AMPlify

Over the last four years, Boostability has developed and refined an employee advocacy program that has transformed their culture and business. In this session from the 2018 AMPlify conference, Kelly Shelton VP of Marketing with Boostability will share his findings, mistakes, and successes on how to engage, motivate and reward genuine employee advocacy. He will walk you through the setup, infrastructure, point system, management and strategy around a successful employee advocacy program. What You’ll Learn: · How to set up the proper infrastructure to gamify your employee advocacy program · How to fuel consistent content creation · What it takes to get gamification right Connect with Kelly on Twitter @KellyShelton32 or on LinkedIn

Marketing is increasingly recognized as a strategic partner in driving leads for B2B organizations. One way to effectively generate leads is through employee advocacy, but for an employee advocacy program to succeed, three things need to be true: 1. Start at the Top! Leadership must buy in and participate 2. Content must have a purpose and address specific needs of your followers 3. Employees, especially sales, must be enabled In this talk from the 2018 AMPlify Conference, Karin Aviles, Sr. Manager of Demand Generation & Field Marketing with Centrica Business Solutions, discusses how Centrica, a global B2B energy company, developed an effective employee advocacy program. All while launching a new brand in North America. What You’ll Learn: · How to gain leadership buy-in of your employee advocacy program and sustain it · How to create content that will drive demand and keep employees engaged · How to enable and empower your Sales team · How employee advocacy can help you brand steal the show at events Connect with Karin on LinkedIn.

Clients are increasingly growing weary of how social channels are becoming push-based marketing mechanisms, where they are seen as adding the same value as billboard advertising. In an overcrowded Twittersphere people are gravitating towards subject matter experts as a trusted source of knowledge and experience and are keen to here from their fountain of knowledge rather than the company push based Twitter id. In this talk from the 2018 AMPlify Conference, Steven Dickens, Global Offering Manager with IBM gives a first-hand account of how to engage your experts to spread the word for you. What You’ll Learn: · Hints and tips from an SME who is not a marketer or a social media lead · How IBM is driving social media advocacy platforms to drive top line revenue Connect with Steven on LinkedIn.

The old world of law firms establishing decades-long relationships with clients who pay whatever invoice is sent and send repeat business to their long-trusted outside counsel is over. Today, competition for corporations’ work is stiffer than ever with long-time counsel fighting many entrants on the market. Additionally, the path to partnership is taking longer than ever. Many attorneys are missing out on building both the law firms’ brand and their own personal brand through social media. In this talk from the 2018 AMPlify Conference, Sameena Kluck, Strategic Account Executive with Thomson Reuters discusses how lawyers and law firms can take the next step to engaging clients and building their brands through social media. What You’ll Learn: • Why and how in-house legal folks are using social media • How law firm attorneys should engage with clients on social media • How attorneys can engage with potential clients or leaders in their industries • Why associates can and should build their brand and show their leadership to their own firm leaders through social media   Connect with Sameena on LinkedIn or on Twitter @SameenaKluck

At Booz Allen, everything begins and ends with employees. They needed them to feel connected to a collective purpose and share the company story. This was easier said than done. The majority of their employees work within the Department of Defense or the Intelligence Community – making them highly risk-averse, difficult to reach during business hours, and not social media savvy. In this talk from the 2018 AMPlify Conference, Donald Jones, Lead Associate & Social Technologist with Booz Allen shares how they developed a comprehensive approach as part of their overall employee engagement strategy to get employees smart on social media, educ ate them on how to safely and effectively talk about work online, and provide them a tool to make it easy for them to do so. What You’ll Learn: • How Booz Allen shifted employee social media culture from ‘risk averse’ to ‘safe sharing’ • What mix of training and educational resources Booz Allen used to meet the diverse needs of a large employee and leadership base • How to leverage employee advocacy tools to reach dispersed employees and make sharing easy and safe   Connect with Donald on twitter @oleandros or LinkedIn

Company rebrands and product launches are notoriously complex and lengthy projects that consume marketing and company resources. Success depends on achieving company-wide participation, buy-in, adoption, and flawless execution across all market facing departmental functions. At the 2018 AMPlify Conference, Henry Bruce, Contently’s SVP of marketing, shared how Contently designed, developed and successfully executed a rebrand and launch process in less than six months.

