Latest news with #employeeadvocacy
Forbes
13-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Why Employee Advocacy Starts With Culture, Not Just Content
Bradley Keenan, founder and CEO of DSMN8 , an all-in-one employee advocacy platform. getty With digital noise at an all-time high, it's no longer enough for brands to rely on polished campaigns and official channels. To create a real impact, nothing is more important than people. For this reason, employee advocacy has become essential to many marketers. However, while many companies focus on supplying employees with content to share, they often overlook the deeper foundation that makes advocacy work: culture. A thriving employee advocacy program doesn't start with content templates. It starts with building a culture where employees genuinely want to share your company's story. When leaders participate in their organization's advocacy program, whether by posting on LinkedIn or simply by championing team successes internally, it sends a powerful signal across the business. Program managers are realizing this. According to research from my company, DSMN8, 73% of organizations plan to get leadership involved to boost their program engagement this year. Something I'm keen to emphasize is that leaders don't need to become influencers overnight. Sometimes, executives can hesitate to get involved if they think it will take up a significant part of their day-to-day work. What matters is showing authentic engagement and reinforcing that advocacy isn't just a marketing task but part of the company's DNA. When employees see their leaders walk the talk, they're far more likely to follow. Making It Purposeful Your next move after gaining endorsement from leadership is to make sure your employees understand that their voices matter. Advocacy really does work best when it's anchored in shared purpose rather than just marketing goals. Show them how advocacy connects to the company's mission and values, creating a significant business impact. Help them see that by sharing, they're shaping the company's reputation and advancing something meaningful, not just pushing corporate content. Empowering Authentic Voices One of the most common pitfalls in advocacy programs is over-scripting employees. In my experience, the most successful initiatives let employees adapt and personalize what they share. Today's audiences can tell when a post is authentic and when it's corporate speak. Give employees the flexibility to use their own voice and perspective. Provide them with training, guidance and a wide variety of content, but trust them to make it their own. Something we like to do is provide at least five different post captions in varying styles and tones of voice. This helps employees find a caption that suits them best before adding their own spin to it. Recognizing And Celebrating Participation Highlighting employee advocacy wins goes a long way in keeping momentum alive. Public recognition, shout-outs from leadership in all-hands meetings or team chats, and even small rewards can help turn occasional participants into passionate advocates. Some companies use gamification, but meaningful acknowledgment often matters more than points or badges. Make your employees the heroes of your program; appreciation is a powerful motivator. Listening And Adapting Culture thrives on two-way communication. For this reason, I'd argue that establishing a feedback loop is fundamental to employee advocacy success. You can't say that your program empowers your team and helps them build a personal brand if you're not listening to their perspectives. Employees should feel comfortable sharing what's working and what isn't. If they suggest content topics and ideas that would resonate with their networks, this is even better. Act on that feedback to keep your program relevant and engaging. When employees feel heard, they become active partners in shaping the program. Showing The Impact Sharing the results is something that many skip, which, in my opinion, is a mistake. Employees are far more motivated when they understand the real-world impact of their advocacy. Sure, they might not be interested in the granular analytics. However, your advocates absolutely should know when their collective efforts have expanded the company's reach, generated leads or attracted talent. To take this a step further, I suggest having these results championed by the CEO or another senior executive. When people can connect their actions to meaningful outcomes, advocacy becomes not just an activity but a point of pride. Final Thoughts Ultimately, successful advocacy isn't about pushing employees to post on social media. It's about creating an environment where they feel proud to share. The six steps I've outlined here all contribute to building an advocacy program that feels second nature to your team. Companies that invest in culture, not just content, will be the ones that stand out in a skeptical market. Get that right, and the content will follow. Forbes Communications Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
Forbes
09-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The Combined Power Of LinkedIn And Email Marketing For Driving Sales
Karan Sharma is a digital commerce expert and the co-founder at Kinex Media Inc, a creative digital agency in Toronto. As social platforms continue to evolve with new features, they're increasingly influencing purchasing behaviors. As a result, the buyer's journey has transformed dramatically. According to research by GWI, 71% of B2B decision makers say that social media influences their decisions when they're considering new products for their companies. For many of these buyers, their purchasing journey begins on LinkedIn. You can leverage this shift by using LinkedIn to build trust with your audience and then connecting with them through personalized email campaigns that drive conversions. Let's take a look at how. LinkedIn has evolved from a professional networking site into a powerful platform where you can build genuine relationships with your brand's audience. To effectively build trust and engagement, you should empower your company's most valuable assets: your people. One survey found that content shared by employees leads to eight times more engagement than content shared directly by brands. This effectively humanizes the brand and helps foster a deeper sense of trust. This phenomenon underscores the power of employee advocacy, where companies encourage their teams to share