0:00
Jennifer Gutman
I want to welcome everybody to the webinar. We are going to be walking through and taking a closer look at what does employee advocacy bring to the table for B2B brands. Right. And everything in this webinar is actually based off of the report we did, the 2022 Employee Advocacy Benchmark Report. And I can assure you that after this webinar, everybody will receive the recording of this webinar in addition to a copy of the 2022 Employee Advocacy Benchmar. With that being said, let's go ahead and get started with some introductions. So this report is brought to you by Oktopost, and I want to introduce to you our chief R and D department, if you will. So my name is Jennifer Gutman. I am the Director of Customer Experience Marketing here at Oktopost, and my colleague Whitney is joining me to speak about the report that she really Blood, sweat and tears put together. Whitney, you want to go ahead and introduce yourself?
1:01
Whitney Blankenship
Sure. So, hi, my name is Whitney Blankenship. I'm the senior Content Marketing Manager for Oktopost. And yeah, honestly, thanks for having me, Jen. This is great.
1:12
Jennifer Gutman
Absolutely, absolutely. So we're going to dive right in, and I want to take kind of zoom out and look at the big picture before we zoom in, if you will, and talk a little bit about why we did what we did, what we were looking to find, and a little bit about the process in terms of putting together the 2022 Employee Advocacy Benchmark Report. So what we were really searching and trying to understand is what is the real impact of employee advocacy for B2B brands? And what we ended up doing is taking a long, hard look, if you will, at all the data that we had collected and really trying to find and benchmark the different ways B2B brands were using employee advocacy in the helpful ways. So throughout this webinar, please know you're welcome to go ahead and ask any question you may have throughout the chat. We'll keep checking down in the chat to see if there's any questions. And of course, at the end of the webinar, we'll leave some space for Q and A. But without further ado, Whitney, my biggest question to you as we kick off, if my presentation lets me move forward to the next slide, is can you explain a little bit more in depth about why we did this and why now?
2:31
Whitney Blankenship
Absolutely. Well, first of all, we're going to Quentin Tarantino, and we're going to go back to the state of B2B social report that we published late last year. If you want to pop to the next slide, we asked CMOs what their best performing social initiatives were. And you had nearly half of them that were saying employee advocacy, without a doubt. And then the next biggest, best performing social initiative, the next one was social selling, which is a close cousin to employee advocacy. So we have 78% of CMOs that are saying, hey, this is working for us. So we decided, okay, we need to dive a little bit deeper. And if you want to take a look at all of the different social initiatives, we have them laid out are top two were essentially employee advocacy, including outperforming paid social, which I think is huge. So we decided to take a look a little bit deeper into our own data and kind of see, okay, so how are advocates using the platform and. And which networks are best performing for them? So if you pop to actually the next slide, the biggest thing that we found was the brands who were using an employee advocacy program earned 25 to 40% more total engagement than brands that didn't have a program in place. And I do want to highlight that there are certain things that we can't track because of the way that social algorithms work. So personal accounts and I think some Instagram areas, it could be as much as 10% higher for all we know. But what we can track, we did see 25 to 40% more total engagement from employee advocacy programs.
4:36
Jennifer Gutman
That's phenomenal. And I think when it comes to talking about trends. And I popped over to the next slide because when I was reading through the report, this becomes very interesting, you know, especially if anyone is leading an employee advocacy program. Right. And you're trying to figure out the ebbs and the flows and you know, when is a good time to share content. So when you were diving through all the data and putting together your findings and trying to benchmark, can you share with us a little bit about timing wise, what you found in terms of employee advocacy and sharing and best times to share, for example?