More than ever marketing organizations are taking on the responsibility to help companies innovate. Often, that requires transformation of capabilities within their organizations. From the digital imperative to mining deep insights and analytics, marketing teams are working hard to move through the change curve the industry is experiencing. However, what often gets overlooked are the associates and the embedded culture within the company that might struggle with change and innovation. Brent Korte, Chief Marketing Officer with Ameritas explored this challenge facing many organizations in his speech at the 2018 AMPlify Conference.

In a recent survey, 91% of respondents indicated that they were doing content marketing, but 53 percent of teams were small or one-person operations. How can brands keep up with content demands? Turning to a free resource that already knows, and maybe even loves, your brand is a no brainer. Employees are authentic, they are intrinsically motivated, and they can be brand safe spokespeople in ways that no paid influencer could ever provide.  Michelle LeBlanc, Social Media and Content Marketing Director with Fuseideas dove into this topic at the 2018 AMPlify Event.

While much of the discussion around employee advocacy best practices rightly focuses on program roll-out and adoption, it is equally important to focus on what content you will distribute through your employee channels – ensuring that relevant and personalized messages are being provided to the right people at the right time. This is exactly what Casey Hall, head of social media business communications with Thompson Reuters, discussed on stage at the 2018 AMPlify event.  Let’s hear what he had to share on developing content strategy for employee advocacy programs based on his experience with Thompson Reuters.

The more globally distributed a company is, the more disjointed their social media efforts threaten to become. How do you develop an effective, streamlined social media and employee advocacy strategy when your employees and audience are spread across continents and time zones? How do you craft culturally impactful social messages when every region reacts to the same message a different way?  Live from the AMPlify Conference stage, Chelsea Frischknecht, social media and influencer relations specialist with Tricentis, a global B2B software testing company, addresses how her company used GaggleAMP to develop a cross-cultural employee advocacy program so effective that it re-shaped Tricentis’ corporate social media strategy as a whole. 

On this episode of AMPlify, we pull from the archives of our sister podcast, AMPUP Your Digital Marketing. Host Glenn Gaudet sat down with Bernie Borges. Bernie is the Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Vengreso having previously been the CEO at Find and Covert. He also currently hosts the Social Business Engine podcast. In their discussion, Glenn and Bernie explore the ups and downs of employee advocacy and ways to make it easy for employees to share their stories to help promote your company.

On this episode of AMPlify, we pull from the archives of our sister podcast, AMPUP Your Digital Marketing. Host Glenn Gaudet sat down with Tara Zoumer, who at the time was PR coordinator and Social Media Manager for TriNet, and who now works as an Independent contractor in PR Strategy and implementation. Tara stresses the importance of communication and enjoys the challenge of figuring out how to best communicate a message and making sure that it resonates with the intended audience. In her discussion with Glenn, they go in depth on the importance of including your employees in your social media strategy.

LinkedIn reports “In an average company, only 3% of employees share company-related content but they are responsible for driving a 30% increase in the content’s total likes, shares, and comments.” Our guest today, Samantha Stone founder of The Marketing Advisory Network, wanted to find out what’s holding employees back, and more importantly, what can be done to break through the barriers and drive more engagement. In her discussion with host Glenn Gaudet she shares insights from the Employee Advocacy Impact Study her company conducted and how she has put what she learned into practice in her business.

On a special episode of AMPlify, this week host Glenn Gaudet is joined by Sally Anne Kaminski and Karin Aviles. As past attendees and speakers at the AMPlify Conference, both Sally Anne and Karin have insider knowledge as to why AMPlify is the can’t miss event of the year. They share their experiences, lessons they learned… based on their copious number of notes and encourage everyone to be at this year’s upcoming event.

You might be wondering if an employee advocacy program is right for you. What if your company doesn’t allow employees to use social media? Or even invest time in it for promotional purposes? Our guest today encountered both of these road blocks at his company. Donald Jones, Lead Associate and Lead Digital Strategist at Booz Allen Hamilton had an uphill battle when it came to implementing an employee advocacy program. However, with a strategic plan of action that included guidelines and lots of training his company has seen great success. Donald talks in depth about the techniques Booz Allen Hamilton employed in this interview with host Glenn Gaudet.

Every good marketing strategy needs a little bit of everything, knit together with purpose. Employee advocacy is just one of those tools that can bring new purpose and drive to your companies marketing efforts. Kelsey Kruzel, Social Media Manager at CDK Global, took her experience in tying together strategy and creativity to bring employee advocacy to her company. She structured the program with a focus on social media and brought everyone on board through a strategic plan that emphasized ROI, education and a company-wide cultural shift. She shares her story and tricks of the trade in her chat with Glenn Gaudet on this episode of AMPlify.

