A Guide on Employee Advocacy on Social Media

Published on 28.12.2025 by Chizoba T

In recent years, competition on social media has intensified, underscoring the need for a strong, long-term social media growth strategy. Brands now employ various methods to reach their target audience, including influencer marketing. However, with the organic reach of social media content decreasing and influencer costs rising, they have now been compelled to seek alternative marketing methods.

One of the methods that is gaining traction in 2025 is employee advocacy. This involves employees sharing content about your brand, sharing their experiences, and amplifying your brand's reach. This is not only a buzzword but also a powerful strategy for leveraging your audience's individual voices to build a loyal following. In this guide, we take you through the steps of using employee advocacy for brand advocacy.

What is Social Media Employee Advocacy?

Employee advocacy is a process where a brand uses its employees as authentic brand ambassadors on top social media platforms. It involves the employees sharing content that promotes the brand and engaging in industry conversations using personal networks. This helps them create some genuine connections that cannot be replicated using traditional marketing methods.

You can use an employee advocacy program to encourage employees to:

Grow brand visibility by amplifying your company's promotions and messages.
Sharing their positive messages and experiences while providing an inside view.
Positioning themselves as brand advocates who have the confidence to recommend the products and services offered by the company to their networks.

Employees can conduct the advocacy program through their social media platforms, traditional networks, or word-of-mouth. With statistics indicating that 50% of employees are already posting about their organizations in their channels, this can be an excellent opportunity for them to leverage.

Statistics indicate that at least 30% of high-growth companies already use an employee advocacy program. This could be in the form of posting their organization’s content, recommending the company's products or services, or creating posts that position the brand in a positive light.

LinkedIn is the most preferred platform for employee advocacy. However, in the recent past, this has also happened on other platforms like TikTok, X, and Slack. It may take simple formats like employees liking a company post, sharing it, or creating content about your brand. You can read our guide on LinkedIn content formats to consider.

Benefits of Employee Advocacy

Employee advocacy comes with various benefits, such as:

Increased reach and brand awareness. According to one study, when employees shared company-branded messages, they achieved five times the reach compared to when the message was shared through the company social media account. This is a clear indication that employee advocacy can be a powerful marketing method.
Brand messaging companies. A formal employee advocacy program involves the business providing content to the employees to redistribute. This also involves providing them with on-brand content and some clear guidelines while leaving some room for their own perspectives and voices.
Adds a human face. When employees add a human face to their brand and illustrate how their company helped them achieve their goals, it puts a human face on the brand and showcases their humane side.
Higher employee performance. According to the same study, companies with a high employee advocacy program outperformed those without by a factor of 2.
Create a positive brand image. When your employees position your brand in a positive light, their audience on social media will continue to absorb the information. This will improve your brand image and make other people want to work for your business.
Improved credibility. An employee’s voice is often seen as more credible compared to a brand’s marketing messages.

How Advocacy Benefits Employees

As noted earlier, the employee advocacy program is usually managed by employees. This also means it has some benefits for the relationship, such as:

Easy-to-read content. In an employee advocacy program, the brand is responsible for providing employees with the content to post. This helps them save time while adding a personal touch to the content.
Encourage those hesitant about social media. Some people may not be very active on social media, but would still want to be strong brand advocates. If they have content ready to post, this will encourage them to post.
Position themselves as thought leaders. According to a 2023 study on how B2B leaders perceived thought leadership, 89% said it helped improve the company’s perception. In addition to branded content, employees can also share industry commentary, positioning themselves as industry experts.
Better networking opportunities. When you post on social media, this will improve your networking opportunities.
Boost morale. An effective employee advocacy program helps to increase engagement and morale. According to a Gallup study, it can reduce employee turnover by 60%.

How the Employee Advocacy Program Works

A good employee advocacy program doesn't just happen organically. It involves providing training content, incentives, and other guidelines to help your employees share your company messaging in their own voices. This means businesses shouldn't only pitch to employees but also empower them and show them how to perform employee advocacy.

