Many organisations make use of brand advocates to drive their consumer marketing campaigns. But we see fewer businesses making use of their own people to raise their employer brand. While it may be happening unofficially (anyone with a friend working for Google will have an appreciation of its proposition for its employees), we believe there is huge potential for companies to encourage their own people to share good stories through their personal social channels and networks. A thriving employee advocacy programme should be a key part of any direct sourcing model.

‘Launching’ an employee advocacy programme is more simple than you might think. In this blog stream, we’ll share our research on what makes a good programme; how to find your advocates; how to encourage and reward participation; advice on how to create good content; and suggestions of how to measure and track success.

We’ve helped a number of businesses to get their programmes off the ground by supporting them with building a business case to get senior support; defining KPIs; identifying, recruiting and training advocates; creating robust content programmes (and providing initial seedling content); and providing regular analysis of the programme.

‘Brand advocates’: in consumer marketing, ‘brand advocates’ are consumers, influencers (such as bloggers or old-school journalist reviewers) and employees. At 106, we work mostly in employee engagement and recruitment marketing (encouraging the right people to join your business in the first instance); so when we refer to ‘advocates’ throughout this series, we are referring to employees.