Digital advocacy is the concept of empowering your people to market your company. Research shows this is the most effective way to reach audiences in today’s digital world. Featuring your people, and encouraging to provide digital advocacy for your business will benefit your brand and increase employee engagement. Whether you’re a small team or large corporation, here’s a list of 26 inspiring ideas to promote your in-house expertise in the digital space.

Add an ‘About’ Section to Your Website

The simplest place to create digital advocacy is to list them in a section on your website. If you’re a small company, have a space dedicated to each employee complete with bio, social media profiles, and additional contact info. If you’re a larger company, consider featuring your leadership on your website, but then featuring employees in a variety of roles through your content.

Build a Newsletter

With a newsletter, you can promote products, services, news or important business updates. Newsletters are a great place to feature your employees via quotes, images and profiles. Newsletters can be printed, shared on company blogs, published to social media and emailed to targeted lists all of which create digital advocacy. Services like MailChimp offer up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails monthly for free, allowing you to run campaigns even easier. You may even consider connecting with vendor partners, industry influencers or community members to have your team’s expertise featured in other’s newsletters.

Create a Survey

With a tool like SurveyMonkey, making a survey for your customers and employees can provide a quick and easy way to collect quotes and knowledge from your team. From customer service and satisfaction surveys to performance updates, once you’ve collected enough results, you can help turn your research into a newsworthy press release or internal documentation your teams can use to improve business and marketing as a whole.

Establish a Yelp Page

Many individuals go to Yelp to find or recommend a particular product or service. Your employees can utilize Yelp’s management system as another avenue to help moderate your business, respond to customer inquiries, and build relationships.

Create Videos

Videos are a great way to make your content and business stand out. Video content can take many forms, from ‘how to’ videos, inspirational videos, or behind the scenes of your team and your workspace. Videos are a powerhouse that help build that essential trust you need for your business. Giving customers a look into what happens within your work culture will not only build business credibility regarding transparency but also shows your team and brand’s personality.

Share Through Photos

Both Instagram and Snapchat are among today’s most powerful social media tools. Leverage your employees as the ‘face’ of your company, allowing them to share things, like promotions, deploy exclusive content, or provide access to special deals with your audience. You can even highlight your employees through company photo shoots, or lease images that feature key people in your company.

Use Twitter

Twitter continues to be a major incubator for social media interaction and, when used correctly, can be a business-friendly platform for employees to easily share different types of content for your business, and reach a wider audience online.

Make Twitter Lists

Twitter Lists allow you to cut through the clutter, organize and attract the attention of potential customers, influencers, companies, and potential employees alike. Your own employees can take advantage of Twitter lists by organizing and connecting with individuals that are a good fit for your industry, or becoming enlisted themselves in other lists on Twitter, increasing the likelihood for interaction.

Create a Facebook Page

Facebook pages are a great way to be directly linked with your target audience. They’re free to make, and you can share updates, stories, and photos/videos in real time or in the future using scheduled posts. Attaching Facebook ads alongside your page can help your target audience find your page based on targeted demographic info such as region, gender, and age. Strategically place your employees at the front line of the newsfeed. Your team can definitely help maintain your brand’s online presence, once your ads and pages are up and running,

Get Published

There are many outlets (blogs, e-books, online magazines, etc.) that can publish samples of great work done by your employees. Syndicate your work to these publications and include additional information about yourself and your business. Many online publications will want to incorporate good content to increase their customer base as well.

Start a Podcast

Podcasts are on the rise as an efficient form of content creation. Many individuals can listen to them on their way to work or on a long drive. Fashion a podcast around your industry and include your employees to organize and even participate in podcasts to share value. Just don’t forget to promote them as well! Need some inspiration? Here are 50 fantastic marketing and business podcasts.

Write a Blog

Blogs are great opportunities to extend your digital marketing strategy and cultivate an online experience for your readers. When your employees share insightful tips, stories, and videos on a company blog while using a whole range of long-tail keywords for SEO, your business has a better chance of showing up in search results and you’ll start to develop an audience for your industry. This allows you to generate digital advocacy for your employees while also producing quality content for your business.

