64% of businesses that have a structured employee advocacy program report a lift in revenue- revenue that can be directly attributed to their employee advocacy efforts. The bottom line? The more your employees share your branded content, the more significant the impact that shared content has on your revenue. But, how can you encourage your employees to share your content on a consistent, ongoing basis? It all comes down to having the right incentives. Here are 10 ways to incentivize your employees to share your content.
10 Incentives To Encourage Your Employees to Share Your Branded Content
- Create An Official Program
- Make it Easy To Participate
- Upgrade Their LinkedIn Accounts
- Uplevel Your Employee’s Personal Brands
- Tickets To Favorite Events
- Extra Vacation or PTO
- Bonuses and Cash Rewards
- Invest in Employee Growth
- Award Their Loyalty
- Recognize Their Participation
1) Create an Official Program
The first step in turning your employees into an army of advocates is to legitimize your employee advocacy efforts. In other words, you need to roll out an official program – complete with rules, best practices, suggested content, the works.
Take the time to outline the goals of your program and its benefits to both the individual employee and the organization. Then share that program with your employees.
2) Make it Easy to Participate In
You can have the best program in the world, but if it’s a headache for your employees to be a part of, they won’t join. Plain and simple. Remember, your employees are busy people. They’re taking care of their regular responsibilities. So, if you want them to add one more item to their to-do list, you need to make it easy for them to knock it out between tasks.
Pro-Tip: Take the friction out of sharing by hosting your employee advocacy program on a platform that allows your employees to share your content with a single click of the mouse. With SocialToaster, your advocacy marketing team can identify the specific content and its accompanying social posts. Then, you can send that shareable content directly to your employees, where with a single click, they can share it to their personal LinkedIn pages.
3) Upgrade Their LinkedIn Accounts
Now that we’ve got the basic engagement needs laid out let’s move on to answering your employee’s most critical question – what’s in it for them? To engage your employees and encourage them to share your content, you need to tie an incentive to the program.
One of our favorite incentives is to provide participants with an elevated LinkedIn experience. Upgrade their account to a premium level to unlock key features of the LinkedIn platform. Not only can this provide your employees with better tools to complete their work, but it can also help to uplevel their personal brands (more on this below).
4) Uplevel Their Personal Brands
The raw truth is, your employees won’t share bad content. At least, not consistently. Each of your team’s social media profiles is a carefully curated experience – one that reflects the personal brand they are trying to build for themselves. For your employees to share your content, that content needs to at least align with their personal brands.
Even better, if that content actually improves their personal brand and sets them up as a thought-leader in their space, your employees will be begging for opportunities to share it with their network.
5) Tickets to Favorite Events
Participation contests can do wonders for bolstering employee advocacy participation. And, of course, all contests need a strong prize to drive engagement. With live music returning, concert and festival tickets are fantastic prizes for any employee advocacy program. Not only can they show your staff that you “get” their interests, it’s also an opportunity for you to endear yourself to the winners by providing access to VIP experiences and hard-to-get tickets.
6) Extra Vacation of PTO
No matter your company’s vacation policy, no employee is going to say no to an extra day or two of paid leave. If the idea of a full-day off makes your team a bit nervous, consider providing flex-time that your employees can use to take the occasional longer lunch or head out early on a Friday.
7) Bonus and Cash Incentives
Suppose you’d rather limit your team’s time off. In that case, you can use this same incentive structure (milestones) to provide your employees with opportunities to earn gift cards, bonuses, or other cash incentives.
If you’re opting to give away gift cards, be sure to poll your program participants to see what gift cards excite them. Don’t assume that any old gift card will work as an incentive. It has to be something that excites your employees.
8) Invest in Employee Growth
When selecting your program’s incentive, keep in mind that not all employees are motivated by cash and gift cards. Your high performers, for instance, may appreciate an opportunity to grow their talents and skills through continued education. Consider awarding your top advocates with tickets or travel to a conference of their choice. Not only does this reward work for your employee, but it can also help you improve your business as well.
9) Award Their Loyalty
The benefits of employee advocacy compound over time. The longer you can keep your employees engaged and sharing your content, the greater your return on investment on your employee advocacy program. To that end, consider adding tiers of rewards (or milestones) that employees can unlock by consistently sharing content across an extended period.
10) Recognize Their Participation
Don’t underestimate the power of public recognition in encouraging program participation. A public shout-out in a team meeting or internal newsletter (specifically from a C-suite team member) can do wonders for bolstering employee morale and keeping your employees engaged in sharing your branded content.
Build an Employee Advocacy Program That Drives Participation
The return on your employee advocacy initiative directly correlates with your employee participation rate. The more active employees you’re able to bring into your program, the more content that’s being shared, the more people see that content, the greater the program’s impact on your bottom line. Work with your employees to identify the incentives that speak to them, then build your program rewards around their desire.
Ready to create an employee advocacy program that your team can’t wait to join? We have you covered. SocialToaster has become the chosen employee advocacy platform for hundreds of businesses across dozens of industries. Give us a call today or schedule your demo to learn more about how the SocialToaster platform can support your employee advocacy program.
