How to Supercharge Brand Reach…
Employee advocacy is an untapped goldmine in B2B tech companies, particularly where every team member can serve as a voice for the company, amplifying the message and brand. Tech founders must leverage the workforce as brand ambassadors as a smart, cost-effective way to expand their marketing efforts, especially via social media. It’s your employees who humanise the brand with the work they do and the customer relationships they build, giving it authenticity and reach through their personal connections. Taking full advantage of everyone’s professional networks is what helps multiply your brand’s reach. Wearing company-branded hoodies has nothing to do with employee advocacy and is a facile endeavour and a waste of small company resources. Bootstrapped startups have barely enough cash to make payroll and may not know where the next customer is coming from. Founders, check your egos.
What is Employee Advocacy?
So how does employee advocacy work? First, picture a team that is well-versed in the company’s products, values and culture, which is a must. Early-stage businesses can quickly coach new and existing employees into making advocacy a good habit everyone exercises as part of their daily role and responsibilities. For larger companies with an international presence, significant workforces, organisational processes, layers of management and HR to navigate, it can require a more formal approach. Nonetheless, there is no excuse for tech startups not to make this a standard employee practice. With a little bit of training, guidance and encouragement, it’s a good thing for everyone to do that will help amplify the company message and humanise the story. It provides new channels to expand any company’s reach beyond more official channels.
Your Tech Startup is About the People, Not the Tech
Some people are predisposed to being active on social channels and will take to advocacy quickly and easily, while others may be less engaged or motivated to support any kind of social promotion. That is just human nature; some people are gregarious, while others are more introverted. Imagine all your employees sharing and commenting on relevant industry posts on LinkedIn, tweeting about a webinar or presenting about the company’s latest innovation at an industry event. This can help build trust with prospects, which for B2B tech companies, is worth its weight in gold. Who knows, it could even propel you toward series A funding quicker than you could otherwise achieve if you kept quiet.
Top 4 Ways to Empower Your Employee Advocates:
1. Tools
Turning your team into enthusiastic advocates doesn’t need to be complex or expensive. First and foremost, get them to engage with your company content on all the major social platforms where you post, such as LinkedIn, X, YouTube, etc. Focus on the social channels where your target audience is present and ignore the ones that don’t provide the opportunity to engage with customers and prospects. At the very least, be as effective as you can in getting employees to set a little time aside each day to help promote your content and comment on relevant posts, groups and connect with respected industry leaders.
Make sure everyone has an appropriate LinkedIn profile and is listed as an employee on your company’s LinkedIn page. This way, every time they like, share, post and comment, there is a direct link back to your brand. To help, you could consider tools like LinkedIn Elevate, Bambu by Sprout Social and Hootsuite Amplify, all of which are ideal for employees to share curated content, track engagement and grow their personal brand alongside your company’s. However, only deploy additional tools if necessary and with additional training.
2. Training
Training, guidance and motivation must not be ignored and is essential. Employees must understand what the company stands for, what tone of voice to use and how to spot moments worth sharing. Consider running workshops to teach them how to create engaging posts and clarify that advocacy isn’t about being a corporate mouthpiece or trying to sell the product; it’s about aligning a personal brand with the company’s mission in a way that feels natural.
In small startups, where everyone is busy working long hours and covering multiple roles, it can be challenging to ask people to spend some of their time on advocacy duties. However, it is extremely important to do this because startups have the most to be gained; anything that helps amplify a small brand could be the difference needed to survive in those difficult early years.
3. Culture
Make it fun, not forced. People should only feel like contributing when they are supporting your content or have something of value to say. Creating a culture of advocacy must feel like an opportunity, not a chore. The last thing you want is employees rolling their eyes at yet another request to share a corporate blog. Instead, find ways to incentivise advocacy.
