The well-known pollster Frank Luntz recently teamed up with Conversate Labs to have a conversation with a group of professionals who’d left their jobs during the “Great Resignation,” which Conversate Labs argues should be called, “the Great Disconnect.”

There’s much to unpack from the interview, but I thought a number of insights were worth highlighting in particular.

Anyone who’s been reading our blog will recognize some themes we’ve been hammering on for months.

 

Employee-Employer Relations

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the focus group was that lack of engagement and poor communication – more than money – drove the wave of resignations. That’s why Conversate Labs is calling it, “the Great Disconnect.” Employers were blindsided, but they shouldn’t have been.

It turned out that professional after professional identified problems in their relations with managers and bosses as the source of the problem. These quitters weren’t “entitled.” They were fed up and burned out.

Luntz put it well in a tweet: “Every CEO you see now talks about being “inclusive” and treating their employees better – but people don’t believe most of them.”

It’s hard to put it better than that. It’s not enough to talk about employee activation. (NOTE: When Employee Activation Post comes out, link to that here.) You have to walk the walk.

People who quit their jobs last year knew their employers weren’t walking the walk.

 

Why They Quit

When asked to explain their reasons for leaving, each of the individuals in the focus group identified problems in their former work environments. They talked about lack of respect from managers, zero communication from up top, and being forced to work with people who’d tested positive for COVID – and then being punished if they spoke up or tried to do anything about it.

One woman actually said, “People aren’t quitting for money.” She went on to explain that employees want to feel like they matter.

Another member of the group talked about having time to put the kids to bed at night. Others spoke of unrealistic expectations from managers, and not getting the support they needed from their bosses.

When the moderator asked for a show of hands from those who had a good relationship with their manager prior to quitting, very few people raised theirs.

 

What They’re Looking for in a Better Job

In another tweet, Luntz highlighted his takeaways about what people who resigned are looking for in a better job.

Yes, they’re looking for better pay. Lunch isn’t free in life. But they’re also looking for flexibility. Especially those with families.

Most importantly, they say they want future employers to “treat me like a human being.” “Not a robot.”

 

What Does that Mean?

They wanted “real-time feedback” from managers. And listening. Listening is perhaps one of the most important parts of “treating employees like human beings.” Listening is a sign of respect. Which is at the core of “treating people like human beings.”

Respect doesn’t mean unearned praise or “everybody-gets-a-star” appreciation days. It’s not about giving every employee a participation trophy.

It’s about treating them with a little bit of dignity, instead of as a cog in a machine.

One thing respect is definitely about is taking employees’ COVID concerns seriously. It’s been a difficult two years for a large number of people. Workers are struggling with fear, loss, getting sick, burnout, stress, and worrying about loved ones.

Treating people like human beings means taking seriously their need for time off to grieve a lost family member. It means letting them sleep at night instead of pestering them with emails. It means affording them the respect of hearing out their legitimate concerns about contracting COVID, especially if they have elderly or immunocompromised relatives. It means listening to what they’re saying when they say, “I can’t take this anymore,” or “I can’t deal with it,” or “I feel like I’m losing any lines between work and home-life.” It means giving them some space.

We don’t live to work; we work to live.

 

Big Takeaway

The pressure is on employers now, not on employees. Oftentimes, hiring managers have the upper hand in negotiations, but right now the momentum is on the job-seekers’ side. So, if you don’t want to lose any employees, you need to treat them right.

If you want your employees to be engaged, you need to engage with them. The onus is not the other way around.

This isn’t some entitled, anti-capitalist claptrap about how work sucks and young people want bosses who can “understand their feelings.” Instead, it’s a call to action for employers to create the kinds of work environments where people actually want to work. Or forget even one where people want to work – it’s about creating the kinds of environments where they’re not destroying their physical and mental health every day just to keep up with the rat race.

It’s not about being your employees’ nanny. It’s about being a human.

 

Show the Human Side of Your Company

(The first step is having a human side.)

Assuming you’re good on the first step, here’s what you can do.

1. Follow Through on Your Commitments: Don’t just talk about diversity, or employee engagement, or equity, or environmental responsibility. Take actions that demonstrate the depth of your commitment.

2. Take a Look at this Focus Group: In particular, watch their reaction to GM’s CEO, whom they said actually came off as “genuine,” unlike their former employers.

