Identifying the 8 Key Roles for Your Employee Advocacy Program
When you’re starting a new project, identifying your key stakeholders can be challenging.
In project management lingo, the drivers are the people who define the trajectory of your project. They tell you what you should do. The supporters are the people who help you carry out the project. The observers are interested in your project, but they have little impact on the project’s outcome.
To help you identify these people, we’ve created a list of the key roles that you need to fill for your employee advocacy program. To keep the list short, we’ve focused on the key drivers and supporters.
Your executive champion is a person who holds a high position in your company. This person:
- is a visible and vocal supporter of your project
- advocates for your program in company meetings
- stands up for your project when disputes arise
- takes necessary actions to help ensure that your project is successful
- provides guidance and feedback when necessary
Level of Involvement:
If you’re planning on launching your employee advocacy pilot program, here’s the level of involvement that you should expect from your sponsor:
Envisioning the pilot: Heavy
Your executive champion will defend your pilot to the rest of the executive team. She may even be the initiator of the project. So, your sponsor’s feedback and expectations are important. Her input will influence the trajectory of the pilot.
Organizing and preparing: Moderate
Consult with the executive champion as you develop your plans. Make sure that she likes the direction of your project, and most importantly, have her sign off on your project plan.
Carrying out the pilot: Light to moderate
As you decide on a group of advocates, ensure that you introduce your advocates to your champion. Have your executive leadership explain why social media will help your advocates in a professional context. Hearing this message from a higher-up goes a long way.
Wrapping up the pilot: Heavy to moderate
This person has gone to bat for your project. She should know the results – the triumphs and the areas for improvement – so that she can take the information to other members of the executive team.
Your project manager will be busy, to say the least. This person is responsible for:
- Communicating the vision for the program to the key stakeholders
- Finding a platform
- Maintaining the project plan
- Providing status updates
- Holding team meetings
- Monitoring team morale
- Coordinating deliverables with the vendor’s customer success team
Level of Involvement:
It goes without saying that this person will be heavily involved throughout the project – from proposing the pilot program to wrapping it up.
Envisioning the pilot: Heavy
Organizing and preparing: Heavy
Carrying out the pilot: Moderate to heavy
Any respite will happen during the actual pilot – if you and your team have done a good job planning the project.
Wrapping up the pilot: Heavy
At this stage, the project manager has to:
- Determine whether the program met its objectives
- Re-evaluate the advocacy platform to see if it helped your team meet its goals
- Decide if and how the pilot program will expand to include more employees
- Work closely with the executive champion to determine the next steps
- Coordinate with the vendor’s customer success team to plan for the next phase
Your employees will need access to content. You’ll want a mix of both branded content and other people’s content. When it comes to branded content, someone will have to create the blog posts, infographics, and videos that your advocates will share.
Those people, of course, are your content creators. They:
- Write educational and entertaining thought leadership pieces, as well as product-focused content and customer success stories
- Are most likely part of your marketing team
Level of Involvement:
Your content creators do not have much sway over the scope of your project. Essentially, they are supporters who facilitate your project. As such, their level of involvement will look something like this:
Envisioning the pilot: Light
Your content creators need to know what your goals and objectives are so that they can create the right kind of content.
Organizing and preparing: Moderate
Content creation takes time. Give your content marketers a week or two to create content that matches your objectives and your advocates’ interests.
Carrying out the pilot: Moderate to heay
Your content team will continue to produce content during the pilot. The level of your content marketing team’s involvement depends on how much original content you want them to create.
Wrapping up the pilot: Light
Your content team will need feedback on the content that worked and the content that didn’t work. That way, your content crafters can be prepared for when you launch a full-scale program with more advocates.
As I mentioned above, you’ll want a mix of branded content and third-party content. It’s your curation team’s job to:
- Find third-party content that resonates with your advocates across departments
- Define topics and subtopics that your advocates and their followers care about
- Write sample headlines, which the employees can use or modify when sharing content on their social media networks
There are several ways to structure your content curation. See this post for three ideas.
Level of Involvement:
Like your content creators, your curators will be more involved during the planning stages and during the actual pilot.
Envisioning the pilot: Light
Organizing and preparing: Moderate
Your curators identify content themes that will be relevant to your target audiences. They need to start assembling a library of content for your team to share.
Carrying out the pilot: Heavy
During the pilot phase, your curators will be heavily involved. They will continuously find content and offer suggested copy to your employees. In addition, they should receive feedback from the analytics team about which messages and which types of content are working.
End of the pilot: Moderate
Your curation team should work closely with the analytics team to see what worked and what didn’t work.
We aren’t born with Twitter accounts. It’s something we have to learn, and some advocates will need more help than others. To assess your team’s needs, you will need a team of trainers to guide your advocates’ social media education.
