Why Employee Advocacy Fails on LinkedIn (And What to Do Instead)

G'day everyone, it's Michelle J Raymond back again this week, listeners, with another fantastic guest, who all day every day is living and breathing employee advocacy with B2B organisations. Colin Day from Octopost, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Michelle. Quick question.

For those people who actually don't know about Octopost or maybe haven't crossed paths with you, of course we're gonna put the details in the show notes, but can you give us, like, the one-minute summary, what is it that you guys do? Yeah, so look, we're a B2B social media management platform. So we help B2B organisations or CMOs answer two very simple questions, Michelle. How do you put more quality leads into the top of the sales funnel?

And how do you prove the value of marketing to the wider business? The way we do that and the way we support that, yeah, is through organic social media strategies giving the brand the ability to create, schedule, publish content across their corporate social pages, taking some of that content or indeed different content and sharing it with employees so they can amplify the reach across their own personal, um, social pages. And, um, social listening tools to be able to, uh, snoop on your competition and understand who's talking about what in the market and use that to influence, um, your organic and paid social strategies.

That's what we do in a nutshell. Amazing. So you're the software that enables what I call the power of two. How do you get your pages, i.

e. your brand, and your employees working together to generate, like you said, leads. That's why we're doing this, listeners. This is what we're talking about today.

I'd say it's the power of two million and two, Michelle, not the power of two, because the key part is that second part, right? The employee amplification. And if you can get that right, it's, it's the force multiplier. I think you just, we should underline that if you get that right.

and today listeners, we're gonna be talking about employee advocacy and the fact that it is more than just content distribution. So the whole point of getting your team active is not just so that more people can see your actual pieces of content. But before we get into that employee advocacy piece, can you share what you're seeing across B2B organisations when it comes to becoming more social first? I mean, you wrote the book on this, so what did your research find?

Here's the free plug. Go for it. There you go. That was the free plug, sorry about that.

Shameless, shameless. Look I think that the, the biggest shift we're seeing right now, Michelle, right, is that, um, you know, leading B2B organisations are finally starting to realise that social media's more than just a communication channel, right? It's becoming part of the go-to-market infrastructure for the business, right? For years, social sat inside marketing and has largely been measured by activity metrics, right?

How many likes, how many comments, how many shares did I get versus, um, you know, the actual uh, who's engaging in that conversation and, and that activity, and being able to use that to drive other business, um, behaviours and, and other business, uh, activities. So today's buyer, what we're seeing is they're researching independently, right? It's like they're validating vendors socially and they're consuming expert opinions, and they're forming their perception long before a deal ever shows up, yeah, on, um, a seller's inbox or table or, uh, you know, telephone call, right?

So like they're, they're understanding who's showing up and who's showing up and saying what, right? It's no longer about the product that I'm trying to sell. It's the opinion, yeah, that, um, that I have and, and the conversation that I'm able to bring to the market. And add to that, um, you know, we've got a generational shift, right?

We've got Gen Z, we've got young millennials that, um, you know, are entering the, the workplace and, and actually, um, have buy-in power, right? And the way that, um, you know they validate people and validate people's credentials are different to, to maybe a 55-year-old man that's sitting in front of you right now, right? Like, um, people trust people, yet people don't trust brands. People have conversations with people.

It's called social media for a reason, right? People don't get social with a brand, yeah? No one goes to, I don't know, to, um, their bank and, and says, "Hey, bank, let's have a conversation," right? They go to someone in the bank to have a conversation, and they, they validate, um, you know, the, the credentials of that organisation based upon what they see, um, in the channels where they consume their information.

I think from what I've been watching, and I agree with you that things are definitely shifting, and it doesn't matter whether we're talking about LinkedIn or other platforms, but I think it's the mindset most of all within the organisation that it's no longer just post that stuff over there on that platform and let's broadcast at the audience. There's a lot more, "Okay, can we actually be of service to that audience?" And every episode of this podcast I keep coming back to that for all the listeners, that the days of talking at your audience are long gone.

