Employee Advocacy: A Concise Guide for IT Services Businesses

LinkedIn and other social media platforms provide a rare opportunity to build personal connections with decision makers in your industry.

Employee advocacy helps make those conversations more effective. When your team shares valuable content, they stay visible to prospects, build credibility, and generate leads without paid advertising.

The reality: Posts from personal profiles get 8x more engagement than company page posts.

Your salespeople's networks contain prospects who will never see your company page. When your security engineer shares insights on LinkedIn, CISOs pay attention. When your customer success manager posts about solving a complex problem, prospects take note. Personal profiles generate the peer-to-peer credibility that corporate channels cannot manufacture.

What you gain from an employee advocacy program:

•          More inbound leads from LinkedIn

•          Shorter sales cycles (prospects arrive educated and trusting)

•          Stronger professional brands for your team

•          Free distribution for your content

•          Competitive advantage (most small businesses ignore this)

Time investment: 15 minutes per person per week once you're up and running.

Getting Started (Week 1-2)

Step 1: Set Basic Guidelines

You don't need a formal policy, but establish three ground rules:

• Brand consistency. Encourage authentic voices while ensuring that everyone represents the company professionally.

• Practical guidelines. Beyond rules, the policy shows employees what good advocacy looks like through examples and best practices.

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Step 2: Optimize LinkedIn Profiles

Your team needs professional LinkedIn profiles. Spend 30 minutes per person:

Profile photo: Professional headshot with good lighting and plain background

Headline: Make it about value, not just your title. Instead of "Sales Manager at ABC Company," try "Helping manufacturers reduce supply chain costs | Sales Manager at ABC Company"

About section: Three short paragraphs covering what you do, your expertise, and how to reach you

Step 3: Create Your Content Library

• Educational content and industry insights (70%): Share news with commentary, explain trends, answer common questions

• Company news (20%): New clients or projects, awards, team updates, case studies

• Promotional content (10%)

What to Share (And When)

Frequency: Try to share at least 1-2 posts per week per person, but don’t feel the pressure to post content if you don’t.

Best times: Tuesday-Thursday, 7-9 AM is ideal, but 12-1 PM can also work.

What performs well:

• It’s important to add your personal thoughts

• When possible share behind-the-scenes company

• Client success stories (with permission)

What to avoid doing:

• Pure promotional posts about your product

• Political or controversial topics

• Copy-pasting the same post everyone else shares

Tracking What Works

You don't need fancy analytics. We can start by tracking these basics:

Weekly: How many posts did each person share? Which posts got the most engagement? Did any posts generate conversations or leads?

Monthly: Website traffic from LinkedIn, leads that mentioned seeing content, new connections for team members

Getting Started: The First 30 Days

Week 1: Set guidelines, update LinkedIn profiles, create first set of 10 – 25 posts

Week 2: Choose distribution method, share first content, team posts 1-2 times

Week 3: Create 10 more posts, check performance, adjust based on engagement

Week 4: Establish weekly routine, track basic metrics, celebrate wins

Our Plan: Defining Success

After 90 days, you should see:

• Each team member gaining 50-100 new LinkedIn connections

• 2-3 inbound leads mentioning they saw your content

• More profile views and engagement on posts

• Prospects arriving more informed

• Sales conversations starting from "I saw your post about..."

This approach won't transform your business overnight. It builds momentum. Small businesses that stick with it for 6 months see measurable lead generation and shorter sales cycles.

Keep It Simple

Employee advocacy sounds complex. For small businesses, it's not. You're already creating content. Your team already uses LinkedIn. This just makes both more effective.

Start with three willing participants. Give them good content. Make it easy to share. Track what works. Adjust and improve.

Your competition probably isn't doing this yet. That's your advantage.

Ready to start? Pick two people. Create five posts. Share them next week. Adjust and repeat.

LinkedIn Content Ideas Notes

Make the Technical Non-Technical -> Connect the Technical to Business

Advanced Employee Advocacy

“The most powerful advocacy programs create original content, not just shared content. Employee-generated content carries even more authenticity and credibility.

Support employees who want to write LinkedIn articles. Provide topic ideas and editing support. Their articles build personal thought leadership while raising company visibility.”

Simple Distribution System

Option 1: Shared Google Doc (easiest) - Create a doc with suggested posts, update weekly with 3-4 new posts

Option 2: Slack Channel - Create #content-sharing channel, post 2-3 messages weekly

Option 3: Weekly Email - Email 3 posts every Monday with copy-paste ready text

Critical rule: Always encourage people to customize posts. "Here's a suggested post—use it as-is or adapt it with your own take."