
to advocate for your brand, you can make them more engaged,
knowledgeable and skilled while improving communications,
marketing, sales, human resources and other company goals.
Part of piloting a project like this is trying new things. You’ll soon
discover what works and what doesn’t, and you can improve
the program with this knowledge. Plan to the start the program
small, with a select group of savvy employees, and scale slowly
to new groups.
of consumers are more
likely to purchase a
product when a friend
recommends it1
77%
3The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing
1 Nielsen. “A Multi-Mix Media Approach drives New Product Awareness.” 2 December, 2013. www.nielsen.com/us/en/newswire/2013/a-multi-mix-media-approach-drives-new-
product-awareness.html.

5. 4The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing
Step 1:
Make Your Plan
4The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing

6. Create Social Media Policy
Before you jump into an employee Advocate Marketing program, you
need to have a solid plan in place. Regardless of how socially savvy your
company is, the first step will be to create a social media policy to ensure
compliance with the program. This resource will outline the rules of
what employees can and cannot post. It’s also important to note that all
employees who participate in the program should indicate in their social
profiles that they work at your company. The policy should be written in
everyday language that is easy for all your employees to understand.
Identify Goals
Next, identify your goals for the Advocate Marketing program. With an
employee Advocate Marketing program, your company has the potential
to reach new audiences, drive leads for sales, demonstrate thought
leadership and make your brand’s identity clearer. Your goals can be
internal as well. Perhaps you want to build your employees’ social media
skills and foster a sense of community and pride. Be realistic about
the goals you can achieve and understand that different parts of your
company will want different outcomes from the program.
ADVOCATE MARKETING PROGRAM GOALS
• REACH NEW AUDIENCES
• DRIVE LEADS FOR SALES
• DEMONSTRATES THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
• ESTABLISH BRAND IDENTITY
• BUILD EMPLOYEE SOCIAL MEDIA SKILLS
• FOSTER A SENSE OF COMMUNITY AND PRIDE
5The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing

7. Get Executive Buy-in
Getting internal buy-in may also be an important part of the process,
depending on the size of your company and the scope of the project. Use
the goals you identified to justify the program internally. With support
from executives, the project will unroll more smoothly and achieve greater
success in the long run.
Employees already have a lot on their plates and without management
buy-in, staff are less likely to participate in the program. When executives
support employee Advocate Marketing from the beginning and are
proponents of implementing a company-wide social media program, there
is greater potential for growth. Having this executive support amplifies
the chances that employees will also buy into the program.
Find a Champion
Finding a champion is essential. Your employee advocacy champion is
going to spearhead this initiative company-wide. This champion either
needs to be an executive or have executive sponsorship to ensure that he
or she has the “pull” to make things happen. This person will own and be
responsible for the employee advocacy programs internally.
10 TIMES LARGER
EMPLOYEES CAN REACH AN AUDIENCE
THAN WHAT YOUR BRAND IS REACHING2
6The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing
2 Technorati. “Engaged Employees Build Engaged Customers - How does Addvocate Help you Engage?” 8 October, 2013. technorati.com/business/advertising/article/engaged-
employees-build-engaged-customers-how.

8. 7Millennials as Brand Advocates
Create a Content and Engagement Plan
Next, create a content plan that outlines the types of content you will
include in the program. Make sure you have a strategy to refresh the
materials weekly, with six to 10 pieces of short-form content, and vary
it so that it will be engaging to all your employees, not just a few.
Align the employee Advocate Marketing program content to your
marketing calendar to ensure future updates align with important
company initiatives.
The content you will want employees to share will depend on the goals
you identified. If your goal is to recruit new employees, your content
should focus on company culture, like video interviews of current staff.
If the goal is to raise awareness of your brand, you could share press
coverage from third parties that relate to your brand or its products,
content from brand partners and relevant industry information,
such as how the company has aligned itself with corporate social
responsibility initiatives.
7The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing
We’re pulling content for our employee Advocate Marketing program
from upcoming events, product launches and marketing activities. Look
at what you already have planned on your social calendar and pull the
most engaging topics and posts and ideas for your employees to share.
DeShelia Spann, Digital Marketing Strategist at Eaton