5:08
Whitney Blankenship
Absolutely. So we started with months. Like, which months were employee advocates sharing the most often? And what we found made a lot of sense. There were a couple of surprises as we'll get into, but we found that our top months ended up being November, March and October. November and October make a lot of sense. When are we doing our big Q4 push? It's between October and November, for sure. And on top of that, for a lot of western companies, you have a lot of the holidays that are coming up. And let's be real, Black Friday is not exclusive to B2C brands. B2B brands are always offering a little extra something along the holidays, so it's definitely time for a huge push. And then we had March, and we were like, what in the world is happening in March? So the Oktopost team actually sat down and we went to different team members and we said, what happened in March? Why would March be such a significant month for employee advocacy? Actually, it was you and I, Jen. We sat down and we actually came up with a theory as to why this was happening. And we figured that it's the beginning of the year, people are ready to launch that employee advocacy program. So they're doing their due diligence, they're choosing a tool, they're maybe starting a pilot program, even onboarding their advocates, really kind of teaching their advocates how to use it. And then you had March. Everybody's full power, everybody's full motivation. We're so excited. And then after March happens, the reality kicks in. It's like, oh, okay, we actually have to keep motivation up. We have to incentivize our employees to keep doing this. And so you kind of see that natural and ebb and flow throughout the entire year. You've got that last quarter, last month of the quarter push at each time. And it just, it makes a lot of sense, especially when you consider, you know, B2B sales cycles as well.
7:21
Jennifer Gutman
Absolutely. And, you know, when I look at this data, I think the March piece really stood out to me because what I know is that a lot of marketers are looking for the right technology to use. And usually end of year, they might have some leftover budget, they'll purchase a platform and then they'll go ahead and ramp, train themselves up, get ready to, like, hit the ground running. And as you said, right. January, February become times to create the content for the program, to train the advocates, to run your pilots, to do your kickoff, to get people excited, to ramp up. And then come March, not only is it end of quarter, where if you have sales team members on the board and using advocacy, they're going to see that benefit and they're going to start wanting to push out content so that they can start closing their deals. So it does make sense. And as you said, and just to reiterate, if you look at this bar chart, which I think is fascinating, you can see around every last month of the quarter, that's when advocate shares are going higher. And for anyone who's running a program, I think what this is really helpful to see is that if you know your seasons of advocacy, if you will, so. Right. If you know, January is a less engaging month. Perhaps you put some sort of program or initiative or incentive in place in the months that, that you'd like to increase that engagement. And then again, right. You can challenge yourself and you know, March is highly engaged anyway, but maybe there is something like a specific asset you want to promote or you do a contest or you do something really interesting and those already high performing months to get them even higher. So again, I think this is just really helpful as you think the long term strategy of maintaining a program. Because also, as you said, Whitney. Right. That reality sets in. I always say it's really easy to launch a program. The challenge comes when it comes to maintaining it. So understanding these benchmarks of the year gives a lot of insight into kind of how to map out quarter by quarter, month by month. So thanks for digging into that. I want to ask in the next area if you could talk about, you know, I get this a lot. I speak a lot to our customers and I get a lot like, what are the best days for advocates to share content? Which days should we be sharing content? Can you talk through what you found in terms of days of the week?
9:35
Whitney Blankenship
Absolutely. So we definitely wanted to dive into the days of the week because that's such a hot topic for social media anyway. And we found exactly what you would expect, that during the work week, the typical western Monday through Friday work week, we were seeing the most advocacy shares with Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday being our top days for sharing. Now we've got a bit of a chicken and egg situation because it's without a doubt one of our biggest networks as B2B marketers is LinkedIn. And what days are best to post on LinkedIn but Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday? So it's kind of a question of, okay, so are B2B marketers sharing on these days because of their workflow during their week, or are they strategically sharing on these days because they perform better on LinkedIn? And that's a really interesting kind of dichotomy between the two. Another thing is if you walk away from this graph with any two big takeaways, it's this. If you're going to launch a campaign, Mondays are manic, Fridays are, you know, maybe they're a little slower. We've all been there, right? Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, maybe those are the days that you launch that campaign if you want the biggest reach, if you want the most advocacy shares, if you want the most eyes on that campaign. Now, the second big takeaway that I think I have for you is maybe you plan, you have your employees automate and schedule if you post to happen on the weekend, when there's less social media noise, there's less noise to cut through and maybe you're, maybe your post will get more engagement. We are already seeing that, you know, we have employees that are sharing things on the weekend, so that might be an interesting avenue to test and see if, you know, maybe you're getting more engagement that way.