Your trainers are responsible for:
- Assessing your advocates’ social media abilities
- Filling in any skills gaps
- Helping advocates identify their personal and professional goals
- Standardizing best practices across your company
Your trainers might be in your HR department. They could be part of your vendor’s customer success team. They might be on your social media marketing team. It will vary from company to company.
Level of Involvement:
Here’s the level of involvement that you can expect from your training team:
Envisioning the pilot: Light
Your trainers will need to understand your goals so that they can create the right training materials. But, in general, they won’t have much say in the trajectory of the project.
Organizing and preparing: Moderate
Once you’ve identified your core group of advocates, then, the trainers need to step in and identify the employees’ needs. The employees’ needs should serve as the basis for the training materials.
Creating a training program can take time. Make sure that you give the trainers enough time to plan their training sessions.
Carrying out the pilot: Moderate to heavy
During the pilot, your trainers may offer continued social media education. Furthermore, the trainers will be available to answer your team’s questions that bubble up as they become more involved on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest.
Wrapping up the pilot: Light
At the end of the pilot, your team should request feedback from the advocates. See where they felt adequately trained, and see where you need to bulk up your training program.
The advocates! We can’t forget about the advocates! Their responsibilities include:
- Being active on social media
- Representing your company well on social media
- Following your social media policy
- Developing their personal brand
- Standardizing best practices across your company
Need some ideas for recruiting advocates? We have you covered.
Level of Involvement:
Without advocates, you don’t have a pilot, and in many ways, you’re running this program to help your employees – not just your company.
That said, remember that you don’t want too many hands in the pie when you cook up your project plan. Ask for your advocates’ input, but leave the big decisions and project plan in the hands of your program manager and executive champion.
Envisioning the pilot: Light
You may want to speak to a few potential advocates before you launch the program. Ask them why they want to use social media for work. How has social media helped them meet their professional goals? What would motivate them to participate in this program?
Organizing and preparing: Light
Your trainers may give your employees a skills assessment while they are developing the training materials. The curators may want input on content topics that interest your advocates. But all in all, advocates’ involvement will be light at this point.
Carrying out the pilot: Moderate
During the pilot, your advocates will have two main tasks: enroll in training and be active on social media. Remind your advocates that their involvement is voluntary and that their social media use shouldn’t take a lot of time. If you select the right advocacy platform, your advocates’ participation should be easy.
Wrapping up the pilot: Light
At the end of the pilot, conduct exit interviews with your advocates. Find out what they enjoyed and identify areas for improvement.
Your employee advocacy program should have clear, quantifiable objectives. A number-savvy person will need to compile data so that you can see how your program is performing against your goals.
To fill this role, you may or may not need to involve another person. Many companies can fill the role by using people who are already involved with the project – perhaps your project manager or a content curator.
Level of Involvement:
Envisioning the pilot: Light
Your metrics folks will want to understand the objectives for the pilot.
Organizing and preparing: Light
During this phase, your data people will need to determine how they will track your program’s progress, and they will need to familiarize themselves with the reporting features in your advocacy platform.
Carrying out the pilot: Light to moderate
Your analysts will keep an eye on the data, and they will give real-time feedback to your team members. Are your advocates participating? Which types of content seem to be working?
Wrapping up the pilot: Light to moderate
At the end of the pilot, the metrics people will help your project manager and executive champion to gather strategic insights about the pilot program. Additionally, they may have ideas for the expansion of your program.
It’s easy to forget that you’re not alone. Your advocacy vendor should provide support for you and your team. Here’s what you can expect from your vendor’s customer success team:
- Helps with project planning
- Provides guidance for deployment
- Assists with technical migrations
- Helps with training
- Shares subject matter expertise
Level of Involvement:
Envisioning the pilot: Light
During this stage, you may not know your customer success team, as you may be selecting your vendor. But once you do select a vendor, get to know your CSM as soon as possible.
Organizing and preparing: Moderate
This is the point where the vendor’s customer success team will be of great use to you and your team. Your designated CSM should work closely with your project manager. He should help guide your project plan.
Carrying out the pilot: Moderate
Your customer success team should offer suggestions about optimizing your program, and they should help you troubleshoot any problems, be they technical glitches with the platform or general social media questions.
Wrapping up the pilot: Light to moderate
Your customer success team can help you devise ways to transition from a pilot program to a full-scale employee advocacy program.
Looking for more help launching your advocacy program?
Filling the key roles for an employee advocacy program is just one step in a much larger journey. Check out our ebook The Rise of the Employee Marketer. It’s dedicated to helping you plan and activate your social advocates in your company.
Good luck!
Posted byMark Bajus