9. 8Millennials as Brand Advocates
The next aspect of the planning stage is determining how often you
will be in contact with your employee advocates and what the form of
communication will be. Will you send weekly emails or post biweekly on an
internal social media platform? Align your choice with how the company’s
employees conduct their day-to-day activities.
Next, come up with a strategy for thanking your advocates. Without a plan
for recognizing your employees, it may be hard to keep them engaged.
Try scheduling meetings with company leaders so they can personally
thank employee advocates. Give top advocates access to career building
seminars or training. Supply brand-aligned gift cards or other giveaways
to the top advocates. Even smaller measures like sharing advocate
content on the company site or an executive shout out for those who
are the most engaged with the program can be a great way to highlight
employees for their success.
Finally, you will need to come up with a program hashtag for Federal
Trade Commission compliance and transparency. Try to be intuitive
when creating a hashtag, like #[companyname] or #[companyname]
insiders. Don’t make it too long or you may run into issues with character
limits on certain social platforms. You can learn more about the FTC
guidelines here.
Without a plan for recognizing your employees,
it may be hard to keep them engaged.
LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW TO MOTIVATE AND REWARD YOUR EMPLOYEE ADVICATES HERE.
8The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing

10. 9The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing
Step 2:
Identify and
Invite Your Most
Social-Savvy
Employees

11. To build a solid foundation for your new employee
Advocate Marketing program, it’s a good idea to start
with a small group of socially savvy employees.
Use social listening platforms to identify staff members who are most
active on social media. Look for departments that are accustomed to
conveying the company message and are already active on social media.
Departments like public relations, marketing, corporate communications
and sales are all likely to contain rising social media superstars who are
comfortable expressing the brand’s identity publicly and sharing on
social networks.
At first, the program should be invite-only. You want a select group who
will be comfortable with social platforms and able to experiment with
new ideas to give the program a strong start. Between 10 and 50 people
is a good number to begin the program with, depending on the size of
your company.
BETWEEN 10-50
PEOPLE IS A GOOD NUMBER TO BEGIN THE PROGRAM WITH,
DEPENDING ON THE SIZE OF YOUR COMPANY.
10The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing

12. 11Millennials as Brand Advocates
Recruit the First Group
Invite the employees via email and inform them they have been selected
to assist with the launch of the program. In this message, let them
know their feedback will influence the future direction of the program.
The invite email should include a program overview, expectations and
an explanation of how employees will benefit from participating. The
invite should be sent or signed by an executive program sponsor. This
information will empower them to participate and feel like they’re part of
something new and exciting. The invitation should be sent in tandem with
an invitation to start training.
11The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing

13. 12The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing
Step 3:
Train the
Core Group
of Advocates

14. Once your first group of advocates has been
recruited, it’s time to start training them.
These training sessions can be in-person or through a webinar or video.
Crucial to this step is to ensure the training is simple and straightforward.
The initial training sessions will be centered on the program itself, how
advocates will participate and compliance. Communicate the importance
of employee advocacy, how to take part in the program and social media
best practices, as well as FTC and employee guidelines.
We provide video training that lasts six and a half minutes and focuses
on the fundamentals around how to be an advocate. We also provide
supplementary tools and one-page resources so that as our employee
advocates want to learn more about social media on their own, they
have resources available.
Lee Diaz, Senior Manager of Emerging Communications at AT&T
13The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing

15. 14Millennials as Brand Advocates
Be sure employees understand the value of their contributions, both on
personal and company-wide levels. Their participation in the program
can help them build new skills and boost the company’s visibility at the
same time. The next step is to teach employee advocates to be advocates
for their company. Give your advocates tips about what kinds of content
to share, how to expand their personal networks and how to keep their
followers engaged. Even the most socially savvy staff members can learn
some new pointers. When designing training methods, keep in mind that
participants may have different levels of knowledge you will need to
accommodate.
Ensure advocates sign terms & conditions.
Before allowing your advocates to post freely, you should draft a list of
terms and conditions regarding what type of brand-related content is
permissible to post on social media. Make sure employees sign off on this
document before moving forward. It’s important to trust your employees,
but also to verify they are staying within guidelines you’ve established by
tracking the materials they are sharing.
Be sure employees understand the value of
their contributions, both on personal and
company-wide levels.
14The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing

16. 15The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing
Step 4:
Launch the
Program and
Engage Your
Advocates

17. 16Millennials as Brand Advocates
After the core group understands the goals of the
program and how to make it work, it’s time to begin
sharing content.
Start out by providing approved messages and content for the advocates
to share, and make sure to update these materials at least once a week
to keep advocates and their followers fully engaged. Send regular content
update emails highlighting the latest content. Think of this like any other
social network. If there’s nothing new to see or share, people will stop
coming back.
Grow the program slowly. Start out with prewritten messages that employees
can tweak to match their personal styles. After an initial period, you can start
letting employees write their own unique content. Giving employees creative
license helps let their individuality shine and gives them a certain amount of
ownership over the materials they create.
16The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing
Think of this like any other social network. If
there’s nothing new to see or share, people will
stop coming back.

