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Create an employee brand advocacy program that works in twenty minutes or less using HootSuite and Circulate.it

Like most marketers you already understand the value of creating an internal brand advocacy program, but often times getting employees to change their work habits is the biggest barrier to encouraging your team to share more on social media. They know that utilizing social media can benefit their careers, but the inertia of their routine tends to win out. So changing these habits usually falls on you in marketing (and at times human resources as well).

While it may sound easy (cue the CEO: “We’ll just tell everyone to share our content”), there are some obvious obstacles to getting an employee brand advocacy program off the ground.

You will only get widespread adoption if you…

…keep employees in their existing workflow
…respect their time by not adding more work to their day
…don’t assume they already know what to share on social media
…give them something back in return

20 Minutes?
Yup. Don’t mistake high engagement for high complexity.

Rather than investing in a new platform and heavy training why not start with the tools you already use? You’ll create a program that is low-impact on employee time and return value across the board. Everyone wins.

1.) Keep your team using their existing tools.

If you and your team are already using HootSuite for your social media management, the last thing you want to do is introduce another social media product. It takes your staff out of their daily routine and will likely require investment in training.

This is where Circulate.it for HootSuite comes in. Circulate.it is employee brand advocacy software that has been integrated to work seamlessly with HootSuite. Without leaving HootSuite you’ll be able to mobilize your company by sending a steady stream of content to the rest of your organization to share on social.

How? Circulate.it creates a daily email newsletter automatically from the content you select from your HootSuite streams. You stay in your flow and it only takes a few clicks to build your newsletter. It’s also easy for employees. They stay in the workflow of their email and with a single click can share the content from your newsletter.

To get started, install Circulate.it from the HootSuite App Directory—available in the HootSuite App Directory for Pro and Enterprise users.

 

When you spot a relevant article or blog post in your HootSuite streams you can easily send it to Circulate.it — as you add content you’re also building your daily newsletter.

 

2.) Put social media where your employees are already working —- their inbox.

It is important to remember that your wants and needs are different than employees outside of marketing. You want the added amplification and brand advocacy from your employees, but this can easily be perceived as extra work and an unnecessary hassle. Frankly employees are tired of learning new software and likely to forget to open any new application you want them to use.

The point here is to make social sharing quick and easy, and keep it in their workflow.

From the content you’ve been adding from your HootSuite streams, Circulate.it sends an automatic daily “What to share today” newsletter to your employees based on the schedule you select.

For employees, they stay in their email — with a single click they can share the content that you have curated for them — right from their inbox. There is no training, no additional software remember to keep open and they can share from anywhere their email is connected.

 

3.) Do the heavy-lifting for them

Employees aren’t going to fiddle with your content to make sure it posts correctly on each social network nor are they going to spend the time to periodically post content throughout the day. Circulate.it takes the work out of sharing by insulating employees from this complexity.

With Circulate.it we make it easy for you to customize how the posts will appear on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook before you add them to your newsletter, so employees don’t have to themselves.

 

As you add content you’ll see a preview pane for each social network so any changes you make (like choosing an image or adding a hashtag) are clearly displayed exactly as they’ll appear when an employee posts to their social networks. Employees will never be surprised. You can also add your own private commentary to help provide additional context for each piece of content your share with employees.

When an employee clicks on the Post button Circulate.it handles the scheduling and company-wide coordination to make sure your employees’ posts are spread throughout the day and optimized for the best engagement for each network.

 

So there you go—start to finish setting up your employee brand advocacy program in 20 minutes or less:

1. Add Circulate.it to HootSuite (<1 minute)
2. Sign-up for Circulate.it (<1 minute)
3. Configure your daily employee “What to Share” newsletter (2-3 minutes)
   • Set your delivery time and timezone
   • Customize your newsletter subject line
   • Add your internal distribution email list and send a test circulation
4. Invite other curators from your team to Circulate.it (<1 minute)
5. Add content from HootSuite to Circulate.it (15 minutes daily)

Happy circulating!