Many years ago, National Geographic published an article contrasting the evolution of telecommunications in different parts of the world. Where Western countries like those in North American and Europe built networks that evolved over many years – from wired to wireless technologies – developing countries were able to leverage the newer technologies when setting up their communication networks. In other words, as newer approaches become available, it doesn’t make sense to repeat the same evolutionary processes.
Some Background on Employee Advocacy
The concept of employee advocacy, or the practice of encouraging employees to promote company content on social media channels, is not new. A quick Google search will yield scores of vendors offering solutions in one form or the other, many of which have been around for a decade or longer.
Companies produce content, need to recruit staff, and hold events to promote their products/services to prospective customers. These initiatives consume considerable internal resources in terms of time, money, and energy, so naturally, there’s value in maximizing the visibility of each message. Still, companies can only do so much by themselves, and that’s where their employees come in.
Employees represent an opportunity for companies to broadcast approved messages further than they would otherwise be able to do so. When an employee shares a piece of content, a job posting, or an event, she expands the potential reach of that message on social media channels like LinkedIn and Twitter. The more people who see company updates, the more likely companies will achieve the desired outcome.
And with employee advocacy solutions, businesses have a way of streamlining the process of asking employees to share content and making it easy for them to do so. Traditional services, or those you may find in a Google search, have primarily built their services with web and/or mobile app components.
Each participating employee registers for, downloads, and logs in to another service where they can see company-approved content and share the information on social media channels. Frequently, companies will use these services to send emails to notify employees of new content/messages ready to be shared. Pretty straightforward, right?
Corporate Communication Tools Have Evolved
Today, solutions like Slack are nearing ubiquity. Slack, which was recently acquired by Salesforce, is essentially an internal conversation tool where employees can communicate – primarily via text messages – with colleagues, partners, and customers. Individuals communicate on a 1-to-1 basis or as a part of group conversations. The service is proven to help employees more effectively manage day-to-day communications – more so than sending, receiving, and replying to emails.
But the Slack platform wouldn’t be where it is today if it weren’t for embracing third-party application developers who build add-ons that work with and run in their platform.
Reimagining Employee Advocacy
Understanding how modern companies have embraced tools like Slack and recognizing that employees already have more business apps than they care to admit, if you were to design an employee advocacy solution today, where would you start? What's your take on employee advocacy reimagined?
Would you begin by creating a separate web portal and mobile app – where all employees have to register for, install and log into to use – or would you adapt to how corporate communications have evolved?
Similar to the National Geographic article referenced above, Please Share is a content amplification and engagement solution that has embraced new company and employee workflows. Rather than operating as a free-standing solution or shoehorning an existing solution into a Slack app, Please Share is the first employee advocacy solution specifically designed for Slack. In other words, we started by looking at how people use Slack and then building our service from there – not the other way around.
As a result, with Please Share, company employees do not have to manage a separate login environment, remember to access a web service or install a mobile app. Instead, employees are freely able to broadcast approved company messages in just a few seconds – all directly from Slack’s desktop, mobile, or web app.
Ongoing Innovation
Furthermore, because Please Share exists as a Slack app, we are free to innovate in ways that traditional employee advocacy solutions may not have considered before.
A perfect example of employee advocacy reimagined is our newly announced functionality that enables companies to boost engagement with company posts on LinkedIn or Twitter. Instead of only asking employees to share content, why not ask them to like, re-share, and/or comment on company posts? To learn more about this enhancement to Please share, take a look at this blog post.
But we’re not stopping there. Development on several new exciting innovations is already underway, but more on that later.
Give Us a Try
As a Slack app, Please Share exemplifies employee advocacy reimagined. We've skipped the evolution that competing vendors have gone through. We’ve created a best-in-class solution that’s affordable and easy to use. If your company uses Slack and is exploring ways to boost content distribution and engagement, it’s time to give our service a try.
Click here to get started today.