Advertise With Blogs

Blogging also opens the door to using advertising to promote your content. Research different advertising opportunities by analyzing where else your target market likes to go. You can feature your employees in ads and thereby introduce them to high traffic blogs with influencers. Considering asking strategically selected members of your team to contribute knowledge and write articles, or submit some of their own quotes, that will help you to reach a bigger audience while adding personality to your brand.

Take Advantage of Forums

There are plenty of forums like Quora and Reddit that you (and your team) could join and start contributing to. Many people use forums to find answers. Never underestimate the power of commenting. Encouraging your employees to be avid and active community members will help you build digital advocacy, but be sure to provide value and a direct link to your main website or profiles in your responses.

Invest in Credibility

Customers are more likely to do business with a company that is credible. To have your employees stand out from the pack, invest in accreditations and certifications that your employees can list alongside their social profiles. Programs like HubSpot’s Social Media Certification will demonstrate to potential customers how credible you really are.

Sponsor/Enter an Awards Ceremony

Hosting or attending an awards ceremony may be expensive, but it can also be a great opportunity when the timing is right. Individuals from your company that win awards are great publicity for your business and add further credibility for the overall business. Promoting these award events through social and general media coverage can also help your employees get further recognition for achievements within the company.

Use LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn Groups is a unique function that allows like-minded individuals to connect and have access to a targeted group of people who are in similar industries or have the same interests as you. Having your employees maintain a strong LinkedIn profile while engaging consistently on various LinkedIn Groups, can have huge effects on your business down the line by establishing digital advocacy. Don’t be spammy, but rather insightful with every interaction.

Organize a Meetup

Meetup.com is a great resource to network or meet new people. Your employees can help promote your business with other like-minded professionals in the area and publish additional business information in the event descriptions. This form of digital advocacy is extremely useful for spreading the word about your company.

Host Webinars

Webinars are a great way to expand your digital advocacy. Employees can use online services like GoToWebinar, to interact with your clients. Using these personalized means of delivering value can really show off your employees’ expertise and dedication to serving your customers. Since everyone has a smartphone with a high-quality camera, creating webinars and other video content is easier today than it has ever been.

Utilize Google+

Google is the world’s most powerful and popular search engine. Consider encouraging your team to setup and maintain Google+ profiles to give your company an extra boost online. Google+ lets you customize the URL for your page and establish authorship over any content that you share through your feed. The key is to be smart with your content, so your Google+ page can list you on the top of search rankings.

Give Testimonials or Interviews

Share a few of your own testimonial videos from your employees. Employees that share the insight of your company can help highlight the more attractive qualities of your business. You can even shoot interviews with industry experts within your company to better market your overall business.

Enhance With Online Portfolios

For the more visual creatives in your workplace, sites like YouTube, Behance and Carbonmade are just a few examples of platforms to easily get your work listed online.

Campaign for a Cause

From celebrations such as birthdays or new hires to larger campaigns for a belief or charity, getting your employees involved in company well being can help spark people’s interest in your business. You can increase your digital signage, or have your employees centered on a common charitable project, and share the news via social. People will soon gravitate with your business once hearing about your team’s efforts on giving back to the community.

Ideate With Pinterest

Pinterest is a hub for generating ideas for your business. This platform will help you identify trends that your customers are following. Have your employees generate content that flows with a users Pinterestboards, and you can start pinning items to meet new customers, driving more traffic to your website for free.

Join Industry-Specific Sites

Many sites cater to specific niches and allow users to review products and services that you can put to work for your business. Those in the home, yard, auto, and health businesses, for example, use Angie’s List to compare businesses. Have your employees stick by a few of these sites to reserve your spot as an expert advisor and thought leader in the industry.

Promote Within Your Space

Use modern technology such a digital signage to promote your team inside your physical workspace. You can recognize featured employees, anniversaries, new hires, birthdays and more interesting facts about your team. This will promote a sense of ownership within your organization and boost your work culture. It also shows visitors to your space that you really care about your employees. Here are five ways to use digital signage in your space.

Get started on promoting your employees online and connect with Workspace Digital today!
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