Latest / The Marketing Career Podcast with Fexingo: Marketing Jobs, Skills, and Career Growth / How Mid-Career Marketers Use Employee Advocacy Programs
Transcript
- Lucas: So I was looking at a LinkedIn profile yesterday of a senior marketing manager at a mid-sized SaaS company called VantageSoft — not a household name, but they do about two hundred million in revenue. And her profile views had jumped three hundred percent over the past year. Not because she went viral. Because she started an employee advocacy program — inside her own company. Luna: Wait — she started it for herself, or for the whole company? Lucas: Both, really. She convinced her CMO to let her pilot a structured advocacy initiative: fifteen minutes a day for the marketing team to share curated industry insights on LinkedIn. No hard selling. Just commenting on trends, sharing third-party articles with a short take, and occasionally reposting company content with her own spin. Within six months, she had data — engagement rates up forty percent on company posts, inbound connection requests from potential clients, and a couple of qualified leads that she could track back to specific shares. Luna: And that got her promoted. Lucas: Exactly. Eighteen months later, she's a director. She told me the advocacy program was the single highest roi initiative she'd ever run — not for the company, but for her own career. And I think that's the angle that doesn't get talked about enough. We always hear about employee advocacy as a corporate brand play: get your people to amplify your message. But for a mid-career marketer, running that program — or even just participating visibly — is a fast track to internal visibility and external authority. Luna: I can see that. It's like a built-in personal branding engine that also delivers measurable business results. What are the key metrics she tracked? Lucas: She focused on three things. First, engagement rate on her own posts — not just likes, but comments and meaningful replies. Second, share of voice: how many of the company's LinkedIn mentions came from employees versus the brand page. She got that from about fifteen percent to over sixty percent. And third, inbound connection requests from people in target industries — specifically decision-makers at accounts they wanted to land. She had a spreadsheet. Luna: That's very specific. And probably very persuasive to a CMO who wants to see a direct line between social activity and pipeline. Lucas: Exactly. And I think this is a sweet spot for mid-career marketers. You're not entry-level, so you've got some domain expertise to share. You're not a C-suite executive who can just opine from on high — you're credible but approachable. And you understand how to frame content so it's useful, not promotional. Luna: Are there good examples of companies that have formalized this well? Lucas: HubSpot is probably the most cited. They've had an employee advocacy program for years — they call it the HubSpot Advocacy Program. They give employees curated content, training on how to personalize it, and they track participation. Dell is another one — their social media and community team built a program that trained thousands of employees to be brand advocates. But the key detail is that those programs work best when employees are genuinely engaged, not just told to post. Luna: So the marketer who wants to start something similar — what's the first step if their company doesn't have a program? Lucas: Start with a small pilot. Pick three to five colleagues who are already active on LinkedIn or Twitter. Offer to curate a weekly list of five articles relevant to your industry, with one sentence each on why they matter. Ask them to share one or two a week — and tag the company if relevant. After thirty days, compile the engagement data and bring it to your manager or the CMO. Show them the increase in impressions and mentions. That's enough to get a conversation started. Luna: And for the individual marketer — what's the personal benefit if they're not the one running the program, just participating? Lucas: Visibility, credibility, and network growth. Every post you share is a signal to your network — and to your boss's boss — that you're plugged into the industry. I've seen marketers get recruited specifically because a hiring manager noticed their thoughtful comments on company posts. It's a form of passive job search that runs in the background. Luna: What about the risk of sounding too corporate? I've seen employee advocacy posts that feel like they were written by the PR department. Lucas: That's the number one pitfall. The best advocacy comes from a genuine voice. If you're just reposting company press releases, people will tune out. The trick is to add your own take — even if it's critical. For example, if your company launches a new feature, don't just say 'We're excited to announce...' Say something like 'I've been testing this feature for a month, and here's what surprised me.' That's authentic. That builds trust. Luna: So the marketer's skill set — content strategy, audience understanding, measurement — is exactly what you need to make advocacy work. It's almost like you're marketing yourself internally. Lucas: Exactly. And that's why mid-career is the perfect time to lean into this. You have enough experience to have a point