18. 17Millennials as Brand Advocates
To ensure the success of this new project, make working on the employee
Advocate Marketing program part of your routine. Check in every day to see
how your advocates are doing. Keep in touch with them and make sure you
act on the feedback they give you, including providing follow-up training
when they need it.
Asking for feedback from employees is a good way to ensure they still
feel a sense of ownership and creative contribution. Find out what they
would like to see in the program and its content. Utilize their ideas and add
fresh material to share on a regular basis. Encourage advocates to create
content to share with their audience using the program hashtag. Put the
best advocate-created content in the program for other advocates to share.
Demonstrate appreciation
Demonstrating your appreciation for the participation of your employee
advocates can help them stay engaged in the program. Be sure to thank
your advocates, using specific thank-you messages on internal networks
and in emails. Providing increased access to executives, as well as other
perks, is an additional way to thank employees for their involvement.
Ongoing training is another important part of the continued success of
an Advocate Marketing program. Hold office hours to provide support for
employees to come in and discuss any issues they may have. Once you
start inviting more employees to the program, you may need to increase
certain training initiatives.
17The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing
Once you’ve launched, keeping advocates
engaged will be the primary goal.

19. 18The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing
Step 5:
Raise Internal
Awareness About
the Program

20. 19Millennials as Brand Advocates
Once you’ve been up and running with a small group
of advocates for two to three months, you should
have a pretty good handle on what works well for your
goals and employees.
You’ve likely figured out the kind of content employees are most
interested in sharing and what their audiences are engaging with the
most frequently. You’ve got the basics down and you’re ready to grow,
which means it’s time to start raising internal awareness about the
program to scale it. Promote the program using internal social channels,
email newsletters and at department- or company-wide meetings. Don’t
wait for the word to get out on its own; continue to push it internally. As
the first group of employees become champions of the program, allow
them to encourage and even help train others.
The next step is to put together a small team to champion the program in
their departments. These members should cover a range of departments
in your company, including public relations, marketing, internal
communications and human resources.
19The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing

21. 20The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing
Step 6:
Measure
Success

22. As with any marketing initiative, it’s vital that you
find a way to measure the ROI of your program. Use a
social listening system and your program hashtag to
measure advocate participation and determine how
these individuals are engaging their audiences.
The key metrics to monitor for employee programs are the number of
active advocates, total engagements and reach. The number of active
advocates is a vital metric for the ongoing success of your program.
This number will rise month-over-month in a successful program,
as employees participate on an ongoing basis. The total number of
engagements will equal the total number of shares plus the total number
of audience engagements, such as comments and shares. This number
will equate to overall advocate and audience engagement. The final
metric to measure is reach, which represents the total possible audience
reached. Once baseline metrics are in place, brands can start monitoring
their performance against these benchmarks. Continuous improvement
is key.
TOTAL ENGAGEMENTS
TOTAL SHARES TOTAL AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENTS
=
+
21The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing

23. 22Millennials as Brand Advocates
There are also a series of “soft benefits” that you should be paying
attention to, including employees feeling more engaged, sales people
having better conversations with customers, better quality of candidates
being recruited and increased overall company and employee alignment.
Find stakeholders and departments that are looking to improve goals
like these, include them in your program, and talk with employees and
managers about ways to measure the impact of employee advocacy
based on these goals.
Review these metrics and soft benefits biweekly to assess progress and
implement necessary optimizations. Report success monthly. Meet with
key stakeholders for a detailed review quarterly to discuss success, key
learnings, optimizations and planning for the next three months.
In short, always make sure the numbers are growing and employees
remain engaged in the program. Consistently check to determine that the
program is still meeting the goals outlined by the company.
WEEKLY MONTHLY QUARTERLY
Review Metrics
& Soft Benefits
Report
Success
Detailed Review
with Key
Stakeholders
22The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing
HOW OFTEN TO ASSESS PERFORMANCE

24. 23The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing
Step 7:
Grow the
Advocate
Marketing
Program