positive news, insights and industry expertise about their workplace. This approach not only amplifies the brand's reach exponentially but also injects a crucial layer of authenticity, making the brand's voice more relatable and trustworthy to its audience. To cultivate this, you can proactively provide clear guidelines on brand messaging, offer a repository of content ideas or even pre-written posts that employees can easily customize and share, and publicly acknowledge their contributions to foster a culture of sharing. Implementing formal advocacy programs, providing training on LinkedIn best practices and celebrating employees who actively contribute can turn every team member into a genuine brand ambassador. For example, you might designate an internal content champion to curate shareable articles or organize friendly internal competitions to boost participation and reward engagement. Beyond leveraging personal profiles, you can further ignite engagement through interactive content. Sharing elements like LinkedIn polls and carousels actively encourages audience participation, which in turn drives greater brand awareness. Polls offer real-time insights into customer preferences and pain points, helping brands segment audiences and tailor communications. You can regularly create polls on industry trends or customer challenges. Carousels visually break down complex information or case studies. By integrating these, you can transform your brand's LinkedIn presence into a vibrant community, fostering authentic connections. Turning social media engagement into email subscribers is a critical next step in the digital marketing funnel. Here are some key tactics to turn LinkedIn followers into loyal, high-intent subscribers: • Offer lead magnets: To grow your email list effectively, offer valuable resources like e-books, reports, templates or webinars as lead magnets. For instance, a B2B SaaS company might offer a 'Comprehensive Guide to Optimizing Sales Funnels.' You can offer these on LinkedIn via organic posts linking to landing pages, through LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms in paid campaigns or through profile resources. When a lead magnet directly addresses audience needs and offers significant value, it boosts conversion rates because the perceived benefit outweighs sharing personal information. • Create simplified forms: Limit required fields on lead capture forms to reduce friction and increase sign-ups. Collect essential information initially (name, email) for higher conversion rates, and then gather more details through targeted nurturing. Building an email list is just the first step—how you engage with your subscribers is what truly drives results. Sending messages that are relevant, engaging and conversion-focused is the key. This requires personalization. AI tools can help you craft personalized subject lines, body copy and calls to action at scale. By analyzing audience data, AI tools ensure that every email feels individually tailored, even when targeting large subscriber lists. For instance, you could share personalized e-book offers with your subscribers. Consider adding interactive elements to your emails as well. Adding components like quizzes, sliders or clickable product recommendations within emails can boost engagement and increase time spent with the content. These elements not only improve the user experience but also generate valuable data about customer preferences for future segmentation. To accurately assess the success of a LinkedIn-to-email strategy, look beyond superficial metrics and concentrate on key performance indicators. This involves tracking conversion rates, specifically the percentage of LinkedIn interactions that lead to email subscriptions. Additionally, be sure to consistently analyze engagement metrics like email open and click-through rates to gauge content resonance and how well it addresses audience needs. To understand the financial efficiency of your efforts, calculate your customer acquisition cost (CAC) by adding up all of your direct marketing and sales expenses (e.g., LinkedIn ad spend, lead magnet content costs, email platform costs, relevant team salaries) for a defined period and then dividing this total by the number of new customers acquired through that specific funnel during the same period. The formula looks like this: CAC = total sales and marketing costs/number of new customers. Finally, measure your pipeline velocity—the time it takes from initial LinkedIn engagement to deal closure. This helps you pinpoint bottlenecks and optimize the overall sales process. Integrating your LinkedIn and email marketing efforts is an effective, efficient way to build trust, engage audiences and drive conversions. By using LinkedIn to attract and nurture leads and leveraging personalized email campaigns to convert them, you can achieve sustainable growth and enhanced brand loyalty. For chief marketing officers, founders and marketers, the key takeaway is clear: Stop siloing your platforms. The modern growth engine is not about being everywhere—it's about being intentional and strategic with the platforms you choose to engage on. Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
Daily Mail
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Employee leaves boss speechless with scathing response after getting laid off from her job
A woman is being praised for roasting her boss during a layoff call that has now racked up millions of views on TikTok. Karson Bree, a graphic designer and digital creator, shared the now-viral footage of her being laid off from a local magazine job she held for less than three months. In the video, which has more than 2.3 million views and counting, Karson sat on a Zoom call with two senior staffers and a HR rep whose faces have been blurred out. She is then told her employment is being 'terminated effective immediately.' When she asked why, she was met with an awkward silence - nearly 10 seconds of no one knowing what to say - before it was stated: 'The publication went out late, it went out with typos, and we just feel that the design wasn't necessarily a good fit for the publication.' But Karson didn't take that quietly and immediately pushed back: 'Every step along the way I have met my requirements and quiet honestly a lot of the reasonings as to why it was late was dependent upon you.' Citing the reasons she believed to be behind the chaos, she listed late materials, lack of access to essential accounts, and radio silence from her boss when she asked for support. 