What’s in it for your employees?

Dasle Hong’s had over a hundred client calls on employee advocacy — something she treats like a people program first and a marketing channel second.

The arc that runs through her advice is pretty straightforward: Start with willing people, prove it, and then move the middle. 

Here’s how she does it.

Meet the Master

Dasle Hong 

Senior manager, Brand marketing, DailyPay

Fun fact: She used ChatGPT, loaded with her family’s ages, personalities, and even dietary restrictions/preferences, to plan a 45-person family reunion.

Lesson 1: Sell the career upside.

Employee advocacy or employee-generated content programs are, understandably, framed by how they benefit the employer. But Hong believes that there’s just as much in it for the employee.

She calls it the “secret benefit of employee advocacy — how much you can unlock for your career for yourself.”

When you’re recruiting participants for an EGC program, frame the invitation around the career-building opportunities. “It can unlock different opportunities for their career. It can help them network on platforms like LinkedIn. It can unlock speaking opportunities and conferences.” 

Hong points to herself as evidence. “I think all of my coolest opportunities that I've had in my career are either through other people or through things that I've unlocked through LinkedIn.”

Lesson 2: Start small and prove it.

Sometimes it really is as simple as a spreadsheet. 

“Even if you are at a startup and you have zero resources, you can start out with a spreadsheet and say, ‘Hey, I’m picking 10 people in the company who are already active on LinkedIn, would you be up for piloting an approach with me and talking about things that you're passionate about?’”

Bust out those spreadsheet skills and track your pilot employee participants — followers, engagement, impressions, and other wins that will help you prove the ROI.

People will tell you, “I was actually able to hire someone into our company because of this, or I was able to land a client, land a deal, because I posted about X.”

Those stories and metrics “can prove out a larger business case,” Hong says. Need buy-in from your CFO? Crunch some numbers and show them that “by doing employee advocacy, you're actually saving X amount on impressions that you would otherwise spend on ads.”

Lesson 3: Match your approach to your goal.

Of course we all want to find the super ambassadors to kick off an EGC program. And on the other end of the spectrum, we all know the company curmudgeon who refuses to participate.

But the truth is that most people are in the persuadable middle.

They might be open to it and just need education, Hong says, or maybe they’re active on LinkedIn but just not posting about your company. She also recalls running an initiative “where it was the company’s anniversary, and even the people who were like, ‘I am never posting,’ came around to celebrate because it was such a big milestone.” Finding those big emotional connections isn’t just for your target audience.

Before you start persuading people to post company content, figure out whether your KPI is internal activation or external pipeline. If you’re trying to reach pipeline, Hong says, “then let’s segment based on who your most influential people on LinkedIn are.”

If internal activation is your goal, Hong segments by existing groups like employee resource groups and social groups, and she suggests asking leaders who people go to for advice. “Your superstar advocates can exist anywhere inside the company,” she points out — she once found one in a company book club. 

Identical reshared posts won’t “break through all the AI slop,” but what will break through are “employee influencers who have their own voice, who have their own platform, who are building their own content and are influencers in their own right, in their own industry.”  

That’s why Hong thinks that the next wave isn’t employee advocacy at all — it’s employee influence.