And I, I think the brands that are still trying to do it that way are the ones that are coming unstuck. They're probably the ones that are crying out about the algorithm sucks or there's a problem with this or that. I like what you've said as well, and I haven't quite come up with better ways to measure and, you know, this is probably a whole other episode in itself, but I think because we were always measuring activity, like you said, we were always about the likes, the impressions, the engagement rate, that actually kind of drove the wrong behaviour, and we didn't have any new metrics to come up with so it was like why would we change because we can't measure these new things?"

And so I found that's some of the pushback, and it could be something as simple as last year, uh, you know, I was having conversations, uh, you know, doing presentations at Social Media Marketing World talking about getting your page out there and actively commenting or your people actively commenting, and at the time we couldn't measure what that was generating from LinkedIn, and now we can see those types of things, which is exciting to see. But I'm still not sure that people have figured out, well, what are we doing and what are we measuring now?

Is, is that a fair assumption, like, on my behalf with what you see? Yeah. And, and look, Octopost is, is different, um, in that regard, Michelle. I, I was a customer before I joined the business.

So I, uh, I first came across Octopost in 2014, 2015. Um, I just - So I was the chief technology officer for global marketing for a very large financial technology company. We'd just done a rollout of Marketo. Others do exist, other marketing automation platforms do exist.

But, um, you know, we'd just, um… Now I sound like the BBC. We'd just, um, rolled out Marketo, and, um, the chief revenue officer, um, a gentleman called Jim Levy, came to me and said, "Colin, I need your help from a marketing perspective. I wanna get my sales teams more socially active on this thing called LinkedIn." Yeah.

Can you help me, um, you know, do a, a review of the marketplace to find a platform that can help us," right? "Scale that. I can put content up onto, say, a board so I can, get the, um, that central location, get the sellers to come in, find content that's relevant to their networks, get them to be able to, you know, put their opinions on it, and then share it out over, say, LinkedIn, X, um, Facebook, et cetera." So we did a, uh, a search of the market, and we came up.

Uh, we found Octopost. And the reason that, um, I settled on Octopost as a solution, 'cause there are many out there, right? It's like, um, the reason I settled on Octopost back at, uh, um, at that time was one simple thing, right? I wanted to be able to understand who was engaging with my social content, um, and the content that the sellers were put-putting out there, not just what was being engaged with.

And I wanted to be able to link, yeah, that social engagement to my marketing automation platform so that I could use it to, um, you know, for attribution modeling, so I could use it to drive my nurture activity, so I could use it for lead scoring, right? It's like, um, and, and Octopost was and is the only platform that, um, can still do that. So it was able to do it then. It's, it's able to still do it today.

Um, that's the key difference, Michelle, right? Because Octopost, we say we're, we're B2B to the core. We were built specifically for B2B organisations. If you look at a lot of the other solutions that, that people are used to using, yeah, they came from a B2C environment, and B2C to B2B is very different, right?

In B2C, it's great to be able to measure the number of impressions, right? And, and the amount of engagement. I don't necessarily need to know the who, because if you're gonna buy a pair of trainers, you're gonna buy a pair of trainers if you're gonna buy a, a million dollar, um, you know, software solution to run your, uh, um, your finance, yeah, environment, yeah? Maybe, yeah, there's a, uh, a longer tail to, uh, to, to that sales journey.

Maybe there's more people involved, right? Um, if you look at Gartner or Forrester Research, they'll tell you that there's upwards of 12 to 18 people involved in any B2B buying cycle, right? So I've got to bring all of those people on that journey, yeah, and one of the key places to be able to do that and to influence them earlier on, as we said in that, uh, um, that first question, is, is on social. Yeah, absolutely .

And we know specifically LinkedIn is the place where B2B buyers are. They trust the platform, and I believe honestly that it's becoming more and more important. And so what happens is people hear all of the stats, like you've said, about, you know, and I've just kind of said that LinkedIn's the place to be, and then what happens is the immediate reaction is, "Let's try and get as much content created on the platform as possible and just flood it." And I think a lot of B2B companies actually treat employee advocacy as just a way to scale that content.

