7 Ways to Turn Your Employees Into Brand Advocates

It takes time and resources to cultivate brand advocates for your business. However, many business owners underutilize the brand advocates who are inherently a part of their business: their employees.  This article will provide you with some ways to tap into the incredible potential of your employees’ networks and build employee advocacy for your business.

How to Build Brand Advocacy in Your Employees

1. Encourage Social Media Sharing

Your employees have a genuine interest in advocating for your business, so they’re your best brand ambassadors. Ask them to engage with your business on social media on both their personal and professional networks. This can be anything from sharing your business’s newly posted content to simply liking the posts. This type of engagement does not take a lot of time or effort but your business can reap benefits from it.

2. Invite Employees to Contribute to Your Blog

Business blogging has many benefits, one of which being increased visibility in search engine results. Inviting your employees to write blog posts. is a win for you since your business can cover a diverse range of topics, and a win for them since they can get their name out there and add to their content portfolio. They will also be more likely to promote this content to their own network. Not only will your business benefit from the increased visibility, but research shows that family and friends are the most persuasive source for advice on new products.

3. Embrace Community Involvement

Get ideas from your employees on potential events and different ways your business can engage with your community. Is there a charity auction your team member is helping organize where you can donate your services or goods? Do they know of a charity walk or drive to participate in or volunteer at? Do any of your employees want to help organize a charity drive where their friends or family can drop off donated goods at your business? For more ideas, check out our blog post on ways your small business can give back to the community.

4. Hold Brainstorm Sessions

When you’re planning your marketing or promotions calendar, invite your team to a brainstorming session. Involving your whole team to brainstorm content ideas can reduce the pressure for a single employee and foster creativity. Involving everyone’s participation for a monthly brainstorming session can also nurture and deepen your employees’ understanding of your products and/or services and help them become stronger advocates for your business.

5. Host Fireside Chats

As your business grows, your departments will become more siloed and it can be hard to stay on top of what everyone’s up to. Set aside time each month for your team to get together, get company updates, and ask questions. This will get everyone on the same page, will educate your employees about your products and services, and will equip them with cool updates they’ll want to share with their family and friends.

6. Feature Your Employees on Social Media

Start an employee spotlight series where you highlight a new employee each week (or month). This will help you (or the person writing the content) to get to know your employees better and creates an opportunity for them to stand out as individuals. Employees will be glad to spread the word about the post, and along with the increased visibility, the side of your business that cares about its employees gets revealed too.

7. Run Friends & Family Promotions

When you’re running special offers or any type of promotion event, consider hosting a discount for “friends and family” or host a “friends and family” event. You don’t need to spend much time or resources advertising the promotion—your employees will take care of a lot of that for you. Send out a “pre-sale” email invitation to your employees so they can forward to their personal and or professional networks.

You can also create events on social media networks like Facebook and ask your employees to “share” the event or invite their friends to it. Another idea would be to allocate a single day in the month for friends and family of employees to shop and offer a standing promotion for that day. For example, the promotion could be for every second Wednesday of the month, friends and family of employees get 10% off on all purchases.

Finding people to believe in and advocate for your business will take time and resources, but we’ve shown you five ways to start with your employees. Treating your employees well is the first step in turning them into brand advocates, followed by equipping them with news and tools to effortlessly spread the word about your business.