Gamification can work wonders, perhaps a leader board showing who gets the most engagement or offering rewards for employees who consistently contribute. Be creative and work together to find ways to increase engagement and the number of company followers. Set goals for the numbers you want to achieve and ask everyone to do their bit to help.
4. Incentives
Beyond creating a positive work culture, incentives for advocacy can help boost participation. It doesn’t always have to be about monetary rewards, although that helps. Public recognition, additional time off or exclusive perks for top advocates can generate excitement. For instance, you could offer to feature employees who regularly engage in advocacy in company blogs, videos or podcasts.
People and Culture are Your Biggest Assets
Company culture plays a huge role in employee advocacy. If your startup embraces transparency, open communication and core values that employees truly believe in, they’ll be naturally inclined to advocate. It’s like being a football fan; when you love the team, you will show your support. A good example of this is when the employees of a tech startup truly believe in their product and become its biggest advocates. This would manifest in them constantly sharing tips and stories on social media. This authenticity shines through and will contribute to increasing awareness and growth.
Personal Brands
One of the additional benefits of employee advocacy is that, at the same time as expanding the reach of your company brand, it will naturally grow the personal brands of the employees who are active. This helps everyone involved, because credibility and visibility matter. By aligning personal image with that of the company, employees can advance their careers while simultaneously helping the company. When your social media posts gain traction or your blog post hits the front page of a thought leadership forum, it’s not just the company benefiting; you’re seen as an expert, too. Everyone wins.
Technology to Help Amplify Your Message
Having the right tools can help accelerate employee advocacy. Beyond social sharing platforms, integrating advocacy with sales tools such as HubSpot or Salesforce gives marketing teams insight into how this organic promotion is moving the needle on lead generation. Tools like EveryoneSocial or Sociabble can help employees distribute content effortlessly, track engagement metrics and even tailor their outreach to specific audiences. It’s a great example of how technology can facilitate and amplify the human element in marketing. There are many advocacy programs that have yielded impressive results. By championing the company in this way, it is not unusual to see at least a 10x increase in reach via employee posts versus regular company posts.
People and Their Stories
Employee advocacy is all about the human touch. Cultivate a place where employees can share their personal stories, experiences and express their passion for what they do. Tech is often a dry topic for most, but when framed through human stories and quantifiable business outcomes, it becomes relatable and approachable. For example, rather than talk about your SaaS solution, share stories about how your tech helped struggling businesses weather economic downturns, how teams have grown closer and more productive or how you helped a specific company improve its customer experience. This storytelling, shared by employees on platforms like LinkedIn, resonates far more deeply than a press release or polished ad campaign ever could.
It’s About Startup Survival
Employee advocacy is a useful and important way to engage all employees, whether they are coding, marketing or selling. This community engagement can help build the brand and drive growth. It gives everyone in a startup, regardless of their job role, the chance to do their bit in creating a sustainable business, with the added satisfaction and rewards that come with success. When you consider most tech startups will fail in the first five years and only 10% will see their tenth anniversary, it’s important to use every single resource, channel and opportunity to make a positive impact.
All Employees Can Market the Business
Advocacy is like having an army of passionate marketers, each with their unique voice and personal networks. For tech founders, this is a cost-effective and highly authentic way to expand your reach and build trust, not something you can replicate by hiring a social media agency. The tools and platforms are there, but the key ingredient is creating a culture where employees feel genuinely empowered and excited to share their views and experiences as they relate to your company’s story, values and vision.
Tap into Everyone’s Creativity and Energy
You will find that many employees are naturally excited, highly motivated and prepared to muck in and invest time to help. Even for individual’s whose job role has nothing to do with marketing, if they feel they can do something to help contribute to growth, they will be fully engaged. Taking direct action connects them to the bigger picture and the goals of the business, helping to improve alignment and create a culture of “we’re all in it together.” Only the best founders have the foresight and ability to create the culture to tap into the creativity and energy of everyone in the business in this way.
You may want to read: “How to Define Your Target Market.”