11:44
Jennifer Gutman
Yeah, I really like that idea around testing on the weekends, right. And we always, we always joke here at Oktopost, you know, that should be optional. Don't, don't, don't talk to your advocates to. Absolutely. But because when we see this data, right, we, we can confess we haven't taunted anyone here at Oktopost, you know, to share on the weekends. And I know, you know, our customers don't do that as well. But this data, right, this was based on, on who is already sharing on the weekend. So if we can already see people are sharing, whether that's them scheduling posts out to go out on the weekend so they're not actually sitting at their computer on the weekend or they are, right. It's something to take into consideration. And also during the week, right. A lot of times with an advocacy program, you can go ahead and make certain posts, you know, you can mark them as important, you can push them out, as you said, on a certain day. But looking, seeing that Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday are high engagement days, I just want to iterate how important it is that if you do have an asset or you do have a piece of content or a post or an announcement that you need a lot of eyes on or the goal of that specific campaign, right. Is awareness, then you probably want to look at that Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. So this is interesting to me, Whitney. I want to jump for a moment, right. Because timing, timing is always an interesting question. So again, we have a lot more inside of the benchmark report around timing. So you can always go and drill down there. What I want to jump to is about social networks themselves. And if you can explain a little bit which social network, if there is one, is the best performing one for employee advocacy or which one should we be advising our advocates to use?
13:27
Whitney Blankenship
That's a great question. And honestly, a lot of the times it depends on a couple of different factors. It can definitely depend on the type of engagement that you're looking for. It can depend on what your, your actual advocates prefer to share on. There's definitely a lot that really sort of depends on, you know, the answer to that question. But we found that unsurprisingly LinkedIn is a powerful B2B advocacy channel. And if you pop to the next slide, you can kind of see what I mean about it depends on what you're looking for. Because even though LinkedIn is the king of advocacy, if you're looking for your post to go further and you're looking for more sharing from your advocates networks, then Twitter is your go to. And it makes a lot of sense if you actually take a look at the next slide. Twitter responsible.
14:37
Jennifer Gutman
Sorry to interrupt you for a moment. I'm just going to interrupt because I have one of the things that comes to mind and you can keep me honest. Right. But when you say and talk about LinkedIn and we see it, right, kind of sprouting up, number one, I feel like that's kind of chicken and egg and I have to call it out. Right. Because I feel so many of us B2B marketers, we know LinkedIn works and we, we will encourage, right. Our advocates to use LinkedIn. We know that's our channel. So when we say like LinkedIn is the best performing channel, is it because we are advising and we know that channel is our number one channel and so that's what most people are comfortable using and that's why it's the highest engagement. Or, or is it because that's, you know, out of all the channels that's highest performing.
15:19
Whitney Blankenship
Well, I mean, think about it. If you're going to be sharing things on, you know, different social networks, yeah. Facebook is not going to be a super, super popular option for employee advocates, especially those who try to keep their Facebook very personal. If you're thinking about, you know, what really works in the B2B sphere, you've got LinkedIn and Twitter who tend to be good for different things. And then, you know, you can always, of course, do Instagram, but that's kind of that question of, okay, so am I keeping this network personal for me or do I use it for my personal brand as well? So again, it really depends on the way that you look at it. But I do think it is a bit of a chicken and egg sort of situation because LinkedIn is obviously where advocates are the most comfortable. So having more to go on for LinkedIn makes a lot of sense. Absolutely. But even with, I'm sorry, I was
16:20
Jennifer Gutman
going to say we're getting some comments and I know we're up on this slide and we're getting some comments on how the low amount of shares on LinkedIn is super surprising to a few and I'm going to throw a question out that came out out of curiosity. The data that you collected, Whitney, and the conclusions of Twitter being best shares, are they filtered? Do you know for the, for science industries, do you know what industry or how this was broken down or.