You see it all the time. Posts by employees get shared, you know, 8 times, 15 times, 20 times, I don't know, whatever number we're up to these days. But what do you think that they miss when they treat advocacy only as distribution? What do I think they miss?

Wow. I think they miss the entire point, right? It's like, um, you know, if employee advocacy is simply about getting employees to post more content, then, um, you know, you've really, what you've built is a, a distribution engine that no one particularly trusts, right? No one particularly trusts it, um, because you're not building real credibility and, and real value, right?

The real value comes from the opinions of the employees. As I said earlier on um, you know, people trust people far more than they trust brands, particularly when it comes to B2B decision-making where risk is involved, right? You wanna mitigate as much risk, um, as, as possible. So buyers want insight from practitioners and subject matter experts.

And who are the best subject matter experts in, um, you know, about your product or your service? It's your people, right? They don't want polished slogans from the brand. That was so 10 years ago, right?

It's like, um, you know, you see the algorithm, and you follow the algorithm more than most people, Michelle, so hat off to you. It's like, um, for all of the great work you do there. I don't think there's any one person in the world, even at LinkedIn, that can tell you really what the algorithm does, especially now that, um, you know, it's on steroids and, uh, is being run by AI itself or, or augmented by AI. But, um, you see it with the algorithm, right?

It's like, um, you know, more focus being put on authentic, genuine content, right? The algorithm is now looking at, um, you know, Michelle's profile, Colin's profile and saying, "You know, what authority do you have, yeah, to talk about the subject, yeah, that you've got with- inside your post," right? "And let me try and understand," the algorithm, not Colin, "Let me try and understand whether this is AI-generated, yeah, or whether this is Colin or Michelle-generated, i.e.

human-generated. Um, and let me understand whether, um, this is, is authentic and, and, and genuine content, i.e., can I see it, um, you know, it's spread 26 times, um, across the platform.

… more focus being, being placed on, on authenticity. And for me, the best advocacy programs, um, they encourage the advocate to, to maybe take what the marketing team or the central team have created as a draft, yeah, and turn it into their own voice and put their own experience and put their own credentials on it I am secretly wishing that over the next couple of years because of the shifts that you've just spoken about on LinkedIn, that it becomes, and this is a dated reference and shout out to anyone that's Gen X and older, maybe you remember, there's a movie called Revenge of the Nerds, and I think it was, like, late '80s, early '90s.

And I am hoping that LinkedIn becomes Revenge of the Nerds, where all of the technical people out there on the platform start to get their voice heard even more because I think that for too long it's been a lot of, I don't know, what's popular, what will get more engagement, what will get those impressions, and it was not necessarily who was the smartest or who had the most knowledge or who had the most subject matter expertise or experience. And often I find that those people who you know within any industry who are so highly regarded have probably been in the business for a long time, very well connected, are often invisible when it comes to LinkedIn.

And so for me personally, I'm hoping that we start to see more of those people shine on the platform as this becomes more and more important and we move outside of just the Company Page, just that branded content, and into this employee advocacy and support those people who historically would've been definitely in the background. And so this is the thing that I'm looking at because so much of that B2B buying process we know happens before we even find out about it, and you spoke about that just before, and it's something that I've shared on the podcast before.

But how exactly does employee advocacy help build that trust and influence during that hidden part? Like, what's actually going on? Yeah, look, um, this is probably one of the most important shifts happening in modern B2B, Michelle, right? It's like a huge portion of the buying journey now happens autonomously.

Yeah. Um, buyers are researching quietly, um, you know, they're reading posts, they're watching videos, they're following conversations, they're comparing opinions and, and validating vendors ever before anyone raises their hand, right? And w- we've said that term a couple of times already. So the real question, right, the real question becomes who is influencing, yeah, that invisible journey, right?

