Illustration by macrovector from Freepik.
Almost all businesses of today have made a digital footprint in the online world. Companies have become more perceptive about how to leverage the potential benefits of social networks. And as this tendency continues to grow, implementing a company-wide social media advocacy software is essential for your company’s success. A social media advocacy software helps you widen your company’s reach, strengthen your offerings, and drive more leads to your website.
Yet, many still wander through the world of online marketing without a precise marketing strategy.
Don’t be one of those businesses.
After reading this blog post, you’ll have a totally new approach to maximizing your brand presence and brand awareness. You will also find out how to boost your business with a one-of-a-kind social media advocacy software.
Now let’s get more specific…
What Is Social Media Advocacy Anyway?
In the digital era, the most effective advertising tools available are peer-to-peer recommendations. This concept is founded upon the belief that individuals who aren’t being paid to advocate for a company wouldn’t do so if they didn’t believe in it.
Image Source: Freepik
A social media advocacy program is a strategic approach to developing a network of particular supporters for your brand, so-called brand advocates. Simply said, it means talking on your personal social media platforms about a particular brand or company.
Even though you can always boast about your own brand on the top five social media sites, social media advocacy software helps you expand your reach in a more cost-effective way. This includes the use of third-party “cheerleaders,” known as brand ambassadors, to promote your brand on their social networks.
The Louder the Better
An army of brand advocates can help you reinforce your brand reputation and enhance your reach. The more voices you have spreading the word, the further your visibility goes. With word-of-mouth tactics driving 13% of customer sales or $6 trillion in annual customer spending, it should be instinctive for companies to invest more in the Social Media Industry.
Image source: The Importance Of Word Of Mouth Marketing
According to EveryoneSocial a social media advocacy program can drive 16% better win rates, 2x pipeline, and deliver 48% larger deals.
Businesses have a couple of cool approaches to this social phenomenon:
- Brand Advocates – also referred to as micro-influencers, are the people that promote your brand willingly and freely, and they aren’t in it for monetary gain. There are two types of Brand Advocates: Customer Advocates and Employee Advocates.
- Brand Ambassadors – usually viewed as the leaders in their industries with massive fan followings. Brand ambassadors work based on contacts, which means that once the retainer stops, their advocacy stops.
Nowadays, every organization strives to ‘cut-through-the-noise’ and boost its reach on social platforms. Dell – the leader in digital transformation, has over ten thousand employees who have gone through an internal social-media employee training certification. They are trained to support the company’s objectives in social media.
How Social Media Advocacy Works
Employee advocacy isn’t a concept of modern times. Employees have been spreading the word over dinner-parties and refreshments at social events for decades. The difference is that in today’s tech-driven world, business associates can operate as brand advocates via social media platforms anytime, anywhere.
The question has always been, however, how to exploit social media to truly engage with the marketplace, while still maintaining a measurable and cost-effective impact?
Technological advances, like social media advocacy software, are expanding advocates’ communication options. That is why adopting social media advocacy software is a major benefit for companies, because of its ease of use and ability to tap into the peer-to-peer networks to spread social messages.
Image Source: Freepik
To keep it simple, it works like this: The company provides a set of social updates that employees can take and re-post on their social networks, like Linkedin/Twitter/Pinterest/ Facebook, etc.
When employees share these pre-set social updates, the company starts to get more social mentions; more links shared on social media that lead to their website. Eventually, there are more people engaged in social chatter around topics important for the company. For businesses that do well, through excellent social customer service, their customers then become their best social advocates.
New media plays by new rules. Making strategic decisions to combine technology and employee advocacy will give your company a greater level of credibility. Having people outside the marketing department share their stories will definitely do that for your business.
Automating Employee Advocacy With Social Media Advocacy Software
What if there was a way to have an even greater impact on social media than you already have and in less time?
Well, there is.
Social Media Automation enables you to do just that.
Social Media Never Sleeps
Constantly updating your profile, responding to customer’s messages, coming up with content ideas, and sharing it with minimal time effort and maximum output can feel like a great big hamster wheel.
This is where social media automation steps in; it is an online marketing strategy that utilizes social interactions using automated tools. It includes scheduling blog post campaigns in advance or republishing the most popular articles, among other things.
When you think about how much effort goes into an online marketing strategy, how time-consuming it is, it is no wonder more and more businesses turn to social media advocacy software.
These social media advocacy software programs set human workers free of repetitive tasks. They also greatly help in avoiding many common human errors, making workflows much more efficient.
A Word or Two About Popular Social Media Automation Tools
Each social media advocacy software may have its own set of unique features. But basically, all of them allow you to publish your content directly on multiple social media channels, to schedule your posts ahead of time, or to republish your evergreen content.
That being said, the three foremost social media automation tools are:
- Buffer, it’s known for its comprehensive analytics, and it easily puts your posts in a queue across different platforms through its user-friendly interface;
- Oktopost utilizes post queues within the platform, which enables them to create unique queues for each profile in their account;
- Hootsuite allows you to keep your ears close to what the world is saying about you in the digital world.