16:42
Whitney Blankenship
Actually no, we didn't filter anything. We used complete aggregate data to get a sense of the trends throughout all of our customers without singling out one industry over another. So as far as science industries, I can't say right now, but if you think about the way that the platform is built by itself, sharing easier sharing for Twitter makes a lot of sense. It's very easy to simply retweet something and start your own conversation. And the network actually promotes content generation that way. Whereas on LinkedIn you're more kind of geared towards having your own discussion with that person on that same post where you originally found the content. So honestly, it makes a lot of sense to me and it's a lot easier to do on Twitter. Whereas you have like LinkedIn and Facebook that are better for those deeper conversations. And if you've ever followed a Twitter thread in your life, you could probably see that maybe Twitter isn't the best for those in depth conversations. It's kind of a little hard to follow sometimes. And that's not to say people don't do it, of course, but LinkedIn absolutely fosters that kind of engagement. So it makes a lot of sense. But thank you very much for that question, I do appreciate it.
18:13
Jennifer Gutman
Yeah, it's a great question and I think something else to point out regarding why LinkedIn seems to be a bit low in terms of shares versus Twitter. So in terms of best practices per network, what we know is that, right. On LinkedIn, it's almost a best practice. And this is for the brand and even personal profiles, right. It's that one piece of content a day keeps the algorithm healthy. Right. It's like that's not too much one, one, one post a day, maybe two. Right. But not more than that. And on Twitter, Twitter is not designed to be a one tweet and done kind of deal. Right. Twitter is designed, it's a fast paced network and it's a best practice. As an advocate, and I know this can to many advocates who are new to the program, I can see like, what do you want me to do? But it's almost best practice to be sharing five to seven tweets a day, right?
19:05
Whitney Blankenship
Absolutely.
19:05
Jennifer Gutman
So when you're creating content for advocacy with that kind of, you know, ratio in mind, Facebook, one post a day, LinkedIn, one post a day. And Twitter five to seven. That essentially means that your board needs to be filled with quite a lot of Twitter content, because to keep up with the pace of the lifespan of a tweet, you need more tweets. Could that be impacting what you're looking at here as well?
19:28
Whitney Blankenship
Absolutely. I mean, but like I was saying before, LinkedIn and Twitter are very different beasts. And just like you mentioned, the lifespan of a tweet and I've seen a lot of different reports over the years, but it tends to be like 19 minutes or something like this versus a LinkedIn post. And if you're getting a lot of engagement on a LinkedIn post, you could be getting engagement of that for months. I actually saw a really interesting. I saw a comment earlier today on LinkedIn from a post that I had commented on eight months ago. So if you get enough engagement on LinkedIn, you can have posts that live far longer than a tweet on LinkedIn, for sure. Absolutely.
20:10
Jennifer Gutman
So we have a question here. I'm going to throw it out to you, Whitney. And it's around kind of the suggestion of specific things to be shared on one platform versus the other. So, for example, you know, blogs and articles or thought leadership, does that work on Twitter? Should it be not for Twitter jobs, white papers, kind of. When you think about like content strategy and I know you own and head ours, is there a rhyme and reason to what should go where or what should not go where?
20:40
Whitney Blankenship
So I think it's hard to say because on one hand you've got like Twitter that's really, really great for news and great for quick updates and great for fast sound bites and these kinds of things. And short form content where we've seen that longer form content tends to work better on LinkedIn. And actually this actually brings us to the next slide. Ironically, even though LinkedIn tends to by default deprioritize in their, in their algorithm posts that contain a link, if you're getting the engagement, you're going to get that algorithm prioritization anyway, which is why we saw 91% of all link clicks coming from LinkedIn. That said, to go back to this question, what works better where that is completely going to depend on your brand. And in another sense, what I like to do for social media is to remain consistent above all things. So if you're sharing certain pieces of content on Twitter, you're essentially curating a feed for your followers where they're going to expect that same kind of content. Whereas if you're sharing different things on LinkedIn, they're going to start expecting, your followers will expect that, that same type of content. So if you start cross posting between the two, you're gonna, I think there might end up being a little bit of a disconnect for your followers. So I think that it really depends on the kind of audience that you're curating on each social network. Does that make sense?
