What should we really expect from employees as online brand advocates?

By Justin Walden, assistant professor at North Dakota State University

In the ideal world, cultivating brand support among employees should be a straightforward process for organizations.

If you treat your employees right and help them feel engaged at work, they should be inclined to show support for your organization through their online and offline social networks.

Yet how does this happen? When it comes to employees’ personal social media accounts, to what degree, if any, should firms realistically expect employees to advocate for them?

With support from a Page Center Legacy Scholars Grant, I am conducting two studies that will hopefully answer these questions.

In the first project, I am interviewing public relations professionals to understand how organizations encourage their employees to advance their mission by sharing brand messages online. This project is also exploring the risks associated with employees’ social media use.

My initial interviews are suggesting that the process of cultivating this support is more complex than what we’ve previously thought. Beyond creating a positive work environment, there are additional factors (such as giving employees the right online venue and finding stories that employees will want to naturally connect with) for strategic communicators to consider.

The Page Center is supporting a second related study in which I will conduct a survey of frontline employees about their willingness to share positive messages about their employer on social media. This should give us an employee-centered view of these issues.

As I wrote in a recent guest post for the Minnesota PRSA’s blog, we need to understand the best-practice guidelines for engaging with employees as brand advocates and how organizations deal with problems when they arise.

To that end, my hope is that these two studies add to the discussion about how organizations ethically engage with their employees online and the ways in which employees maintain a balance between their personal and professional identities on social media.

If would like to share your thoughts, send me an email at justin.walden@ndsu.edu or connect with me on Twitter, @justwalden.