LinkedIn Elevate shut down as a standalone tool back in December 2020. Ever since, some of its features have been integrated into LinkedIn Company Pages<\/a>. Some \u2014\u00a0but not all.<\/p>\n Three years later, employee advocacy is as important as ever \u2013 both within LinkedIn and across other social platforms. LinkedIn\u2019s advocacy options built into Company Pages are a great place to start, but they offer limited functionality compared to dedicated employee advocacy tools.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s everything you need to know if your organization is looking for an alternative to LinkedIn Elevate to manage employee advocacy and extend the social reach of your brand.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n Bonus: Download a free employee advocacy toolkit<\/span><\/strong> that shows you how to plan, launch, and grow a successful employee advocacy program for your organization.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n LinkedIn Elevate was an employee advocacy product provided by LinkedIn. It was a paid product with robust content curation and analytics features. Page admins could use it to hand-pick content for employees to reshare and easily track the success of their employee advocacy programs with detailed analytics.<\/p>\n And it was working well for the companies that used it. LinkedIn reported<\/a> that LinkedIn Elevate users shared 5x more content<\/strong> than previously. This allowed them to influence 3x more Company Page views, 2x more Page followers, and 4x more job views.<\/p>\n However, LinkedIn Elevate was sunsetted as a standalone product<\/a> in 2020. Many of the features were migrated over to Company Pages, where they became free to use. That means many LinkedIn Company Pages now have some basic employee advocacy functionality available at no cost. But the truth is that this embedded free version is not a complete employee advocacy solution.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Create. Schedule. Publish. Engage. Measure. Win.<\/strong><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFree 30-Day Trial<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Before we go any further, let\u2019s define employee advocacy<\/a>. In the social marketing context, employee advocacy means that employees share your social content with their own networks to extend the reach of your messaging.<\/p>\n State Farm has been the #1 home insurer in the country since 1964. I\u2019m proud to be part of a company with such a long history of helping homeowners protect the things they value most. pic.twitter.com\/TnXlTtlmiC<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Tim Bordelon (@TimBordelon1) December 30, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n It intuitively makes sense that you would want your employees to be brand evangelists<\/a>. You want them to love the company they work for and share those positive feelings with their social contacts.<\/p>\n There are hard numbers to back up the importance of employee advocacy.<\/p>\n First up is trust. Edelman\u2019s annual Trust Barometer consistently finds that people are more likely to trust regular people than CEOs. In the 2023 edition<\/a>, Edelman found that 63% of people trust their neighbors. And 61% trust people in their local community.<\/p>\n Compare that to the 48% who trust CEOs and the 47% who trust journalists. It\u2019s clear that your message is much more likely to be taken at face value when it comes from a familiar face (or someone in your existing social network).<\/p>\n Source: <\/em>Edelman<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Here\u2019s an interesting twist on those stats. While only 48% of people trust CEOs in general, 64% trust \u201cmy CEO.\u201d That is, people are much more likely to trust the CEO of the company where they work. A CEO message crafted for employees and then shared on to the broader public gets an extra layer of trust built in.<\/p>\n But the most important way that employee advocacy contributes to brand marketing is the sheer reach of your employees\u2019 networks<\/strong> and the power of their social actions.<\/p>\n For example, Hootsuite\u2019s benchmarking data<\/a> shows that in December 2023, the average retail brand had:<\/p>\n Of course, there\u2019s some overlap, since most people follow brands on multiple platforms. But you also know that organic content no longer reaches all of your followers. The number of people who actually see your content might be much larger than your number of followers. Then again, it might also be much lower<\/a>. (It all depends on the algorithms<\/a>.)<\/p>\n When your employees share your content with their personal networks, it increases the potential audience pool in two ways.<\/p>\n First, some of your employees\u2019 followers will see their posts about your brand. This is the most obvious reach extender.<\/p>\n But second, the social action of sharing itself shows the algorithm a connection between your brand and your employee. Over time, this makes algorithms more likely to suggest your content to your employees\u2019 extended networks. This can extend the reach of all your posts, even those your employees don\u2019t share directly.<\/p>\n Think about the potential reach if each of your employees has only a couple hundred followers per platform.<\/p>\n The even better news? You can create content for employees to share on platforms where you don\u2019t have much of a brand presence. Or even platforms where you have no brand account at all.<\/p>\n Lacking the time or budget to maintain a presence on multiple social platforms emerged as the top concern in Hootsuite\u2019s 2024 Social Trends Report<\/a>. Employee advocacy can get the message out without your social team having to be everywhere.<\/p>\n All of this leads to more brand awareness, more web visits, and more inbound leads. And, guess what? It also helps your employees advance in their careers. <\/a>How? By helping to establish their own credibility and expertise.<\/p>\n Phew: That was a lot.<\/p>\n The TL;DR version is this.<\/strong> When employees share brand-approved content on their social networks, they exponentially extend the reach of your social content. For more on setting up an employee advocacy program, check out our six-step strategy guide<\/a>.<\/p>\n If your employees love their jobs, they\u2019ll likely talk about your company. That\u2019s true whether or not you have an employee advocacy program in place.<\/p>\nWhat was LinkedIn Elevate?<\/span><\/h2>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t#1 Social Media Tool\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\nWhat is employee advocacy?<\/span><\/h2>\n
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Why do you need employee advocacy?<\/h3>\n
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Why do you need an employee advocacy platform?<\/h3>\n