22:27
Jennifer Gutman
That does, that does make sense. And you know, you're thinking about tone, you're thinking about your audience and your followers. I think it does make a lot of sense. So I'm going to just pop through. And I think a lot of us, I mean, I love going through this with you every single time because I always learn something new with every conversation that we have. But what I'm curious to understand, especially as like customer experience marketing, but how is social media influencing the B2B customer experience? And what should we be aware of as we go ahead and see this data, use this data, how can we kind of strengthen it or what did you find?
23:04
Whitney Blankenship
So one of the biggest things, and again, going back to the State of B2B Social CMO report as really the foundation for why we did this, we asked CMOs, what's your big goal for social media? Why are you using social media? And one of the big things that people were saying, we want to engage with our customers, we want those deeper conversations, we want to connect with our customers. And I mean, like I said before when we were talking about, you know, where you're having Those deeper discussions, LinkedIn is the king for that. It's absolutely the network that you want to use for those deeper discussions. And if you pop to the next slide, or even the slide after that,
23:50
Jennifer Gutman
actually, because what I'll call out here, right, is. And I just want to say it again, so I think it's important to hear, right? LinkedIn is the top advocacy network for real conversations. So what I want to say about that, right, as everybody kind of thinks through, like each network and every strategy you have on every network, right? When on LinkedIn, the algorithm is really promoting kind of that meaningful connection, if you will, and you're having those real conversations, it is more meaningful if you create a piece of content, you post it out onto LinkedIn and let's say you spark only two conversations. But those two conversations essentially lead to deals or opportunities or, you know, MQL's to SQLs or however, right? Whatever language you want to use. But those two meaningful connections from LinkedIn moved over into that sales cycle. Whereas sometimes with Twitter, you can get a whole bunch of shares. And what does that like, does it mean you get new customers? Maybe, maybe not. But I think, right, the value truly is on LinkedIn. So now I'll, I'll hop over.
24:55
Whitney Blankenship
I mean, honestly, it's a lot about what is that low commitment engagement? There was no way I was going to be able to create a graph with all the different types of engagement by network. I tried. But if you think about likes, for example, there were billions of them. There was absolutely no way I could fit them onto a graph and actually have a graph that meant anything. And it's because the more you have those sort of low commitment forms of engagement, the easier it's going to be to engage. This is the entire reason behind, you know, sharing being super easy on Twitter. It's just a simple, hey, retweet. I don't even have to quote it. I don't have to write anything. And you can do the same thing on LinkedIn, of course, but it doesn't get as good engagement on LinkedIn as it would on Twitter. So, you know, definitely for these deeper conversations that are really going somewhere and creating that human connection between, between those in your network, between prospects, between customers and between employees, even LinkedIn is absolutely the best network, driving 96% of all comments added by advocacy posts, without a doubt. And I know you're fine and I know we're all wondering, okay, so who took, who took home the crown for conversion? Because at the end of the day that's really, really what matters. And no surprise, it was also LinkedIn. And I think it has to do a lot with those deeper conversations we were talking about earlier. We, you know, LinkedIn on social media, it doesn't have to be just a touch point in the sales funnel. It's actually perhaps what could coax a customer into the next phase of the purchase funnel. And I do want to say that despite 95 of conversions coming from LinkedIn, this does not at all mean you should discount using Facebook and Twitter because 5% is still substantial. Who here would love to increase their conversion by 5%? Because I would, I would take that deal. And that could be what you get on employee advocacy via Facebook and Twitter. Definitely not worth just leaving and forgetting.
27:21
Jennifer Gutman
I would definitely agree with that. And something I can share from personal experience with advocacy. And I don't know if this is because I'm, maybe I shouldn't say my age, but for whatever reason, my Facebook network tends to generate for me as an advocate more clicks, more shares, more comments, more engagement than LinkedIn and Twitter. Sometimes it's not for everything but for certain things. And so I know, for example, if I want to be at the top of the leaderboard, I will go ahead and share something on my Facebook and it's very specific like a webinar, right. Registration or, you know, when I host podcasts, if I put that on my Facebook, it always is outperforming. Right. And I would have never thought that because, you know, on Facebook usually I'm posting pictures of my son and you know, my family and you know, whatever
28:12
Whitney Blankenship
else we got, cooking videos, I mean, depends on your feed, right?