of view, but you're still close enough to the ground to know what's actually useful. The VantageSoft manager I mentioned — she told me the program also improved retention in her team. People felt more invested because they were building their own brand while helping the company. Luna: If these marketing conversations have sparked something you've actually used — a tactic, a framework, a way of thinking about your own career — a couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these going. You can support the show at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a small thing that makes a real difference. Lucas: Yeah, absolutely. So back to the data — what I found really interesting was how she measured the program's impact on her own career. She tracked not just company metrics, but personal ones: the number of recruiter DMs she got, the quality of speaking invitations, and even the number of times she was introduced as 'the person who runs our advocacy program' in internal meetings. Luna: That's smart — turning a corporate initiative into a personal differentiator. How did she get buy-in from leadership initially? Lucas: She started with a low-cost pilot — no budget, just time. She pitched it as a test: 'Give me three months and I'll show you the metrics.' She used free tools like LinkedIn's native analytics and a simple spreadsheet. After sixty days, she had enough data to show that engaged employees had a four times higher click-through rate on company posts than the brand page alone. That opened the door for a small budget for training and content curation tools. Luna: So the lesson is: don't ask for permission to run a full program. Just start small and prove it. Lucas: Exactly. And for mid-career marketers, that's a career strategy in itself. You're not waiting for a mandate — you're taking initiative. That's exactly the kind of behavior that gets you noticed for promotion. Plus, you build a skill that's increasingly in demand: the ability to activate a workforce as a distribution channel. Luna: Are there any tools you'd recommend for someone starting out? Lucas: There are platforms like GaggleAMP, EveryoneSocial, and PostBeyond that are purpose-built for employee advocacy. But honestly, when you're starting, you don't need them. A shared Google Doc or a Slack channel works fine. The important thing is the content curation and the personalization. Tools come later, once you have scale. Luna: And what about measuring ROI for the company? That's often the hardest part. Lucas: Yeah, it's tricky because attribution isn't perfect. But you can look at leading indicators: employee engagement rates, share of voice, website traffic from LinkedIn, and then pipeline influenced by social touches. Some companies use UTM parameters. The VantageSoft manager tied her program to a seventeen percent increase in demo requests from LinkedIn over six months. That's not a direct causal link, but it's enough to justify continued investment. Luna: Seems like the kind of thing that could also help with internal networking — especially in larger organizations. Lucas: Absolutely. When you're visible externally, you become more visible internally too. People in other departments reach out because they saw your post. That can lead to cross-functional projects, mentorship opportunities, and even job offers within the company. One marketer I know got a role in corporate communications entirely because the VP saw her LinkedIn activity and thought she had the right voice. Luna: So if a listener is sitting there thinking, 'I'd like to do this but I'm not on social media much' — what's the minimal commitment? Lucas: Fifteen minutes a day. That's it. Spend ten minutes reading industry news and find one or two articles that genuinely interest you. Spend five minutes writing a short comment — two or three sentences — and share it. The key is consistency, not volume. Even three thoughtful posts a week will build momentum over three months. Luna: And what about the fear of saying something wrong or getting negative comments? Lucas: That's real. But the antidote is to focus on adding value, not being perfect. If you make a factual error, correct it openly. If someone disagrees, engage respectfully. That actually builds credibility. The risk of being invisible is far greater than the risk of being imperfect. Luna: Good point. So for the mid-career marketer, employee advocacy is really a triple win: personal brand, company results, and career acceleration. Lucas: Exactly. And the window is still open. A lot of companies have programs, but very few employees participate actively. If you're one of the ten percent who do it consistently and strategically, you stand out enormously. It's a low-competition, high-impact move. Luna: I'm curious — what's the next evolution? Where do you see employee advocacy going in the next couple of years? Lucas: I think we'll see more use of AI to help with content curation and personalization — tools that suggest articles based on your interests and help draft posts in your voice. But the human element — the authentic perspective — will become even more valuable as generic AI content floods feeds. The marketers who can combine their own experience with smart curation will have a real edge. Luna: That's a good note to end on. Thanks, Lucas. Lucas: You bet.