3. Try Something New: Give your workers a stake in your company – stocks, a stake in decision-making, a seat at the table, etc. Maybe even try our employee advocacy idea.

4. Listen to Your People: Actually listen. Respectfully. Then maybe you’ll understand what they need and how you can serve them better – so that they serve you better.

There’s been a hot debate in some marketing circles about Google PPC Ads, with some people arguing that they no longer work (or at least not for certain types of businesses), and others arguing that they do still work if you know how to use them properly.

But, rather than wade into the debate, we’d like to talk about why we think employee-generated content (employee advocacy) might be a better investment.

Some Common Themes

If you’ve read any of our past articles, you’ll know we write a lot about how consumers (i.e., people) trust real people (i.e., employees, and other customers, and sometimes influencers) more than they trust large corporations.

We’ve also written about how audiences implicitly trust organic content better than traditional advertisements.

Both of these concepts play into making employee-created content a potentially better marketing tool than Google ads.

Think about Your Own Life

If you’re reading this, you’re probably an experienced digital consumer yourself. You’re savvy about internet browsing and you know how to find the content you like best.

Do you think popup ads are working on you?

Even before the internet, most Americans were fairly good at tuning out interruptive ads. When the game paused and the commercials came on, most people muted the TV and got up to use the bathroom or get a beer. We’ve continued to apply this mindset to our digital consumption.

Seriously, ask yourself: when was the last time you actually clicked on a Google ad on your smartphone or laptop?

Most people either use ad-blockers, or they learn how to ignore ads. Even when we don’t successfully tune them out, we avoid clicking on them. That wouldn’t be a problem if consumers went out and bought the advertised items on their own after viewing the ads, but that usually only happens if it’s an item they’re already looking for.

Meaning it’s really only cost-effective for the largest brands to invest in blanketing the internet with ads.

Does that mean it might not be worth it for everyone else? We’ll come back to that.

Bots?

What about bots and crawlers clicking on your ads? What about ad-fraud?

If you spend money on PPC ads, you pay for every click. But if a bot clicks on your ad, there’s zero chance of a sale. Web crawlers don’t convert.

Now, many will clamor that ad-fraud can be mitigated. You don’t have to lose all your money on “fake” clicks. That’s true, but mitigating them can be a bit of a pain – time intensive and costly, a real headache if you don’t know what you’re doing.

So once again, we return to the question: is it worth it?

Perhaps it is. Certainly, some savvy advertisers can make a lot of money off of Google ads. And if you have a 9-figure marketing budget, you can definitely gather some impressive data from massive ad campaigns, meaning you can target them very effectively.

But if you’re a small business, or if your team isn’t already expert at Google advertising, it may not give you a good return on your investment.

Which Brings Us to Employee Advocacy

Whereas Google ads may not be cost effective for every company, businesses of every size can see immediate returns from farming out their content marketing and social media to their own employees.

This is what we call “employee advocacy” or “crowdsourced content marketing.” If you have a workforce of any size, you’ve got a wealth of social media talent and good content at your disposal. Best of all, you don’t have to pay extra for this content (other than rewards for top performers, perhaps).

Employee-generated content is more “authentic” than are Google ads. Content that’s employee-created is more organic and therefore more trusted by audiences. Employee advocacy, or employee ambassadorship, is real people talking to real people.

Which means we think it will convert at much higher rates than any but the most targeted Google ads. People are less likely to tune out employee-generated content than they are Google ads.

In short, we think it will cost you less and perform better in the long run. Making it at least worth a shot. Especially if you’ve been frustrated up to now with the performance of your Google ads.

In a recent post, on Employee Advocacy for B2B Companies, we foreshadowed a future post in which we planned to delve deeper into how to apply the concept of employee advocacy specifically to social media for B2B.

We think our model of each employee as an online ambassador is particularly suited to the B2B approach to social media sites, which differs from the B2C approach some critical ways.

 

B2B Social Media Style

Typically, when we think about Facebook or Twitter – or especially Instagram and TikTok – we think of young people, short attentions spans, humor (memes and gifs), and cultivated lifestyle images.

When we think about corporations using social media platforms to build their brands, we think of B2C companies. Wendy’s trolling McDonald’s. Steak-umm trolling everybody. It seems like the way to stay relevant on social media is to be cool, edgy, and casual.

And, in some ways, it is. The way to capture attention in the attention economy is to excite people. The language of the attention economy is informal. It’s great for advertising.

