Strategic Guide for an Employee Advocacy Programme

Employee Advocacy Programme

Social media is all about networking. One of your most easily accessible and powerful networks is your employees. Are you making the most of your employees when it comes to animal health social media strategy?

Encouraging employees to take a more active role in sharing social media posts from your company pages is a powerful tool for increasing the reach of your posts and generating positive brand exposure. The fact that employees are engaged and want to interact on social media is also an excellent signal to possible stakeholders that they are proud to work for your company and believe in its values.

Put in place an employee advocacy programme using the following steps:

1. Create a clear social media mission – Put together a clear outline of what your goals are as an organisation, in line with any business objectives. This should include the benefits of sharing on social media for the organisation and also the employee.
2. Put in place social media guidelines – Develop a social media policy that lists some simple guidelines for employees to follow when representing your company on social media. These should reflect veterinary and animal health specific social media guidelines, as well as how to share posts, and what language to avoid in comments.
3. Lead by example – It is essential for senior leadership to set a proactive example by sharing social media posts to their personal profiles.
4. Identify key employees – Select some specific employee ambassadors to recruit to the advocacy programme initially who you think are most positive about their work for your company, understand the regulatory environment (especially with regard to veterinary medicines regulations) and are more likely to interact on social channels.
5. Set up a rewards scheme – you could consider rewarding employees for their social media support and interactions. This can take any form you choose, but a good example is a prize-draw for sharing a specific strategically-important post.
6. Track your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) – here at Companion Consultancy we perform monthly social media reporting. We have specific KPIs in place to monitor performance, and we can compare results before and after the initiation of an employee advocacy programme. Contact us for help identifying appropriate KPIs for your company and to discuss animal health social media strategies.

Found these tips helpful but not sure where to start? Companion Consultancy can help you create the necessary documents for your employee advocacy programme.

We also provide tips for making the most of LinkedIn, which is the platform on which Employee Advocacy Programmes can have the most impact. We even offer a free 15 minute audit of your personal profile.

Contact us today