On June 8th, Social Media Today and EveryoneSocial hosted the second annual Employee Advocacy Shake-up with powerful presenters from Adobe, IBM, Coca-Cola, Nestle Purina, Dell, and Whole Foods, to name just a few. Using a format similar to TED talks, we covered topics such as trends in the marketplace, best practices on executing content, measurement, legal, social selling and much more.
We kicked off with a fireside chat with Eric Roach, CEO of EveryoneSocial, during which Eric shared that many customers don't identify with the word "advocacy." It was a great insight as many organizations are looking to scale their program beyond the first target audience. Some of these latter employee groups will not identify with "advocacy," but play an important role as listener, contributor, supporter, etc.
Some of my favorite personal takeaways:
- 42% of employees can't articulate what their company does, shared Renee Austin, Executive Vice President at Weber Shandwick, highlighting organization communication gaps.
- Courtney Hunt, Founder of Denovati Group, presented the costs of digital illiteracy and recommended organizations create assessments beforehand to understand employees' true understanding of digital.
- Jim Dudukovich, Coca-Cola's Senior Social Media Counsel, rocked the legal obstacles presentation and opened all our eyes to the Fair Labor Standards Act (not to be confused with Fair Laboratory Standards Act) and how non-exempt employees can't volunteer their services, which puts a real damper on advocacy programs with hourly employees.
- Content should be a mix of branded and industry content, shared Christa Gorham, Senior Manager at CenturyLink, helping to showcase human side of employees.
- Cory Edwards, Head of Social Media at Adobe, shared that their team closed a $6.5M contract sourced and nurtured through their social selling program. Plus, Apple watches are a great incentive for sale teams.
- DeShelia Spann, Digital Marketing Strategist at Eaton, shared best practices of understanding how specific sales team members like field technicians share content to ensure relevancy.
- Natanya Anderson, Director of Social Media at Whole Foods, shared that when using social for HR recruiting they receive better candidates.
- Amber Armstrong, Program Director at IBM, ran a Klout 50 program where employees attaining the score or higher received a day off from work.
- Amy Heiss, Social Media Manager at Dell, is leading the charge in embedding social into everything at Dell from roles, compensation and even analytical reports are presented in infographics.
- Brian Fanzo, Change Evangelist at BroadSuite Media Group, managed to Periscope, tweet and moderate throughout the day (impressive multi-tasking). Highly recommend inviting Brian @iSocialFanz to any of your upcoming social events for great insights, coverage and sharing.
At the end of the day, during our wrap-up session, Jenn Roumian, Employer/Talent Brand Advocate at Electronic Arts, recommended creating a community of Employee Advocacy experts to continue the conversation, learn best practices and network.
Stay tuned for developments!