B2B brands can do some of that. But they’re not trying to reach a consumer audience. They’re trying to appeal to people in their professional lives, and – unless it’s LinkedIn – there’s this idea that if people are on social media sites at work, they’re probably wasting the company’s time.

But actually, social media platforms – not just LinkedIn – can be excellent for B2B selling.

 

Here’s Why

There’s this image of social platforms as places where you need to be glitzy and flashy to stand out. Which doesn’t jibe with the image of B2B brands as professional and competent and unglamorous.

But Facebook was originally conceived as a way for people to meet other people. The concept was to connect people, to facilitate relationships.

And business-to-business marketing is all about relationships.

If your company caters to other businesses, you surely already have established channels for facilitating information-flow and relationships between employees within your company and employees within the companies you’re selling to.

But social media sites – again, not just LinkedIn – can connect you with people you might not otherwise be connected to – people who hold important roles inside companies you’re not currently selling to. Yet.

 

How Employee Advocacy Fits In

Platforms like Facebook and Twitter can allow potential buyers to establish connections with employees inside your company (who might work in product development, sales, environmental impact, design, etc.), who can give them the kind of information they need to move along the buying process.

But for that to happen, you need to allow those employees a little more license to use social media on your behalf. Perhaps not to post viral cat videos. But to interact with new buyers whom they can bring into your audience. This means allowing your workers to share information about your products and services, and about their own roles in your company, in order to facilitate the buying journey.

It doesn’t have to be anything fancy at first. Just tacit acknowledgement on your behalf that part of the role of your engineers, truckers, managers, safety techs, and even forklift operators actually might require them to get on social media.

You can give them a few guidelines to start out. If you’re looking for advice, scroll back through our archives and see what we’ve written on the topic.

 

Employee Empowerment

Go back and read what we wrote about decentralized content marketing.

The B2B buying process is already a little decentralized. Information doesn’t just flow through a tightly controlled funnel, but passes between employees at all levels of your company and employees at all levels of the companies you sell to, making employee advocacy all the more of a good fit.

If you’re ready to fully embrace what social media promised – building connections – go ahead and empower your employees to go out onto social media during the workday, so that they can build rapport with the audience who buys from you.

Let them post original content, reach out to potential new buyers, connect more directly with people in your audience.

We think you’ll see dividends with this approach, because we think social media is perfect for B2B employee advocacy.

Joe Rogan has managed to get himself in the news again. And once again, in a controversial way. Now, I’m a bit of a fan of his podcast, especially because he doesn’t take himself too seriously. As with most of the other controversies he’s been involved in, I think his detractors take him more seriously than he does – or than most of his audience does, including me.

But rather than wade into the controversy, I wanted to talk about one of my favorite moments on his show, and why that moment is relevant for marketing teams on the fence about employee advocacy.

 

Competition

In an episode from a few years ago, Rogan says that he has a positive attitude towards competition. He explains that, rather than feel jealous when he sees someone doing something more skillfully than he does it, he takes it as motivation to perform better. If someone does something more impressively than him, “that means it can be done better” than he’s doing it.

Rather than get down about this, he takes it as a sign that he can improve – whether it’s his lifts, his fighting, his comedy-routines, or even his podcast.

 

What Does This Have to Do with You?

One common sticking point that content marketers and social media managers have about embracing employee advocacy, or letting their employees (from outside the marketing team) write articles and craft social posts, is a worry that those employees’ content might perform better than content created in-house.

Let’s face it. We all get jealous sometimes. Even when it’s your best friend. It’s easy to feel a pang of envy when your buddy beats you in a race or a game of one-on-one basketball.

But rather than wish ill of our friends, some of us take that stab of jealousy as a motivation to improve our own performance.

 

It’s Okay to Feel a Little Jealous

It’s pretty natural to feel nervous about opening up content and social media to the entire company. It’s new. And, yeah, some employees might write better articles than you or post videos that go viral. But that’s okay – if you take the right lesson from it.

You can either have a healthy attitude to competition, or an unhealthy attitude. And like high-school football, attitude makes a difference in what you’ll get out of competition.

If someone on your engineering team posts a graphic that outperforms every graphic you’ve ever created, you can learn from that. You can up your content game to match your employees.

If someone on in your frontline staff masters TikTok influencing, maybe you can learn something from them. Maybe you’ll discover how to do even better in the future.