And in many cases, yeah, it's not the brand, right? It's the employees. Yeah. And, you know, thoughtful LinkedIn posts from sales engineers, from a customer success manager sharing a practical insight, right?

Or a consultant discussing a specific industry challenge. They're the interactions that are building that familiarity over time, right? And they're the real things that are helping, the organisation, yeah, build that trust. So by the time a prospective customer enters the sales conversation, they already have consumed months, yeah, of social content that have been shared by employees of the business, right?

So that changes the, the nature of the sales cycle completely because it's no longer starting from zero trust, right? Trust you build in, in drips, right? But you lose by the bucket load, right? So you build trust in drips, you knock that bucket over and, uh, it's very hard to, uh, to get back to that point, right?

So, we've already said people buy from people, people buy from people they trust, people buy from people they like. Yeah. That months of, of content engagement and sharing and consumption has already helped you build that level of trust, um, to a point that, um, it becomes a much easier conversation for the seller. And I think too many organisations still underestimate how much of the pipeline is being influenced by social long before, um, you know, that, uh, that initial conversation ever takes place regarding the, uh, the sale.

So employee advocacy helps to shorten the distance between awareness and credibility, and that's the key point, Michelle It sure is. And if I think about my own LinkedIn journey, which I, I've shared before, so I started sharing content on LinkedIn when I started in a new sales role in a new industry. And at that point in time, for me, in my mind, it was just being able to talk about what we did to as many people as possible, 'cause I physically couldn't get around to them all, 'cause Australia's a big country after all.

And so I would start to do that, and I didn't have a fancy term for it. I didn't know what employee advocacy was. I didn't know what social selling was. I didn't even know what B2B marketing was.

I was just happy in my little sales world. And the way that I knew that this was working is that my job was to stand at trade booths, you know, go to the industry event, stand there and with a bowl of mints sitting on top of the table and some cheap giveaway, and hope that someone would come over and ask us about the products that we sold. In, in this case, it was the beauty industry, so it was all the ingredients that we would offer. Now, what I actually found was, and I didn't realise it at the time, is that I'd be standing there and I'd have a lineup of people wanting to talk to me, and I'd be like, "Wow, this is great.

Must be those mints or something." But no, what they would say to me was, "Michelle, you did a post on LinkedIn four months ago, five months ago," often no time recent, "and I saw that and I wanted to talk to you about it." And I'd be like, "You didn't like my post. You didn't comment.

You didn't do anything at the time, and here we are six months down the track," because they didn't need it at that minute in time, but I kept talking about it, I stayed top of mind, and they knew I had a solution to that problem. And so for me, that's where I fell in love with LinkedIn, and I still fall in love with LinkedIn today from that perspective. And it's funny because I just went to a, you know, the marketing club meetup here in Sydney last week, and sure enough, somebody from New Zealand that is a friend of mine on LinkedIn who doesn't engage with my posts, hadn't seen him for a while.

First thing he says, he rattles off everything I've done over the last three months. "Oh, Michelle, I saw you here. You've done that." And I wish we could bottle that up because I think it would prove the case to any non-believers in a heartbeat that- Yep … it works because people are watching even if they're not clicking and commenting and doing those kinds of actions.

And Michelle, they're, they're watching, you know, that's a key point. They're watching who shows up, and more importantly, they're watching who doesn't show up, right? And that's the credibility aspect. Yeah, so, you know, make sure your people are active.

Give them the, the guardrails. Guardrails don't mean control, right? It doesn't mean that you've gotta, you know, be so rigid that, um, you know, it's do it this way or, or don't do it at all, right? It's like, um, you know, you need a set of guardrails, right?

People sometimes don't know what to say, yeah, on social media, whether it be LinkedIn or, or somewhere else, right? And that's where a formal employee advocacy program, um, you know, at a brand really comes into its own, right? You're giving the space and you're giving the security, the comfort, right, of being able to share, yeah, some, some pre-authored content, pre-created content that the employee can then take and, and make their own, put their own opinions, put their own voice.