28:16
Jennifer Gutman
So I always just like, as you're saying like that 5% when you're, if you're doing an advocacy training, a ramp up, a pilot, don't discount, as you said, Whitney, Facebook especially and Twitter. And you can definitely share with your advocates this information and you can have them test it out. Right. And maybe when they start sharing to Facebook, they might even see themselves at the top of a leaderboard because you just don't know who you are connected to on Facebook. Who, again, it's a leisurely scroll. They might be up looking to read something interesting about the field that they're in. So definitely worth noting. I want to head to the next slide because we're coming up on time and this report, if it was an action movie, is action packed. I mean, there's so much good stuff inside of it. But if you had to do kind of a key takeaway overview, Whitney, what are the main things that we should walk away from today knowing moving forward?
29:10
Whitney Blankenship
Absolutely. In terms of timing, November, March and October are going to be your top months for advocacy shares. But it also means that you should be incentivizing, you should be trying to keep your employees motivated throughout the year and really trying to push a little bit more when your advocacy shares are ebbing as opposed to flowing. In terms of important campaign launches, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are going to be your absolute best bet. But also test on Saturdays and Sundays, test when there's less noise on social media, you have less noise to cut through for your real conversations, traffic generation and obviously conversions. LinkedIn is going to be your biggest employee advocacy asset. And then also test on Facebook and Twitter, test where, you know, you may not think that there's going to be a lot of results because everything works differently for each brand. And it depends on, you know, what social network that you're using and what you're publishing and what you're sharing. And it all depends. It's all worth testing Absolutely. And those are my biggest takeaways from the advocacy report.
30:25
Jennifer Gutman
I mean, it all makes a lot of sense and I think if anybody's embarking, especially on maintaining or launching a program, these are some pretty big takeaways. Serena comes in with a pretty interesting question and it's. My mind is actually going for it, but she's asking, do the results of this survey change based on the industry sector?
30:47
Whitney Blankenship
That's a really good question. And I, we did not look that far. I did not split the data into different sectors. However, I would guess that the grand lines would be similar, but that there would be some differences industry to industry. Like different industries definitely are different beasts. I'm originally from the e commerce industry. That's where 99% of my expertise comes from. So I'm definitely, you know, it's definitely a different beast than, you know, for example, B2B. But I would definitely, I would say there probably would be if we, if we, you know, split it down even
31:35
Jennifer Gutman
further, perhaps that's our next challenge for the rest of 2022, is to split it, you know, split it down by industry. Something I'll add is probably going to. Everybody, I'm sure can maybe give a little chuckle because we all can relate to it. But I think what's interesting also to take away when it comes to social media is there is no playbook and there are so many factors that can contribute to these types of benchmarks. Right. So even if you were to break it down by industry, every brand on social may have a different number of followers. Right. A different tone and different levels, if you will, in their social media strategy. So even small things like that could potentially impact some of this kind of benchmarking. Would you, would you agree with that, Whitney?
32:23
Whitney Blankenship
Absolutely. Absolutely. There are so many different factors that play into social media and ultimately social media, even the algorithms that we can't control them. We don't have perfect control over this channel. What we have to do is we have to work with the algorithm in order to make sure that we are getting eyes on our content, we are getting that engagement with our followers, with our customers, because it's really just dependent on so many different factors. And I could definitely see industry being a big one.
32:56
Jennifer Gutman
I've definitely noted down in my notebook Sriran, just so you know that the next challenge we're gonna pitch to the team is to break it down by industry. So we'll be sure to keep you updated on that one. So with, with that being said, I wanna thank everybody for joining us today to walk through these benchmarks. If there's any other questions you may have, feel free to drop them in the chat. You're also more than welcome to reach out to myself or Whitney, Whether it's on LinkedIn or reach us at marketingoctopost.com it's been a real pleasure hosting. I hope you enjoyed the report and as I shared, you will certainly get the report and the recording sent right to your inbox. So thank you so much and we look forward to seeing you again soon.
33:40
Whitney Blankenship
Thanks so much. Chen thanks everyone.
