You’ve gotten approval and budget to launch an employee advocacy program. Congratulations! It may feel like the hard part is over, but a new challenge has just begun: employee advocacy training and engaging your employees to become ambassadors of your brand.

Any new (or existing) employee ambassador program needs ongoing training. There are the basics to cover, for one, like your organization’s social media do’s and don’ts and how to use an advocacy tool if you have one. 

But your ambassadors need a lot more than technical know-how. They need training to confidently communicate their work stories and professional experiences on social media so it becomes second nature and fun to promote their own brand.

Elements of an employee advocacy training program

There are six essential elements to a successful ambassador training that go beyond sharing your company’s social media guidelines. 

1 – The importance of their personal brand

This is the answer to “What’s in it for me?” when you’re asking employees to become ambassadors. While your employee advocacy program is in it for increased reach and brand awareness, for ambassadors it’s an opportunity to show off who they are and what they want to be known for. A great training will include how to align their experiences, skills, and passions to the things they’ll post about on social media so they can grow their network, increase their visibility internally and externally, and expand as a thought leader.

2 – Tips for optimizing their social media profiles

This is table stakes for training. Everyone who will become active on platforms like LinkedIn should know how to create a profile that communicates who they are and the experiences they’ve had. Particularly when platform algorithms use that information to determine who sees what posts in their feeds.

3 – Guidance for growing their network and understanding their audience

The cool thing about social media? Everyone’s network is different. It’s your job to help ambassadors understand the power of increasing their network by connecting with colleagues, peers, customers, and other relevant people. And once they have a network established, they need to understand who they are talking to so the messages they share resonate, foster engagement, and build community.

4 – Strategies for effective storytelling

The hallmark of a great ambassador is someone who can take a company post and craft a message that is unique to their own experience. This takes practice and an understanding of what makes a great story. Your ambassadors need to learn this skill so what gets amplified across social platforms doesn’t look the same over and over again. 

5 – How to be creative with photography and filming videos

The goal of an advocacy program is to build a group of employee influencers who not only share company messages, but are well-equipped to create their own social media posts that tell compelling stories about their experiences. Every great social post needs media, so your ambassadors need tips on how to take and edit photos and film videos. Arming them with these skills means better social posts that get shared across more feeds, which means better amplification of your brand. 

6 – Insight into how social media algorithms work

While algorithms change and it’s hard to know exactly why one post gets seen over another, there are tactics anyone can use to increase the visibility and reach of their content. If you manage your company’s social media handles, you inherently know some of these. Why not share them with the people you’re trusting to grow your brand organically?

An employee advocacy program is an investment in time and money with the potential for a strong ROI. So much of its success depends on the skills and engagement of your ambassador team. Giving them the knowledge they need to be confident in their social posting means a more effective program overall. And who doesn’t want that?

If your ambassador group needs to level up their skills and you don’t have the time to create an employee advocacy training from scratch, we just launched an off-the-shelf course that covers all the elements above and more. Build Your Confidence as an Employee Brand Ambassador is a self-paced, online course geared toward building their confidence with posting original content, and effectively resharing company content so your advocacy program shines.