Joe Rogan has the right attitude towards competition. You can too. If you take that attitude, you’ll get the most out of employee advocacy.

 

Friendly Competition

The key here is the word friendly. Competition sucks when competitors try to sabotage one another and best friends stab each other in the back. It’s okay to be a little jealous. But then you have to get past that. You’ve got to turn that jealousy into fuel for your motivation.

So, try opening up your digital presence to some friendly competition. Don’t worry too much. Let your employees post cool pictures and send awesome tweets. Watch what they do well. Then try to one-up them. If you can beat their stuff, your company will do even better.

And not only will that be fun, it will be good for your company’s bottom line.

A couple stats jumped out at me from Hubspot’s recent “Ultimate List of Marketing Statistics for 2022,” including that “69% of marketers invested in SEO” last year, and that the company “website is the #2 channel” for reaching customers, “behind social media.”

It’s no surprise that SEO remains highly relevant in 2022, or that social media is taking over as the #1 place to reach buyers.

But I would have thought that first statistic, “69% of marketers,” would have been much higher.

Whether you’re currently investing in Search Engine Optimization, or whether you’re on the fence, it’s important to understand how SEO has changed in the last two decades.

Let’s have a look at some best practices for SEO in 2022.

1. Get the Basics Right

SEO isn’t new anymore. You can’t afford to have a glitchy website, or pages that aren’t indexed by Google. Yet some businesses still fail to fix basic problems that hurt them with the algorithm.

Here are a few things to get right.

Core Web Vitals

Google introduced its Core Web Vitals (content loading speed, visual stability, and interactivity) in May of 2020. Since that time, marketers have learned that while it isn’t necessary to optimize all three (doing so won’t improve your rank all that much), if your website fails all three you can guarantee it will rank poorly.

Speed is still important. Just not crazy important. As long as your website loads reasonably quickly, you shouldn’t have to worry too much.

Broken Links

Don’t do it. Don’t be that website – the one with all the redirects to pages that don’t exist. Fix your broken links.

If customers can’t find what they’re looking for on your site, they’ll leave. Google penalizes broken links for a reason, and when people click away from your site quickly due to a broken link, that hurts your rank even more.

Great UX

Solid User Experience (UX) is a must-have.

If your website is difficult to navigate, people won’t hesitate to go elsewhere. Good design is what every website needs. This isn’t so much something that will boost your rank tremendously as it is something that can kill your rank if you screw it up.

Testing

A/B testing (or A/B/C/D testing) is the standard in 2022; however, only 17% of marketers use landing page A/B tests to improve conversion rates, which might be why Cyrus Shepard listed it first in his “22 Smart Google SEO Tips for 2022.”

Be the Last Click

Speaking of Shephard, when it comes to getting the SEO basics right, I thought the most important thing to highlight was his “favorite SEO tip of all time,” “Be the Last Click.”

If you give users exactly what they want, they won’t go anywhere else. The purpose of Google’s algorithm is to give users the result they want, so 10 times out of 10, being the last click is going to boost your ranking.

2. Don’t be Too Clever

Don’t try to outsmart the algorithm by getting fancy with your SEO. I’m talking keyword stuffing, spammy practices, etc.

Keyword stuffing is like overusing Microsoft Word’s thesaurus function in your first 9th grade English paper. You end up with a bunch of big words you can’t understand, and your teacher can tell. It’s unreadable, and so is your webpage.

Shephard calls this “nuking the fluff.” According to him, “Google is rewarding sites… that provide quick answers and more direct engagement.” Not flowery category descriptions and keyword-jammed title tags.

Real quick on gaming the system (i.e., spam): don’t do it. In his list of SEO practices to avoid in 2022, Neil Patel highlights “spammy backlinks” and “spammy link building.”

3. Go Beyond the Basics

Internal Linking and Deep Linking

Both Patel and Shepard point to the need to optimize your internal links. Not only will this help the ranking of each page, it will help the ranking of your website as a whole, because Google’s algorithm doesn’t just consider time on page, it considers time on site, and if you can direct people to other pages on your site, you’ll increase that. Patel recommends including 2-5 internal links in each blog post.

Likewise, deep linking is a strategy you should be implementing. Instead of linking to a URL, link to a specific passage or text fragment. This may help you with Google’s passage ranking. It also gets people deeper into your site, and ideally brings them to exactly the information they’re looking for.

