One thing to think about before you embark on an Employee Advocacy Program
From time time, we have marketers contacting us about Employee Advocacy programs and asking whether/how we can help.
I am usually offering them this short story. “The Secret Life of a Standard Employee Advocacy Program”
=========== beginning of story ===========
Start
1- A Manager in a PR/marketing group (maybe back from SXSW) decides it is a critical program.
2- 10s,100s of employees are named ambassadors. A solution is purchased with content distribution, leader boards …
Everybody is highly energized and ready to go for it!
Early problems
5- Since “productivity” is the issue, the centralized program automates more and more, sometimes even it takes over the social identity of the employees and tweet/engage in their names.
It can be automated so it can scale.
Failure
6- The audience of the employees who used to perform decently in social is turned off by the corporate spamming (same message every other day …) and they quit listening.
Justification
7- The problem is diagnosed as a lack of motivation from the ambassadors and the conclusion is either “social does not work”, “social does not work for us”, or “our employees can’t figure out social.”
============= end of story ==========
If they don’t like the story, then I try to setup a meeting 6 months later.
If they do like it, then we start discussing an alternative approach to thought leadership / social selling: The grass roots one.