Um, you know, my social media team, um, are Americans. Nothing wrong with Americans, but, um, they put Zs in very funny places. And they're also younger than me, and they put exclamation marks at the end of every sentence, and they use emojis. I'm a 55-year-old man.

If, if I use an emoji in a post, my kids would laugh at me, right? So, you know, I need the flexibility, but likewise, like, um, you know, maybe I need the, uh, the safety blanket, um, or the, the, the, the security blanket of someone helping me construct, yeah, what I can and, and, and you know, how I should react and be- behave on, on, on social media. Yeah, and it is a sliding scale. We get everyone from, "Leave me alone, I can post it myself," through to, "You just give it to me- Right … and I'll post whatever you tell me to," to, "Don't come near me," and everywhere in between.

And that's what I think I love about my job, is working to find out what is it that that employee needs support with for them to find their own voice, you know, ultimately. And where we start and where we finish over time, they can be very different places, and that's the exciting part. Everybody on the, that listens to this podcast knows that I love all things Company Pages. Call me crazy, but I think they're still an important part of this discussion.

Now, where do you see the LinkedIn Company Pages fitting into this broader ecosystem that we're talking about? Because I see the page as always the credibility base, you know? And often that's the piece that attracts employees to come and work for the particular brand. And then the way I see it from there is the employees can help create some momentum around it.

But I'm, I'm curious where it fits from your side of the thing. 'Cause I know the Octopost page, for instance, is super active. You've got your team out there running campaigns all the time. I notice it.

They're out there and doing that. But yeah, what, what does that look like on your side? Yeah. So look, Michelle, I completely agree with you, right?

That, um, you know, the, it, it's, it's not an either/or decision, right? Or an either/or conversation, right? It's not the Company Page versus employees. The real power is when you can get them to come together and work together, right?

It's called a marketing mix, right? It's like, is it organic versus paid? Is it a, a physical event versus the website, right? It's, it's, it's not one of those things.

And, and that's the same for, you know, the Company Page versus, um, you know, an employee advocacy program. The real power of organic social is when you can get those two components working hand-in-hand. I see, the Company Page is really the credibility anchor that you talk about there, right? The credibility anchor of the organisation.

It provides consistency, um, authority, positioning, and, and institutional trust, right? But the employees create reach, reliability, and that human connection between the brand and the market. The mistake that some companies make is expecting the Company Page to behave like a, a media brand in isolation. Organic reach is harder than ever for buyers to engage with when it's just the brand itself, right?

Because as we said, people don't trust logos, people trust people, right? So, you know, for me, employee advocacy without a strong company presence just lacks structure and credibility. And the best organisations create an integrated ecosystem where the Company Page establishes that authority, and the employees take that and amplify the relevance through authentic expertise, um, and their voice Yeah. Look, people come and go, employees come and go.

I think the page stands the test of time and will always be there as, the coach or the, you know, the person that's there to guide the rest of the team. And so that's why I always … I like people to see that it's an and option. Like- Yeah … you don't have to ch- choose a side, like many influencers on LinkedIn would have you believe, that you just have to choose a side. And I wanted to have this conversation today to say, "No.

No, you don't. You can have your cake and eat it, too." Just- Yeah … or should I say, have your Tim Tam and eat it, too, uh, in my world. But, um- Well, with your tim tam, you, you've got a cup of tea as well, right, Michelle?

So, you know- Absolutely … may- maybe the employee is the Tim Tam and the brand is the tea, or vice versa, right? Exactly. And we're gonna do a Tim Tam slam and just make the best product ever. Exactly.

So fr- from that perspective, I, I think that … and we spoke about this earlier, that one of the things that I think happens for B2B marketers is It's really tricky to show that employee advocacy's actually contributing to things like trust in the business, brand awareness, influence, pipeline, these types of things, and not just those likes and impressions. Like, what would you say to people who are struggling with that? And I know that your tool can help them, and feel free to share about that because I think it's important for people to understand that just because you currently don't know how to do it doesn't mean that there aren't options out there for people to really, almost I feel like they have to justify their existence.

