We don’t recommend incentivising your employee advocates with financial rewards; but, the opportunity they have to be part of a company-wide, non-hierarchical network can be a big incentive to take part. Successful programmes can encourage this network to succeed by:

1) allowing all participants access to the wider group. This can be easily done through a Yammer or Jive group, or via a bespoke portal. Use this as a means through which to share and recognize best practice and successes/failures – some organisations have found a ‘Wall of fame’ works well.

2) facilitating regular get togethers. These could be held regularly for specific training sessions (on content creation, or social platform overviews, for example); or as a forum for wider knowledge sharing. Invite guest speakers in to talk about a relevant, topical issue; or a successful blogger to share their experiences with the group.

3) when the programme is up and running, you could think about encouraging some competition between your advocates – creating a league table to show whose followers are participating most actively in content. Small prizes could be awarded on a monthly basis to encourage participation – as long as you can keep things fun and light-hearted.

4) If you are the programme lead, then lead by example. Networking is part of your role in a social environment, so show the rest of the group how you build it into every day.