Here are several methods that can be applied in an employee advocacy program:

Requiring employees to like a particular post.
Ask them to share a company post on their social media platform.
Asking employees to comment on the post.
Asking employees to share the company post while adding some thoughts to the post.
Employees share your business post to start the conversation. They can ask questions about the post and require people to share it.

Employee Advocacy vs. Brand Advocacy

Brand advocacy, as the name suggests, involves endorsing a brand or product by a person because they genuinely like it. Brand advocates can therefore help to increase your business's credibility, increase trust, and expand your brand’s reach through enthusiastic and authentic recommendations.

On the other hand, employee advocacy involves your employees becoming brand ambassadors. The employees share more about your brand on social media, as they aim to showcase your business's positive aspects to outsiders.

Steps in Implementing an Employee Advocacy Program

If you are getting started with employee advocacy, this may look overwhelming. This is why we have added the necessary steps to get started. Here are the steps to follow:

Ensure Positivity Around the Workplace

Before you start, ensure that your workplace is not only appreciated but also loved by employees. To achieve this, you need to understand and meet their needs constantly. According to Gallup research, various factors affect employees' opinions of their workplace. These include:

Having a clear purpose and mission.
Being transparent about their expectations.
Regularly recognizing the contributors.
Having an open communication line.

Managers play an essential role in impacting employees' outlook on the workplace. To ensure a positive opinion, they should:

Define and communicate to employees their roles and expectations.
Offer the right tools and training.
Have a clever evaluation process that empowers employees to thrive more.

By going beyond fundamental advocacy, the advocacy program can increase your profitability, improve customer loyalty, and improve productivity.

Engage the Executives

One way to ensure the success of your employee advocacy program is to secure executive buy-in. When leaders actively support your initiative, it sends a strong message. This isn't another job but a strategic priority for your entire organization. The genuine engagement should begin from the top.

When a leader actively champions a cause, the employee will get inspired to follow, resulting in a ripple effect that increases brand visibility. This will increase the employee’s productivity, resulting in greater business outcomes.

Have Clear Goals and KPIs

Before starting an employee advocacy program, you need to understand what you want to achieve with it. Avoid ambiguity by communicating clear goals and providing measurable metrics to track. You can have various program goals, such as:

Talent acquisition.
Lead acquisition.
Improved brand awareness
Higher share of voice.

You can also measure different KPIs, such as:

Organic reach.
Top contributors.
Engagement.
Website traffic from the employee advocacy program.
Overall brand sentiment.

Choose the Advocacy Program Leaders

One of the mistakes brands make is assuming that the leaders of the advocacy program are necessarily those at a higher rank. However, these may be those with an active social media presence. Some of the factors to consider when choosing are those who are:

Adept at personal brand development.
Regularly share industry-related content.
The public face of the company because of their work.
Are enthusiastic about the company and industry.

Once you find employees who meet these qualities, you can empower them to play an essential role in shaping and promoting the campaign.

Create Some Social Media Guidelines

Provide employees with guidelines on what they are expected to share and how to communicate more effectively. You can create a social media content policy that outlines topics to avoid, FAQs, dos and don'ts, and FAQ responses, as well as brand and social media content style guidelines, such as typography, color palette, and logo use. Consider also the brand's key attributes, such as messaging and tone of voice.

Ensure that the rules are easy to understand and presented in a visually engaging format. Add examples and include contact details of the employee advocacy program leaders for additional guidance.

Consider the Employees' Input

After creating your goal and rules, you need to engage the employees who will be participating and inform them of the tools they will be using in the program. Ask for volunteers for the program, and don’t force employees to share your branded content in their private accounts. Instead, you can ask for their input in the content planning.

Make sure you inform them that the content must reflect the company's culture and align with the advocacy program's goals. By incorporating employee ideas into the advocacy program, you can foster a sense of collaboration and inclusion.