Multiple Media Types

Patel also recommends taking advantage of the growth in video and audio by embedding different media types into your pages. This can “improve the user experience and increase dwell time on your site.”

Long-Tail Keywords

Finally, long-tail keywords are the way to do SEO in 2022. Patel notes that 91.8% of Google search traffic is for long phrases, and that “long-tail keywords tend to have a lower search volume and, as a result, lower competition.”

You might think longer keywords, which are naturally more specific, might reduce your potential traffic. But, they’re easier to rank for and they have a higher search intent. Quality, not quantity.

Long-tail keywords give you a greater chance of giving site visitors exactly what they’re searching for. Meaning you’re their last click, and they spend more time on your site. Which improves your ranking.

4. Optimize for Mobile

I could have included this under “Get the Basics Right,” but it deserves to be called out by itself. According to that Hubspot article, only about 25% of companies are investing in mobile optimization, even as about half of all web traffic worldwide is from mobile devices.

In 2022, there’s no excuse to have a website that doesn’t work well on mobile devices. And yet, too many businesses still haven’t optimized for mobile. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been frustrated trying to navigate clunky business websites on a smartphone in recent months. This isn’t something you can afford to screw up anymore.

SEO in 2022

SEO has changed a lot in the last 20 years. Following these best practices will help you ensure you’re getting it right, so you can build and engage your audience.

Is it time for you to do a content audit?

2022 is fully off and running now. We’re about halfway through the first quarter. It might be time to reassess your 2022 content strategy now that it’s had time to work for a few weeks, but before we really get deep into the year.

A content audit can mean a few things, but basically, it’s just a way of stopping and checking yourself.

Look at the metrics you’ve gathered. How’s your content doing? How does it perform week-to-week? Is engagement trending upwards or downwards?

More importantly: would you read it?

As a writer, I can say that this question is a good gut-check. If you’re bored with your own content, other people probably are too. If I’m bored writing it, you’re probably bored reading it.

Is it Boring?

It sounds like a harsh question. But it’s worth asking. If your articles are tedious, of course they might not perform well.

What if it is boring?

Don’t worry too much. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Every writer’s been there (except maybe William Faulkner). You’re pressed for time. You’re stressed out. You churn out some piece of internet-speak to meet a deadline. It’s okay. It happens.

If you decide that your content is boring, congratulations. You’ve learned something. You know that it can be improved. You may even have a clear path to improving it.

If your posts are fire, but they’re still not performing well, it’s harder to figure out what the problem is. If your posts are lame, well, then you know how to improve their performance. Make them un-lame.

But How Do You Do That?

“Just make your content less boring.”

That’s easier said than done.

So, what are a few strategies you can actually use to write more interesting articles and design more intriguing posts?

1. Bring More Humanity into Your Voice

Ditch the jargon. Lose the corporate-speak. Write like the real human being that you are.

Note: this isn’t just, “write like you talk,” which is a common bit of advice given to copywriters. You may not talk the way your audience talks. You want to write like they talk. But, more importantly, showing emotion and feeling in your content is a better way of having a “human voice” than just throwing in some slang to make trite points.

Take a stand. Maybe even do something controversial.

2. Outsider Perspectives

Voices from outside your organization can offer fresh perspectives and help you mix up your content. Freelancers, influencers, contributors from other organizations (who might reciprocate by hosting you at a later date), and thought leaders in your industry can all give you those fresh points of view.

3. Try Asking Your Staff for Fresh Ideas

Ask around your organization. What do your employees care about? What stories can they tell?

Your workers can give you those fresh ideas that can help you to ditch the boring content. And maybe, just maybe, you could even try letting them write content for you, too.

Just Do Something

It really doesn’t matter what you try, if your content’s boring, you need to change things. But also, if it’s boring, almost anything you try will be an improvement. At least it will be different.

Now, maybe your audit confirms that you’re already doing everything right when it comes to content marketing.

Or maybe you find that it’s perfectly fine, but there are a couple of ways you could tinker around the edges to make it better.

But maybe you fail your audit. In which case, you’re in luck, because – just like the U.S. healthcare system – almost anything you do will be better than letting it stay the same. Truly terrible content marketing is also the easiest to move in a better direction.

But before you know just where your content ranks on the scale from three poop emojis to ten fire emojis, you need to do the audit.

So ask yourself: do I enjoy reading this?