25. Eventually, you may appoint a manager who is
fully responsible for the success of the employee
Advocate Marketing program.
As the program begins to expand, keep revamping and revising the
training for new advocates as they come on board. Continue to leverage
feedback and integrate new ideas as employees join to keep the program
fresh and exciting. After a while, you will be able to segment employee
advocates based on the topics they are most interested in. Keep in mind
that different employee segments will respond to different content.’
While other employees may be aware of the program, they may need
additional information before they want to join in. Leverage internal
champions to host social hours to answer frequently asked questions
about participating. Hosting “mythbuster” sessions is a fun way to dispel
myths about participating in the program. For instance, employees may
think the company can post on their behalf if they choose to participate.
Assure them this is not the case.
Keep in mind that different employee segments
will respond to different content.
24The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing

26. 25Millennials as Brand Advocates
Here are some additional strategies for growing the
program and gaining more advocates:
Incentivize sign ups. For instance, give the first 100 people who sign
up free T-shirts with their sign-up numbers on them.
Define a part of your program that has a positive impact on the
advocates’ community and aligns with the company’s stance on
corporate responsibility, for which employees can feel they are
making an impact through their participation. Public service
campaigns work well for this, such as spreading awareness about the
dangers of texting and driving.
Promote the program on employee communication channels and
include quotes and success stories from current advocates. Continue
reminding employees about the benefits of participation. You can also
call out weekly top advocates in these communications.
Grow awareness with LinkedIn ads that target company employees.
Put up signs about the program around the office, at employee events
and in break areas.
Talk about the program’s success metrics and participation during
company meetings and events.
Keeping advocates engaged is a key part of maintaining the program. Ask
for feedback from participants to make the program the best it can possibly
be. Leverage employee focus groups or conduct surveys to determine
which content and thank yous resonate best with employees. Ask
advocates what they would change about the program if they could. Your
employees may have some great ideas for expanding content and goals.
25The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing

27. 26Millennials as Brand Advocates 26The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing
Employee Advocate Marketing Program Launch Checklist
1. Make Your Plan—Week 1 Date:
Create a Social Media Policy
Identify Goals
Get Executive Buy-in
Find a Champion
Create a Content and Engagement Plan
Determine type of content
Align with marketing calendar
Determine communication strategy
Plan how to thank advocates
Create a program hashtag
2. Identify and Invite Your Most Social-Savvy Employees—Week 4 Date:
Determine size of select group
Recruit the first group
3. Train the Core Group of Advocates—Week 5 Date:
Determine how you will conduct training
Communicate the program goals
Convey the value of participating to your advocates
Establish guidelines for sharing
Ensure advocates sign terms & conditions
4. Launch the Program and Engage Your Advocates—Week 6 Date:
Provide approved messages and content
Refresh content weekly
Grow the program slowly
Encourage message creativity and content creation
Add advocate-created content in the program
Demonstrate appreciation
Hold office hours for ongoing training
5. Raise Internal Awareness About the Program—Week 10 Date:
Promote the program on internal channels
Empower advocates to spread the word
Assemble a team to champion program
6. Measure Success—Week 11 Date:
Identify key metrics
Analyze participation and engagement
Review metrics and soft benefits (weekly)
Report success (monthly)
Detailed review with stakeholders (quarterly)
Make sure numbers are growing
7. Grow the Advocate Marketing Program—Week 15 Date:
Continually revamp program and training
Segment advocates based on interest
Leverage champions to inspire and educate others
Leverage all internal channels to promote the program
Employ additional strategies for growth
Expand goals

28. 27The Definitive Guide to Employee Advocate Marketing | © copyright 2014 SocialChorus, Inc. All rights reserved.
415.655.2700 info@socialchorus.com
socialchorus.com blog.socialchorus.com
Conclusion
Using this step-by-step guide, you can create employee
Advocate Marketing program that successfully
accomplishes your outlined goals.
If you start with an in-depth plan and follow each step, the result will be a
growing employee Advocate Marketing program that will inspire with the
results and direction it goes in. If you’re ready to start empowering your
employees to speak out for your company, don’t wait. Get started today!
SocialChorus® powers tens of thousands of brand advocates – employees, consumers and
bloggers – to experience, create and share authentic content about brands they love. We
call this new marketing category Advocate Marketing.
Our award-winning Advocate Experience™ solution makes Advocate Marketing easy. We
combine a comprehensive SaaS platform with a dedicated, expert team and best practices to
deliver measurable social engagement with millions of people every month.
Leaders in every industry, including consumer packaged goods, retail, technology,
telecommunications, travel, automotive and financial services have chosen SocialChorus,
the recognized leader in Advocate Marketing.
Learn more at socialchorus.com.
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