Consistency is a key aspect of everything you do in your business.  At the corporate level, you have to be sure your messaging is consistent in every department but especially at the front lines.  On this episode host Glenn Gaudet chats with Henry Bruce, the senior vice president of marketing for Contently a content marketing platform that brings story telling into brands to tell their story to the marketplace. Henry shares his secrets to navigating what he calls the communications waterfall inside your company and explains how to overcome resistance at any level when navigating the choppy waters of changing your brand messaging.

Implementing change in an organization is never an easy process. Implementing change that involves your team getting on board and being the advocates requires a lot more planning and effort. Brent Korte, Chief Marketing Officer at Ameritas, knows this better than most. He joined Ameritas with the agenda to make some changes that ultimately resulted in them implementing an employee advocacy program. His role during that process and now is to make sure that customers and associates feel awesome about every interaction they have with Ameritas. This involves everything from marketing, customer experience, analytics, digital communications, community relations, innovation and more. In this chat with host Glenn Gaudet, Brent talks about the crucial factors to consider when implementing change and why having the mentality that transformation starts at home should be your starting point.

When it comes to marketing your brand across cultural boundaries the road can be a bumpy one. Chelsea Frischknecht, social media and influencer relations specialist with Tricentis, an international B2B software testing company, has successfully designed and launched a corporate social media strategy and a global employee advocacy program. Daunted at first by the expectation from within the company of automated social media, Chelsea developed a program that has boosted not only the Tricentis brand but the personal brands of its employees as well. Here more about her experience, struggles and triumphs on this week’s episode of AMPlify.

Scott Bardell has been a consistent innovator in the public relations and marketing space.  As the President and Founder of Idea Grove he helps his clients reach media and buyers by pushing the envelope through the power of employee advocacy.  In this discussion with host Glenn Gaudet, Scott shares his unique perspective on public relations, ways to build those crucial PR relationships and the best places to focus your time and energy to maximize results.

Do you employees know where to easily find your corporate social media policy and general posting guidelines?  In this speech from the 2017 AMPlify event, Jamie Laliberte Whalen, Sr. Manager of Content & Social Media at Mimecast, shares how you can make a social go card of your own, how to empower your company to empower themselves and how to make social fit at every level and department in your company.

Does your content stand out in a crowd?  Or is it lost in a sea of sameness despite implementing an employee advocacy program.  It isn't enough to put the content out there in the hopes that people will find it.  You have to deliver the right content in the right way in order to get noticed.  This is the expertise of Gaetano DiNardi, VP of Marketing at Sales Hacker.  Caetano is a musician turned SEO and Content Marketing expert.  His background as a musician combined with his technical marketing acumen creates a unique hybrid of creative and analytical skills that we were luck enough to tap into in this interview.

Despite the fact that social media and digital become more and more prevalent each and every day the opposite of that is true in that countries around the world are tightening their spam and data privacy laws to protect the very people you are trying to reach.  So, it is becoming increasing important that companies have a keen understanding of what marketing activities are compliant and non-compliant so that your marketing efforts don’t get way laid right when they are picking up speed.  Sally-Anne Kaminski, Manager, global social media strategy at Zebra Technologies, has been on the front lines of dealing with this topic.  In this episode, she shares tales from the battlefield on what it takes to gain approval and launch an advocacy program that is dealing with the privacy issue daily.

Employee advocacy is on the rise. But what does that mean for companies like yours and how will it transform the way you work? On this week’s episode, Jen McClure, one of the original authorities on digital and social media and CEO of JEM Consulting & Advisory Services, shares insights on the factors that affect the growth of employee advocacy and engagement. Plus, she gives her advice about what it takes to make employee advocacy a core business initiative and get everyone in your company on the same page.

So you have an employee advocacy program. Your people are fully engaged and active and they are driving loads of traffic to your social sites, your website and more. What next? What do you do with that traffic so that it has a value add beyond brand awareness. You need to create leads. Listen as Jason Sibley, CEO and Head of Campaign Strategy at Creation Agency shares five of his top tools to turn traffic into leads.

Starting an employee advocacy program is one thing. Keeping your employees engaged and sharing is another. On this episode of AMPlify, host Glenn Guadet chats with Kelly Shelton, Vice President of Marketing at Boostability. For Kelly and the Boostability team, employee advocacy was a no brainer but that doesn’t mean it came easily. They have put a lot of hard work and time into delivering valuable content and guidance to their employees that not only raises awareness of the brand but also gives something back to the employees. In his interview, Kelly shares the Boostability secrets to converting your employees into active members of your program and he discusses how to make sure everyone reaps the rewards.

