Company leaders know that nothing’s more important than their employees. We provide all kinds of things to make them happy, from competitive salaries to ergonomic chairs to gourmet coffee.

It’s time that we also make social media easier for them.

Let me clarify. I mean social media for the company. Your employees are already on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram all the time sharing stories about their personal lives. They also want to build their personal brands and talk about their workplace, but they lack a safe content distribution channel. Who wants to get reprimanded, even fired, for what they thought was a harmless post about the company picnic?

That’s why every company – and I mean every company – needs to start an employee advocacy program.

If you’re unfamiliar, an employee advocacy program allows employees to receive and post company-approved content to their social networks. Content is pushed out through a centralized hub, and since people trust their social contacts more than official marketing campaigns, they’re more apt to read, re-post and take action.

The key is that employee advocacy makes it as easy as possible for employees to do company-related social media. It’s all due to ease of access, since social is part of their daily routine and the program works with systems they already use. If you have the right employee advocacy technology, your program will provide exactly what workers want - convenience and relevance. You’ll deliver the right information to the right people at the right time.

Your employees have many reasons for wanting an employee advocacy program. Some want to sell more through the power of social selling. Others want to build their personal brands. Some know that social is a more efficient way to recruit. Social becomes much easier for executives and board members. And, it’s a more impactful way to connect with customers and provide personalized service. 

Of course, you can only have a successful employee advocacy program when you trust your employees. So take the grip off of your social media policies and train employees with guidelines and best practices. Most importantly, let them get involved however they like.

Keep in mind, however, that success involves more than a launch party. For your program to work, you need to scale and measure it, which is best achieved through a combination of enterprise-grade technology, an expert customer success team, best practices, a knowledge base and training.

Plus, the program and social media strategy must integrate with your business processes, which require business integration partnerships such as Salesforce1. In fact, when your technology integrates with Salesforce, social selling becomes as easy as possible since employees won’t have to download a second app. There’s nothing new to learn – it fits into how they already live and work. 

This type of integration also allows the program’s administrator to create, submit, and distribute new content directly to their team’s Chatter feed inside Salesforce. Users of Salesforce1 will be able to connect social channels, comment, and share the content from within Chatter.

With such an intuitive user experience, employees have virtually no barriers to spreading positive company messages on social media. They won’t have to open a separate application or create another login/password – their personal Salesforce.com account already provides access.

All of this ease of use leads to tangible results. Program administrators can track activity and see statistics like total shares, clicks, social reactions (likes, comments, re-tweets, etc.) and impressions.

There’s a big payoff when you trust your employees and make social media easier for them. By extending your social media strategy, you can see an increase in revenue, lead generation, and brand awareness, plus a more efficient recruiting process.

But let’s not forget about your employees. The program instills a sense of pride. They’ll be able to sell more. They’ll get the opportunity to become advocates, contributors and thought leaders. They’ll be more engaged in their work. All because you gave them what they wanted. How easy was that?