Early on the morning of January 3rd, an 8-12-inch snowstorm hit the Mid-Atlantic, causing widespread power outages throughout Virginia. I-95 was shut down for over a day, stranding some drivers – including Senator Tim Kaine – for over 27 hours. In central Virginia, tens of thousands of people (including me and my relatives) are still without electricity, with outages projected to continue for days.

Just as people who lost power did in 1981, many of the affected customers have been calling their utility companies, hoping for a voicemail update with an ETA for when they’ll get power back. Others have been checking the website, dealing with clunky outage maps that update occasionally.

But in 2021, the fastest, easiest, and clearest line of communication between electric companies and their affected customers is social media. Facebook – not the company website – has the most up-to-date information. It’s the best way to reach the largest number of people. And companies are able to give their customers much more detail in Facebook posts than they can through other means.

Like many others, I’ve been checking the Facebook page for my relatives’ electric provider, too. Posts include useful information, and typically include a picture of ice on the power lines, or of a road crew hard at work, or of a fleet of trucks heading out. The comments are dominated by thanks and well-wishes and prayers for the road crews. While everyone is understandably frustrated, they also truly appreciate the hard work these men and women are doing to restore power.

 

But We Want to Hear Directly from the Road Crew

At the moment, I don’t think anyone wants members of the road crew taking a break from fixing the power lines to get on Facebook. But when all this is over, I think many customers, including me, would like to hear directly from the brave men and women who worked in the cold and in the dark and in the snow to restore our power.

Human beings want heroes celebrate. We want to have people to thank, real people. It’s nice to see a quick picture on the company page. But if dozens of people are already commenting with prayers and messages of appreciation, think how many more will engage with stories posted by some of these brave men and women themselves.

 

Frontline Workers

Similarly, throughout the pandemic, we’ve learned to praise and laud frontline workers, healthcare workers, and all the men and women who labored in obscurity to fight the virus and keep their fellow citizens safe.

But praising “all healthcare workers” is too generic after a while. Humans want faces and names to connect to. Hospital workers, nurses, doctors, sanitation workers, and frontline workers aren’t monolithic. They aren’t a general collective all pulling in unison.

Healthcare workers are individuals. A hospital is an organization of individuals. Grocery store clerks are a group of individuals. Each with their own individual stories.

During the pandemic, we’ve been able to hear some of those stories. We celebrate scientists like Katalin Kariko, whose research led to the mRNA vaccines. We thank the traveling nurses we know, or our relatives who are EMTs, or our friend who is a hospital janitor.

But most of the stories still go unsung. Some frontline workers would prefer that it stay that way – not everyone wants publicity, for good reasons. But others no doubt would like to share their stories. And hopefully, as we pull out of this pandemic, they will have the opportunity to do so.

 

The Broader Lesson

In crises, we want to know our heroes. We want to actually see them. We want to thank a person, not a collective.

That applies not just to healthcare, not just to power crews, not just to soldiers and sailors, not just to frontline workers, but to anyone who takes personal risks to serve a community. Many people who make sacrifices every day go unnoticed. But today, thanks to the free flow of information, it is easier than ever for us to learn their stories and thank them personally.

For any organization – not just one facing a crisis – the people being served want to hear from the individuals who serve them. Individual stories are not just a powerful way to engage with any audience, they also humanize an otherwise faceless organization.

When the power is back and the road crews have a chance to rest, I hope some of them also get a chance to share their stories.

At first glance, employee advocacy might seem like it works better for consumer-oriented brands than for B2B ones.

After all, most of the “cool jobs” that make for great “employee influencer” content are in B2C companies. And social media seems better suited to B2C than B2B (although not necessarily – we plan to address that soon in a follow up post).

But actually, employee advocacy might be even better for B2B than it is for B2C.

 

Let Me Explain

The idea of employee advocacy, or employee ambassadorship, isn’t just that workers throughout a company craft and post content. It’s that every person who works for the company can and should be a representative for their employer, especially in the digital realm. And actually, this might be most important in business-to-business transactions.

The business-to-business market is about relationships. The buying process is long. No one-click, free-shipping, instant purchases.

Even before the Internet, the B2B market typically involved a long sales cycle: with white papers, phone calls between the buyers and various company representatives, and even in-person meetings between the buyers and the technical staff. If you’re buying a new line of forklifts for your warehouse, you’re probably going to want to speak to the engineers who designed the latest model.