None the less they are still not solving the number one trouble that businesses today face: maintaining consistency in publishing content.
In a survey conducted with 900 social media users, consistency is identified as one of the most important factors that determine whether people continue to follow a brand.
Posting clones of your content on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., will not only fail to get you new fans or views, but it will also set you up like a spam bot – and that’s certainly not what you want to be remembered for.
A math calculation from Populizr, the only platform that helps your craft 25 unique social updates from every blog post you publish online, states that 50 employees would spend a total time of 910 work hours per month, doing social media marketing.
And that’s why automation is the key. Automate your posts and never miss a chance to publish content at the golden hour – when all your fans are awake and skimming!
The point with proper social media advocacy software is to have a creative system to build unique social media messages. And that each point to a blog post, which will eventually help you generate greater website traffic.
Populizr – The Holy Grail of Social Media Advocacy
And this is exactly what Populizr will do for you.
Let me explain how.
Populizr is a unique social media advocacy software that gathers all your employees and turns them into a social tribe that’s sending out shockwaves with your marketing message.
It’s a smart piece of software that literally takes 910 hours and zips them down to just a few mouse clicks. A single person can build an entire library of social updates, set up the entire publishing schedule, and then just send it off to the team. Then, the team can simply click a few buttons and leave the heavy lifting to this software.
The one of a kind solution that Populizr brings to the table will guarantee the success of every social media campaign you create.
Populizr is the only social media advocacy software that does Social SEO right. With it, your social updates lifespan can live on for months, rather than for a few hours. And with the smart Emotions Analyzer feature, Populizr will help you dodge ‘Meh’ Vibe and help you craft your message to trigger the desired reactions from your targeted audience.
Why Your Company Needs A Social Media Advocacy Software
Most business leaders are wrestling with the decision on how much to invest in their social media presence because they are skeptical about the final outcomes.
To attain the desired results, you need to seek further from the sales and marketing teams’ efforts. And one way to do so is to explore the benefits of integrated social media advocacy software.
Social Media Advocacy – It’s BIG for a reason
The main goal of social media advocacy software is to better leverage networks in the social sphere when it comes to engaging some of the largest communities in the world. It is well known that people trust people much more than they trust brands. That’s why employee advocacy is one of the best forms of brand-building promotion.
Integrating marketing automation into your social media marketing strategy is favorable to both the company and the employees themselves. Here are some awesome reasons why implementing a social media advocacy software is vital for your business’ success:
- Brand Perception – 70% of customer brand perception is determined by experiences with people. Meaning, if your customers see your employees frequently sharing interesting, engaging posts, they’re more likely to form a positive image of your brand.
- Increased Visibility & Brand Recognition – A study by Cisco states that employees’ social posts generate 8X more engagement than posts from their employer, which is an outstanding way to increase your brand visibility and improve your brand recognition.
- Better Search Engines Rankings – When your company’s content is being shared by your employees, it expands into networks the company would be hard-pressed to reach alone. The more of your content is out there, the easier it is for search engines to find you.
- Increased Inbound Web Traffic – Assuming that the shared content is engaging enough, this far-reach turns into actions that lead to more referral traffic and potentially to website conversions.
- Market Leadership – Social media advocacy software facilitates businesses to earn a larger market share in their industry.
- Talent Acquisition – Social media advocacy software is also very beneficial in the realm of hiring, and it goes a long way in promoting your work culture. So somebody out there that just read a blog post about how your company manages to keep its employees happy and productive can eventually end up as one of them.
- Saves Money – Advocacy programs save your company thousands of advertising dollars and can prove more efficient than hiring an advertising firm to perform the same task.
- Increased Sales – It can be your most efficient engine for driving word-of-mouth sales because people trust people.
Image Source: Benefits From Employee Advocacy
Establishing an employee advocacy program is a highly valuable marketing strategy that helps you improve your SEO and organic traffic. Social media advocacy software is one of the simplest, fastest, and most cost-effective ways to help you do just that.
Picture this, for example:
The more clicks-through, the more visitors on your website.
The more visitors on your website – the more chances to get new customers!
So if you are still looking for a sign on whether or not to invest more into your Online presence – This Is It!
Go ahead and unlock the endless opportunities for your brand and business through implementing social media advocacy software.
Keep Calm And Automate It
Technology has come a long way, and to get an edge over your competitors, your business needs to pursue strategies that will reduce cost, save time, increase efficiency, and ultimately, sales.
Getting ahead in the cluttered business environment can be challenging. But, if you take social media marketing, sales, branding, etc. seriously, then employee advocacy should also be on that list.
That’s why Populizr is here to take the worries off your shoulders. In just 4 minutes, this awesome social media advocacy software helps you turn any blog post into a full-blown social media marketing campaign!
Check-out Populizr for Enterprise and see if it is a good fit for your company.
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