Entertaining Employment Advocacy: Brand Amper #hrtechconf

The divide between corporate marketing and HR/recruiting is shrinking.

Brand Amper is a fun, easy, Mad Libs™ style web app that helps companies see their employer brand through the eyes of their employees.

The latest category helping to bridge the gap in business? Employee advocacy. Simply defined, it’s capitalization on the reality that employees  have the potential to draw increased exposure to the workplace and serve as advocates for the company.   Yet for many companies, this presents a real and present danger: “Could letting my employees represent the company brand outside of their working hours damage our brand?”

While the merits of the debate that question starts must be considered, the reality is that your employees represent your brand whether you “allow” it or not. Every time someone is asked or shares who they work for or answers the question “what does your company DO?” they are, in fact, representing your brand.   Since there is no doubt that an uneducated workforce can harm your brand, why not arm them with the training they need to proudly and confidently advocate for your brand – their company?

When you do, you unlock an organic reach that can build powerful relationships. And that, at its core, is the business case for an employee advocacy program. It’s a young category that has only really gained steam in the last couple of years.

Currently, there are just under 3 dozen vendors in this category, the latest being launched today at the 2014 HR Technology Conference: Brand Amper. Most of the technology solutions are currently focused on reach-based metrics, something Brand Amper CEO Jason Seiden sees as a fallacy:

“We need to see a shift from reach-based metrics to resonance-based metrics. Whether in recruiting or marketing, prospects are overwhelmed by an extremely noisy social space, filled with ever-increasing content.”

He’s right. Companies are pumping it out faster than ever, much of it just put out to try to maintain relevancy or just be remembered at all. So in a sea of marketing fluff; really, it’s the connection of the employees that can add the gravitas needed to get noticed.

[button_link size=”medium” src=”http://brandamper.com/”]Visit Brand Amper Here[/button_link]

But what’s the best way to do it?

Is it enough to feed your employees branded content and allow them to join in your brand initiatives with a solution such as QUESocial or SocialChorus? While that is a good start, it’s only one piece to what should be the solution to a larger puzzle. Since your employees do represent you whether they are on or off the clock, it’s important that their own stories reflect a certain consistency about the company story.

This is the first area where DaaS solution Brand Amper can make an immediate difference. It takes employees through an easy-to-use app that takes employees through a fun process of simplifying their story so that they’re sharing the core of what they do.

It teaches them how to advocate for themselves while allowing companies to gauge two very important things from a brand and recruitment perspective: what really matters to the employees that work for you and how employees see your company in succinct keywords. That’s an ongoing feedback loop that shows companies how their employees are self-identifying with the brand.

It’s powerful information for a company to have. Think through the implications: not only does it allow employers to crowd-source their brand, succinctly share company culture, and bring together fragmented conversations to amplify advocacy to create a unified and commanding message… the data generated by Brand Amper can also help with recruitment.

Yes, it’s alternative use-case, but it’s one not to take lightly: we spend a lot of time and money getting candidates to the apply point of the recruiting process. We then spend even more time and money getting to the real root of what they do during the interview process.

Yet really, could it be as simple as saying “there’s an app for that?”   Think about it: job descriptions are rich with keywords. As are resumes.

In fact, there are too many of them (maybe we need a Brand Amper for job descriptions… but that’s another post for another day). But if you were to isolate the top 10 skills (aka keywords) and match that with the prospect’s self-identification keywords; pre-established minimum matching thresholds could be established to invite interested, well-matched parties to apply or educate unqualified prospects on what you’re looking for. More than that, it improves the recruitment experience by giving back something that can help them find the job/company that îs right for them by telling their story better (whether that’s with you or someone else).

Could this be the next wave of employee advocacy? Take a peek and then share your thoughts.

[vimeo url=”http://vimeo.com/108570634″ width=”500″ height=”300″]

About the Author:  Crystal Miller is a Strategist and has over a decade of experience at some of the world’s biggest brands. She has worked with start-ups to Fortune 15 companies to at the intersection of HR & marketing; creating campaigns and strategies that solve business problems, tell compelling corporate stories and share the meaning of work in engaging ways that drive results. In addition, she has led both the internal HR function for a regional $350MM business and the largest real estate recruiting practice for the leading single-site search firm in the United States.

She has been a reliable expert source on the topics of talent attraction, talent acquisition, talent management, and digital strategy for multiple media outlets including CBS, Hanley-Wood, Mashable, and ABC. As an industry leader, she is recognized for expertise in employer branding, recruitment strategy & marketing, social media, community building, digital strategic solutions and speaks globally on the same.

Follow Crystal on Twitter @TheOneCrystal or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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