Adding Valuable Resources

The goal of any effective employee advocacy program is to provide employees with valuable content that showcases the company's positive side and supports them in their roles as key industry players. According to LinkedIn research, sharing advocacy content increases users' profile views by 600% and enables them to grow their network by 3X.

You can achieve this by asking employees about the questions they regularly get from customers. They can then create content that addresses these questions. Since front office employees are usually closest to customers, they are best suited to provide these insights.

Regularly update your content library with these resources to ensure easy access. Make sure employees personalize their messages by adding video or image captions. However, this too must align with your brand guidelines.

Encourage Employees to Stay Authentic

Don't make your rules overly restrictive. Instead, set flexible boundaries to encourage employees to remain authentic while ensuring they protect the company’s reputation.

According to a report on employee advocacy, when employees create highly personalized content, they see a 64% increase in engagement compared to those who don't. After they have agreed to share your branded content, you can ask employees to add a personal touch to the post.

Just as a brand voice is essential for companies, a personal voice is important as well. Adding one or two lines to a post helps make it authentic and enhances your personal brand.

Employee Training

Some employees aren't active online and may be uncomfortable posting on social media platforms. When you offer social media training, you demonstrate confidence in your employees' skills.

Remember that the training doesn't stop. You will need to evaluate your campaign's performance constantly and ensure good internal communication. This is especially important with the constant evaluation of different platforms.

A good example of a company that offered excellent social media training is Microsoft. By teaching their staff the skills they need to use social media, they increased their staff's confidence, resulting in a more impactful program.

Participation Incentives

Even though there are benefits of thought leadership and networking for employees, these may not be rewarded immediately. Brands can encourage participation by providing incentives and perks. According to a Social Media Today study, the most commonly used incentives were company recognition (39% of businesses) and monetary incentives (19%). This could be in the form of:

Company meetings, shoutouts, social media, or newsletter.
Bonuses or gift cards.
The use of branded merchandise, such as accessories, apparel, and tech gadgets.
Event tickets, such as team outings and exclusive company experiences.

The reward may integrate well with other recognitions, such as the staff of the month. Include tangible benefits, such as gamification or using advocacy as content, and make sure you have a leaderboard to highlight your top contributors and have prizes for the winners. Have a draw with the different participants for fairness.

Measuring KPIs

As with other social media campaign strategies, you will need to track your campaign's performance. Start by determining the program's purpose and monitoring its success. You can use benchmark studies to understand this better, but ensure your goals are tailored to the industry's needs. Keep monitoring and tweaking your campaigns based on the insights you gather.

For instance, Dell started by structuring its employee advocacy program around brand awareness, engagement, and lead generation. This enabled them to easily measure the program's success and use quantifiable data to drive continuous improvement.

So which metric should you track in an employee advocacy program? A good metric should track both the campaign's impact and participation. This clearly illustrates the people getting involved and the results they are bringing to the organization. You can track various participant metrics such as:

How many people are taking part?
The number of posts the employees are sharing.
The adoption rate of the program.

You can also track the engagement metrics, such as:

Reactions, clicks, and impressions.
A rise in the reach, mentions, and followers.
Conversions and traffic from links shared by employees.

You can also track recruitment metrics such as:

The traffic going to your career page results from posts from employees.
The number of applications resulting from the advocacy program.
Time-to-hire before and after the launch of the advocacy program.

It's crucial to track culture metrics such as:

Pulse surveys that measure belonging and engagement.
Retention and participation rate in the advocacy program.

How Companies Can Encourage Employee Advocacy

We already mentioned the need to provide incentives to employees. On top of that, here are tips to encourage them to engage in company advocacy.

Employee Training

You need to provide them with the training and tools required for success. Make sure you inform them of the best practices for brand and social media promotion, and have clear templates and guidelines for content sharing, including the frequency, tone, and content type, that align with your company’s brand.

