How Employee Advocacy Builds a Trustworthy Brand Presence

How Employee Advocacy Builds a Trustworthy Brand Presence Traditional marketing techniques are all good and well, but just how much do people trust the information shared by PR and marketing teams? Your team can be the biggest promotional tool for your business, when working as  advocates for for the brand  and people are much more likely to trust the opinion of existing staff over marketing content. This infographic by Everyone Social explains the benefits of employee advocacy and why your business should be doing it. The challenges being faced:  There is more and increasing amount of competition for brands to reach their customers. Only a small proportion of employees worldwide are truly engaged at work  63% of employees are not engaged in their jobs, whereas 13% say they are. Attention spans are getting shorter, dropping from 12 seconds in 2000 to just 8 seconds in 2012. Why does employee advocacy matter? Employee advocacy connects the dots between team engagement and brand thought leadership. 84% of people are more likely to trust a recommendation from somebody that they know, than from marketing content. 41% of people think that a companys employees are a more trustworthy source than the PR team, CEO or founder of the business. 40% of sales professionals said that social media has helped them to close two to five deals. How can you get started? Create a strategy that aligns with your brand priorities. Create and distribute a social media policy that everyone within the company must abide by. Nominate and train employees to test out  the advocacy program. Help your team build  their personal brands. Hold training sessions so everyone know what to do. For more tips and statistics see below. More on this topic at  Employee Advocacy: The Ultimate Handbook.