'I received very little feedback from you,' she said directly to her manager (who we find out is named Julie), 'and there were many times I reached out with no reply whatsoever.' TikTok users showed support for Karson, praising her for speaking up She also pointed out the unprofessionalism of getting a message at 11pm the night before informing her of the layoff - and then having her work access revoked immediately. And she didn't stop there, adding: 'I feel like I've done every step of the way of trying to do this job to the best of my abilities and quite frankly you have made it very difficult... 'If you guys want to maintain a good team, you need to make sure your leadership also possesses the strengths needed to produce a well-designed magazine.' Despite being reminded the meeting was 'not about Julie,' Karson took the opportunity to tell her: 'Since starting, my biggest frustration was working with you. I want that to be known.' She then ended the call with a perfectly cold sign-off: 'It's been lovely working with you, Kendall. I cannot say the same for you, Julie. Have a great day.' In the comment section, thousands praised her professionalism, honesty, and ability to advocate for herself in real-time. 'That was so embarrassing for them,' one TikTok user wrote. 'The awkward silence when you asked them questions spoke volumes. They clearly didn't have any reason to terminate you,' another user chimed in. Other users shared their own toxic experiences with the corporate world 'This must have been such a hard call. You handled yourself like a leader on this call - your former leadership evidently did not,' said another. Other TikTok users shared their own frustrations about the corporate world. 'I'm so tired of employers not being able to provide solid reasons to why they are letting people go especially with no prior infractions,' one user shared. 'Not gonna lie, this is almost word for word how I got let go from my job and word for word how I confronted them,' someone else added. 'I'm so glad I'm not the only one that had the courage to stand up to incompetent leadership.'
Entrepreneur
22-05-2025
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Inside the Fight for Injured Workers' Rights: How Legal Advocates Are Shaping Safer Workplaces
Holding employers and businesses accountable by providing proper treatment and compensation changes the workplace dynamic and balances the scales between employees and employers. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. You're reading Entrepreneur Asia Pacific, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. Workplace injury law is no longer just about compensation. It is about systemic accountability and the evolving role of a work injury attorney as a personal lawyer and labor advocate. Choosing the right legal experts can be daunting, especially during injury recovery, but it is a pivotal step in providing justice for those without legal expertise or resources to take on large insurance companies. Holding companies accountable for workplace injuries sets a bar for other companies regarding compliance and brings about systemic change. Holding employers and businesses accountable by providing proper treatment and compensation changes the workplace dynamic and balances the scales between employees and employers. Commonly Mishandled Work Injuries Slips, trips, and falls are the most common mishandled work injuries that can result in permanent physical damage and lost wages. These incidents can lead to fractures, sprains, and head injuries that require medical treatment but often go unnoticed until it is too late. If the injuries are not evaluated immediately, workers lose access to workers' compensation benefits, which is unfortunately common. Overexertion is another injury that is often overlooked. These injuries can be caused by carelessness or a lack of training on how to correctly pick up and handle heavy items in the workplace, leading to pulled muscles, strained ligaments, and more serious back and neck injuries. How Legal Advocates Shape Safer Work Spaces Legal advocates are shaping safer workspaces by providing expert advice and support to workers navigating workplace safety concerns. They are experts in this field of law and know what needs to be done immediately after an injury to assist injured workers. There is generally a stack of confusing paperwork following a workplace injury, and a skilled attorney can help navigate the paperwork, file necessary forms, and seek legal remedies when a worker's safety is in question. Attorneys often do not charge fees unless the victim wins their trial, easing the financial burden of the injured and allowing them to focus on recovery so they can get back to their livelihood sooner. Legal advocates can also raise awareness about workplace safety issues from a larger platform than that of an injured worker, highlighting the need for systemic change in the workplace. How the Gig Economy and Remote Work Complicate Traditional Worker Comp Claims The gig economy and remote work complicate traditional workers' compensation claims by not establishing a clear link between the work and the injury. Gig and remote workers are often considered independent contractors, excluding them from workers' compensation. This makes it challenging to prove injuries occurred during work hours. is a team of Florida attorneys who share the goal of helping people of all walks of life with their legal matters. This includes personalized representation for workers injured on the job in any accident. The firm represents clients throughout Florida and provides free consultations to understand the situation better and provide the best care possible. Firms like these are changing the landscape of worker rights by providing the expertise and resources needed to fight big insurance claims. They are also beneficial in enabling injured workers to get back to their lives and focus on recovery while they handle the minutiae of litigation and settlements. Workers' compensation attorneys are an invaluable asset for receiving deserved benefits, but their role is about more than receiving compensation. Holding employers and companies accountable to their workers is a critical aspect of what injury attorneys do, forcing a systemic change in the workplace. By setting fair standards for both employee and employer, workers' compensation cases set the bar for fair compensation and create a safer workplace.