Provide High-Quality Content

If the content you provide the employees with isn't worth sharing, they will not find a reason to share it. Therefore, make sure you provide them with thought-provoking content that adds value to your audience to drive conversion. The content could take the form of industry news, company updates, employee stories, and thought leadership pieces.

Ensure that employees can easily share the content. For instance, you can offer them templates, visuals, and other pre-approved content. In addition, a regular content schedule should be in place that keeps your audience informed and engaged.

Have a Strong Advocacy Culture

When your company's employees are happy, they are more likely to participate in the advocacy program. Therefore, maintain a supportive and inclusive culture that will make your employees feel valued and ready to act as your brand advocate.

You can encourage your employees to share personal experiences and stories concerning their projects, work, and achievements. Make sure they add personal experiences and insights when sharing content to make it more relatable and authentic.

Set an Example

When implementing a program for your brand, you must set a good example. Take time to discuss why employee advocacy matters and the value it will add for employees and the company as a whole. Encourage your leaders and executives to play a prominent role on LinkedIn by sharing content and driving employee engagement.

Mistakes to Avoid in Employee Advocacy Programs

When doing employee advocacy, brands often make inevitable mistakes. These are:

Lack of clear goals. If you don't set clear goals, it can be hard to track your program's performance. Start by defining the exact objectives to track progress and ensure the program aligns with your company's overall goals.
Not aligning the employee needs. For an advocacy program to work well, it should be aligned with the employees' needs. Therefore, consider their ideas and thoughts so that employees will willfully join the program. Ask employees for their opinions, then use the information to create a program that works for everyone.
Having stringent rules. If the rules of your employee advocacy are stringent, this may make employees a bit reluctant to take part. Therefore, give them creative freedom and allow them to add their unique ideas and perspectives. Though guidelines are fine, having stringent rules can prevent people from actively participating.
Not taking advantage of other platforms. While most employee advocacy happens on social media, relying solely on these platforms will limit your brand's opportunities. Therefore, use different domains such as public relations, customer service, and content marketing. This will enable you to reach more people and leverage other people’s skills.
Not considering legal implications. Make sure you consult your legal team to ensure that the content employees share adheres to data and privacy laws. For instance, you should ensure that employees don't share confidential or sensitive content that violates the privacy laws. By doing so, you will build trust and ensure that everyone abides by the law.

Understanding the Best Content for Employee Advocacy

Social media platforms such as LinkedIn are usually filled with over-polished content, and authentic content stands out. Therefore, your team should also ask employees to create content that feels personal and real. This could include expert insights, authentic experiences, and innovative marketing strategies. These are great employee advocacy content for LinkedIn.

The best employee advocacy content should combine company-centric content, such as press releases and blog posts, with third-party content, such as industry news. You can also add employee-generated content, such as personal stories and events. These are excellent contents for deriving authenticity and relevance. Use visually appealing content, such as videos, photos, and infographics, to increase engagement and build a personal brand.

Remember that your employees also have ideas about the type of content they want to create. Therefore, give them the freedom to share their preferred content. This will ensure that the message remains authentic. But if you are looking for content ideas, consider the following:

You can feature an industry expert in a company podcast, or you can ask the experts to share a blog post. You can provide social media captions that employees can easily share.
Sharing employee photos. You can ask employees to share pictures from a company event to showcase the company culture and support employees' branding efforts.
Third-party content. If you find relevant content from a third party, you can provide the content to your employees to share. This could have new trends or industry news.
Thought leadership content. If you want to position your employees as experts and increase the level of engagement generated, thought leadership content will help you.
Product launches. After you have launched a product, you can encourage the people who worked on it to spread the word.
Hiring. If you have new opportunities, ask your human resources employees to share them.

In Conclusion

Employee advocacy offers many benefits that can help take your brand to the next level. From driving brand awareness to improving the brand image, there are lots of benefits you can get. However, this involves more than just giving employees posts to share. You need a good strategy for an effective program. By following the steps outlined above, you can have a successful employee advocacy program.