People tend to read a post from a person differently from a post from a company page, because the person has a name, a face and a history of saying things. That is the reason many B2B companies ask colleagues to post. This guide covers how to set that up so it is useful to the company and to the people involved, and how to see what it is doing.
What employee advocacy is, and what it is not
Employee advocacy means colleagues talk about their work, their industry and your company on their own LinkedIn profiles. It is not a rota of reshares of the company page, and it is not a script that everyone posts word for word. People can tell when several accounts post identical text, and it does nothing for the colleague's own standing.
A useful definition for a small team: each participant posts something in their own words about work they know, at a pace that suits them, and comments on other people's posts in the same way.
Step by step: starting an employee advocacy programme
1. Agree what it is for
Choose one or two purposes and write them down. Examples: making the team's expertise visible to buyers, helping recruitment, or keeping customers and partners in touch with what the company is doing. Leave out targets for leads or sales, because posting alone cannot promise them and the purpose should be something you can check.
2. Start with volunteers
Ask for three to five people who already want to do it. Choose a mix of roles, such as a founder or executive, someone in sales or customer work, and someone who builds the product. Do not make it compulsory. A person who is made to post tends to post little, and the posts show it.
3. Give people topics
Every month, share a short list of subjects people could write about. Base it on what is happening in the business and the market: a launch, an event you are attending, a question customers keep asking, something the team learned. Each person picks what they can speak about with authority.
4. Offer draft help, not scripts
Some colleagues will want to write alone and some will want a first draft to edit. Offer both. A draft is a starting point, and the person rewrites it into their own words and adds a detail only they would know. Nothing goes out under a person's name unless they have read it and agreed to it.
5. Add commenting
Comments on other people's posts are often easier for a colleague than writing a post, and they put the person in front of the author's audience. Give each participant a short list of posts to comment on each week, chosen for their topic or region. Discovery can supply that weekly list of public posts, and our guide to finding the right LinkedIn posts to comment on explains the routine.
6. Agree light guidelines
Write one page that covers:
- What must stay confidential, such as unreleased products, client names without permission and financial information.
- Whether posts about the company need a check before they go out, and who does it.
- How to say where you work when you comment on something related to your employer.
- Who to contact if a post attracts a complaint or a press enquiry.
Keep it short enough that people read it.
7. Recognise the effort
Thank people in the team channel when a post starts a good conversation. Share what you learn from the posts that worked. Do not publish a ranking that makes a quiet colleague feel they are failing.
8. Review monthly
Once a month, look at what was posted and what came back, and ask the participants what they would change. Adjust the topics, the support or the pace. Add more volunteers when the first group is comfortable.
How to measure employee advocacy
Some of what advocacy does cannot be measured. A buyer who reads a colleague's post and mentions it to someone in a meeting leaves no trace in a dashboard. What you can look at is the public activity:
- Posts per person per month, to see whether people are keeping the habit.
- Reactions and comments on each post, to see which subjects get a response.
- Who reacted and commented, meaning their company and job title, to see whether the right people are paying attention.
- Comparison with the company page, to see whether the colleagues' posts reach different people from the page.
Public reactions and comments on a post can be read from outside the profile, so you do not need access to each colleague's LinkedIn account. The Signals report works this way: you can add up to five colleague profiles and the report shows who engaged with their posts, alongside a team leaderboard. The leaderboard scores posts at 10 points each plus reactions from people outside the team on the person's own posts, so reactions from colleagues do not inflate the score.
Use the numbers to decide what to do next month, such as which topics to repeat. Do not use them to rank people against each other in public, and do not treat them as proof of sales results.
Employee advocacy checklist
- One or two purposes are written down, with no sales target
- Three to five volunteers have agreed to take part
- The roles in the group are mixed
- A monthly list of topics is shared
- Draft help is on offer, and nothing is posted without the person's approval
- Each participant has a weekly list of posts to comment on
- A one-page guideline covers confidentiality, checks, disclosure and who to contact
- Someone thanks people when a post works
- Posts and engagement are reviewed monthly
- The review is used to adjust topics and support, not to rank people
What to expect
Expect the first month to be slow, because people need time to find a voice and a routine. A small group that keeps going will teach you more about what suits your company than a large launch that fades. Add people as the early group shows what works.