Discussions of social media tend to focus on news feeds, going viral, and engagement (in the form of likes, comments, and shares). But social media was originally designed to facilitate relationships. And it still can.

Employee advocacy is about giving faces to large organizations. Your company isn’t faceless. It’s made up of a diverse group of real individuals. You know that, but do people on the outside? Not if you don’t let them peek inside and see a thriving group of individuals working together.

That’s what a company is: a large group of people with different lives and different interests who work together for a common purpose. Sometimes it can seem opaque from the outside, but it’s really a collaboration between a variety of individuals, each with their own individual stories, who come together because they each get something of value out of their cooperation.

If you have a thriving internal culture, consider showing it to the world. And if you want to foster a thriving culture, show your employees that you trust them by giving them a voice.

Letting buyers see inside your company – by allowing your employees to advocate on your behalf – fosters trust and intimacy. Not just in your workforce, but in your audience. When people see that you’re willing to let your employees say what they want to say about you on social media (even though you’re managing what they get to post), that’s powerful.

Buyers are more willing to believe you when your employees all represent you well.

 

Meeting Buyers’ Needs

You already focus your products and services (and marketing messages) on meeting buyer needs. Many buyers, especially in the information age, especially in B2B, need to see inside your company a bit. If they’re buying something for their employer, they need details. They need the kind of in-depth information your employees can provide.

This goes beyond having your technical people write white papers. In 2022, you want your technical people to have genuine relationships with representatives from all of your buyers. And digital technology empowers them to do that.

If you use digital technology in a positive way – by letting each of your employees put their best foot forward on your behalf – you’ll reap dividends. With employee advocacy, you can make your sales cycles simultaneously more professional and more intimate.

More engaging and more informative. More informal and more thorough. More open and more collaborative.

Employee advocacy doesn’t have to be flashy or salesy. Often, it’s the opposite. And that’s why it’s perfect for B2B companies of any size.

For forward-thinking companies in 2022, crafting thought leadership has become the next level of content marketing. When your business produces thought leadership, you no longer follow trends. You create them. Your company goes from up-and-coming to influential. You drive actual change in your industry.

So, it makes sense that everyone from Deloitte to McKinsey to the RAND Corporation is writing about thought leadership. But while many CEOs and public relations people talk about thought leadership, genuine and trendsetting insight is still relatively rare.

What Sets Apart Real Thought Leadership?

The difference between those who merely talk about thought leadership and those who actually drive change is action. The people and companies who take action are the ones whose thought leadership matters. This action can take many forms, but – at its core – action is the tangible follow-through for the message and vision of a company.

Action drives change. Action demonstrates commitment to the principles laid out in articles and white papers. It backs up in reality what was written down in words.

That is not to say that words don’t matter. They do. Language is the means by which we convey thoughts and ideas. For it to be put into practice, an idea must be expressed and communicated (to the relevant parties). Without words, there is no thought leadership.

But action reinforces and complements the written word. Together, words and actions create something real. Together, they drive change.

A Few Lessons from This Insight

While there are many takeaways from the understanding that action and words work together to change hearts and minds (and reality), there are a few lessons we’ll focus on today. 

1. Doers vs. Communicators

We believe that the dichotomy between doers and communicators within a company is a false one. Why? Because the doers can be communicators.

The people on the ground can be the ones communicating their experiences and broadcasting their perspectives. In fact, audiences want to hear from the doers. Employee advocacy is a great way to make that happen, by allowing your audience to hear directly from your engineers, designers, architects, frontline staff, software developers, and your test team.

But there’s another reason the dichotomy is a false one. Rather than working in tangent to one another, we believe that the doers and communicators need to work together. They need each other. The doers can create their own content. But the guiding architects and managers need to be the marketing and public relations team, who actually design the overall thought leadership message.

Instead of writing every post themselves, the communicators can now become the designers who shape and direct the flow of content.

2. Commitment to Employees

Lots of companies talk about their commitment to their people. But we believe that one way to actually demonstrate that commitment is to give employees a voice. Empower them to craft content. If you’re proud of your diverse workforce, this is also an excellent way for you to pursue equity.

3. Trendsetting

A precondition for being a trendsetter is doing something first. Being an early-adopter. Trying novel ideas. Employee advocacy is a novel concept. It’s new. Not many businesses practice it. By trying it out, you can be a trendsetter. You can set a new standard within your industry for employee engagement and crowdsourced content. Your action can drive change.