You shouldn't have to, but sometimes numbers speak volumes, no matter how much you trust your gut instinct, right? Yeah, no, true. And look, I think that, um, you know, this is where B2B marketing n- really needs to mature quite significantly. Too many organisations still measure social success through what I would class as vanity metrics because, you know, as you said, it's what we know, right?

It's easy to report on the number of likes, um, you know, the number of, um, you know, the amount of engagement that I got on a particular post, yeah, but it's difficult to understand who's engaging with that post and be able to correlate that, yeah, to, um, specific outcomes, right? Being able to connect organic social all the way through to, uh, to, to revenue and revenue attribution. So for me, the more important question is what commercial outcomes are social activities influencing?

And if I looked at things like, you know, inbound, um, conversations generated through employee advocacy or influence pipeline, um, sales cycle acceleration, engagement from target accounts, these are all things that are relevant to me as a CMO as I look to, to get a seat at the table, yeah, with the, uh, with the revenue leadership. And if I can prove, um, you know, those elements and, and how I'm impacting, um, those from a marketing perspective, then that's not only good for, my marketing team, but it's good for me as I go to the CFO at the end of the year and say, "Hey, do you know what?

My, uh, my budget requirement for 2027 are X because I need to do more, yeah, from an organic social perspective." So for me, um, you know, being able to tie organic social activities or social activities in general, yeah, to pipeline revenue, um, is, is key to the way that, um, you know, I build my budget, my budget forecast, and how I actually manage my marketing team. My marketing team are managed on- Two very simple metrics, right? It's like, um, uh, what is our, our total NRR, so net revenue retention for the year, right?

Is it 100% plus? If so, tick the box, we've done a good job, right? We, uh, we maintained all of our existing book of business or grew it. Um, and then the second one is, um, my marketing team have to contribute, um, sufficient, um, opportunities, right, or leads that, um, that account for 75% of all of our new business number.

So the way that we do that is based on the age-old thing of SQLs. But, um, you know, I need to deliver, um, a certain number of SQLs each and every week, and the only way I can do that is I've got paid… You know, I've got all of the marketing activities, right, and all of the m- the marketing components, um, um, at my disposal. But, um, a key thing for me is organic social. And I would say that because I work for an organisation that, um, not only sells an organic social platform to the market, but, um, are big users of our own software.

I was gonna say, you walk the talk at the end of the day. And I think that's how we landed here at, is not tool first, it was people first. I, I come across you, shout out to Zoe Bermant, who obviously introduces us, and it's that one degree of separation which I just love the relationships that you can build. And I think when we look at it beyond just the piece of content and look at how can we develop that awareness, that trust, that credibility, those relationships, and nurture them over that long period, I mean, that is exactly what employee advocacy is all about.

Now, I'm gonna wrap up the show with one very last question, which I've just recently started asking, uh, guests that come on the show. If the LinkedIn gods were listening to this episode, and of course they are, if you could ask them for one new feature on LinkedIn, and you can't have organic impressions, that's off the table, we're not even gonna bother there, what would you ask for? I'd ask for an API that allows us to have social listening capabilities from LinkedIn like every other network has.

Sounds perfect to me, and I'm gonna make sure that those LinkedIn gods are listening to this episode. Colin, thank you so much for everything that you've shared. I am definitely going to put the links for where people can buy your book, if you wanna hold it up one more time. Uh, The Social B2B organisation, with a Z no less, uh, is the book that we're gonna share the link in the show notes.

Thank you for everything that you've shared because I think it's really important that we just get beyond looking at employee advocacy as a way to share more content. Thank you for everything that you've shared today. Thanks for having me. My pleasure.

So listeners, until next week, what will you do differently based on this conversation? Let us know in the comments. If you are not connected to Colin or myself over on LinkedIn, please do that and let us know that you listened to the episode and what your takeaway was. So until next week, cheers.