Why Employees are Willing to Engage in Social Media

It’s always wise to begin with the “why” of anything. So, let’s look at reasons employees might be willing to share your company’s content and be an advocate for your brand on social media.

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Help your company grow your social media following.

1. These employees care about your brand’s social media following and want to help you grow it.
   

 Help drive sales leads. 

1. Often, these employees are in sales or business development or another customer facing role and they want the company to succeed.
   

Educate their network about your company.

1. These employees take pride in working for your company and they want their network to know when your company wins awards, closes big deals, contributes to charitable causes, etc.
   

Help your company recruit talent.

1. Similarly, these employees want to help the company recruit the talent needed to grow and thrive. Many companies offer financial incentives to employees to help them source qualified candidates for open positions.  
   

Look good to their management.

1. These employees want to be noticed by management. Sharing content and advocating for the brand can get them noticed especially when these employees like, share and comment on posts from management.
   

Boost their professional reputation.

1. These employees have a strong interest in building their own brand for credibility inside their company and in their industry. This can be one of the most powerful and beneficial reasons to the brand because of the halo effect – when the employee’s brand reputation reflects well on the company’s brand.
   

Participate in monetary incentives.

1. When financial incentives are offered in combination with training, content and governance, positive results can be sustained. However, the absence of a formal employee advocacy program can dilute the long term effectiveness of monetary incentives.
   

We also discussed obstacles to get employees to advocate on social media.

• 12 % of employees don’t know what to share because there is no employee advocacy plan in place.
  
• 8% think they don’t have a big enough network to have an impact. This is symptomatic of a lack of understanding how to share content with hashtags or engage with other’s posts to have an impact.
  
• 6% of employees don’t see how it benefits them. This is huge and addressed through training.
  
• 15% of employees don’t want to sound like a company robot. This is addressed through process and efficient implementation of technology platforms.  
  
• 14% of employees say they don’t have time. Usually, this obstacle is addressed through training and an employee advocacy platform that makes it easy and time efficient.
  
• 15% of employees say they don’t want to overwhelm their network with company information. Little do they know the diversity of content available, so they can pick and choose content that is relevant to them.
  
• 30% of employees say they don’t use social media for business. Again, by addressing the why, employees can learn the value of social media engagement. Plus, LinkedIn is a business-focused social network. Engaging on LinkedIn properly has little to no overlap with personal social media usage.