Taking Action on Employee Advocacy

It’s a new year, and there’s no better time than the present to take action on resolutions made in 2021. We believe that if you make 2022 the year you take action on empowering your employees to be content creators, you’ll never regret it.

Action is difficult, which is why it’s often so much rarer than white papers. Action requires risk. But opportunity requires risk. Change requires risk. Genuine thought leadership requires risk.

So, if you’d like to demonstrate through your actions that you are a thought leader in your industry, take a leap on employee advocacy. It just might pay off for you.

If you’ve read any of our previous posts, you’ll know that here at Mobibi we believe strongly in employee advocacy. We not only think it will be good for your bottom line, we think it will be good for your workforce.

We also think it’s the right thing to do.

Empowering Employees

It’s been a hard two years for all of us. Burnout in the U.S. working population hit sky-high levels in 2021, which contributed to the legendary “Great Resignation.” Fear of the virus, worry about friends and loved ones, fights about vaccines and masks, shortages, inflation, stress about working – whether from home, or in the office, or on the front lines. It’s been a lot.

You might be thinking about cutting your employees some slack. One idea to consider is giving them a voice. As we limp into the end of a worldwide pandemic, this is one way to show your employees that you care about what they’ve gone through. Giving them a voice shows that you respect them as human beings, because you want to hear what they have to say.

Here are a few other reasons we think you should try it out:

Equity

Not every business considers social justice an important part of their role in society. If you don’t, that’s fine. That’s your decision. But if you do want to do something about equity, instead of spending big on DEI trainings, consider inviting your employees to the table. Ask them about their stories. Instead of telling them what to think, listen to what they have to say. Especially if you’re proud of having a diverse workforce.

Younger Employees

We’ve written a little about Gen Z entering the workforce. Your youngest employees may not have much experience or responsibility yet. But many of them want “a seat at the table.” That might seem awfully presumptuous to you, but it might actually work in your favor. Generally, people meet expectations.

If you treat your younger staff-members as little more than children, they’ll act like it. If you want them to onboard quickly, then treat them as full members of the team: with all of the rights and responsibilities entailed by full membership.

Give them a voice, but let them know that voice comes with expectations of professionalism and maturity. By showing them a little respect, you’ll teach them to be worthy of your respect.

Open Culture

Some companies pride themselves on having an open culture. Many teams claim to value employee input. If you do, prove it. Give your employees a digital voice. Bring them into your content marketing operation.

Positive Social Media Image

No company wants to have a negative image online. It’s no secret that the people who often feel the most motivation to leave a review are the ones who want to leave a negative review. Maybe you encourage positive reviews from your customers. But what about your reputation as an employer?

There’s little you can do about Glassdoor or Indeed reviews. So, you probably don’t spend much time there. But, if you’re worried about what people might be saying about you online, you might be monitoring your employees’ social media feeds surreptitiously. Instead of snooping behind their back and hoping they don’t complain, try getting proactive about creating a positive digital image.

How? By encouraging your happy employees to say positive things about you online, just like you encourage your happy customers to write positive reviews. Just by asking them, you’ll show your people that you trust them, making it even more likely that they’ll say positive stuff about you.

You don’t want the only people posting on social media about you to be the ones posting negative stuff. If many of your employees really like you, ask them to rep you online a bit.

How Do You Give Your Employees a Voice?

When we talk about a voice, we mean a digital voice. Let your workers write content for you. Let them use social media for you. Let them send a Tweet, or a TikTok, or an Instagram photo, or even create a YouTube video. Let them post on their accounts, or write under their names, for you.

(Of course, you’ll get to manage and approve what they send out, so you will be able to monitor things and ensure they don’t actually say anything bad about you.)

It’s the Way of the Future

We’ve written previously about the democratization of content (and of the Internet in general). Increasingly, audiences want to see a variety of content from a variety of contributors, most of whom will be regular folks, not billionaires and politicians.

That’s why we think employee advocacy is such a good idea. It’s a way for you to get distributed content. Meaning a variety of sources, on a variety of channels, all flowing through you. The rise of blockchain, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and similar technologies demonstrates that people are hungry for decentralization. Well, this is a way for you to embrace that.

It might be uncomfortable at first, but if you give all of your employees a voice, you’ll be ready for that distributed future Internet. It won’t catch you by surprise.