Brand engagement and employee advocacy shouldn’t be limited to one area. If you have customers around the world, your advocacy frequency signal should reach them. Julie Hayes, Sr. Brand Communications Manager at Autodesk shares how they scaled their program to reach advocates in 37 countries and 11 languages. Her hard-earned lessons could be the key to unlocking going global with your employee advocacy efforts.

How might a well-crafted employer brand affect talent attraction if you aren’t a market leader? This is the question that Jörgen Sundberg, CEO of Link Humans, a company that helps employers be more attractive to top talent, spends his days answering. One answer that he has explored is the power of a strong employee advocacy program as a means of attracting the best talent out there for your brand. Jörgen’s new book, Employee Advocacy: The Ultimate Handbook takes a deep dive look at what employee advocacy is, why you should do it and how it works. In his interview with Glenn Gaudet of GaggleAMP, they explore how to jump start your advocacy program, what companies are doing right or wrong with employee advocacy and some important details that you always need to take into consideration no matter the size of your program.

Events are a big boost for brands. There are a number of ways that you can use social media before, during and after an event to generate leads and awareness for your organization no matter if you are the host or just an attendee. Daniella Peting, Social Media Manager at Motorola Solutions covers nine ways to get more from events using that ever so powerful tool of social media and how employees can be a part of harnessing that power to gain more social influence for your brand.

Social media is a powerful tool but you need to make sure that your content strategy on those platforms aligns with the brands goals, in each and every post. Employees have a great capacity to reinforce a brand’s core message and personality but only if they are properly prepared. This is the message of Douglas Spencer President of Spencer Brenneman. He joined us for AMPlify to discuss how to find the right voice for your employees.

Driving engagement in your advocacy programs is one thing when you are working with internal employees; but it can be a completely different animal when you are working with non-employees like independent contractors in a sales organization dispersed across the country. Chris Winston, Communications Manager at Colonial Life joined us at AMPlify to provide insight and understanding on how you can get the same level or more engagement and commitment to an advocacy program from your non-employees. In this talk he shares a case study based on what Colonial Life has learned from their experience.

There is a lot of talk around content marketing, but most companies struggle with identifying its true impact on revenue. Mike Pace, Sr. Manager of Online Marketing at SendGrid talks about how through analyzing data it is possible to attribute real revenue to your content marketing efforts. Mike walks us through steps to identify where content has its greatest impact on the customer journey, how to leverage all this new found information to create the right content and where content marketing actually fits into the revenue model.

How do you influence advocacy if you aren’t influencing engagement? Employees and even your customers aren’t going to share anything about your brand good or bad if they aren’t engaged. Driving engagement is driving experiences. Ashley Mayhew, Communications and Media Lead at TD Bank, discusses what how great communications means great employee experience and a great experience means engaged employees.

When it comes to employee advocacy an often overlooked voice is that of the CEO. That single voice has a power to generate opportunity and influence and establish your brand even more so than the combined power of your employees. Ryan Murphy, PR, Editorial Content and Social Media Manager for Carbon Black joins us to pull back the curtain on the CEO Effect and how you can bottle it to amplify your organizations voice.

When starting your employee advocacy program you need buy in from the executives. How do you get it? Jason White , Director of SEO at Hertz, joined us to share stories of his success and failures on this front. He divulges some hard earned tricks and tips to help you institute change in your organization and discusses how employee advocacy was the corner stone of his strategy.

Steven Dickens, global offering manager of IBM, joins us to talk about how you can enlist the help of subject matter experts both internally and externally to be your biggest brand advocates. He has an insiders perspective on how employee advocacy actually works and how it benefits the employee and the subject matter expert.

Tristan Bishop Senior Director of Digital Customer Experience at McAfee previously worked with Informatica to develop and launch an employee advocacy program that grew from 10 participants to over 900 employees in less than three years. His TEAM method made it easy for employees to share content and actively support the brand at conferences and other venues; bringing to Informatica a new level of market awareness it previously didn’t have. Let’s listen in to hear what Tristan had to share.

AMPlify is the companion podcast to AMPlify: The Employee Advocacy & Engagement Conference. The AMPlify podcast provides conversations with the leading practitioners and thought leaders around employee advocacy and engagement. Employee advocacy and engagement is essential to any successful corporate marketing effort. In this podcast, you will learn about best practices, trends and strategies that have made impact in the companies currently engaged in these efforts.