Why and how to develop your leaders' influence with Leader Advocacy?

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In the last few years, the number of executives active on Twitter and LinkedIn has exploded: executives have become influencers, ambassadors for their company.

Developing the influence of executives through a Leader Advocacy programme is an effective strategy for strengthening a company’s reputation, building trust with stakeholders and driving growth.

Why has this strategy become essential to any communications strategy, and how can it be put in place? 👇

What is Leader Advocacy?

Leader Advocacy is the practice of distributing or relaying a company’s content via the personal accounts of its leaders on social networks.

By speaking out on their networks, leaders increase their visibility and credibility.

Why turn your leaders into influencers?

👉 Increasing the visibility of branded content

Quantitatively: The combined audience of directors and managers is often larger than that of the brand. So sharing the company’s content on their social networks helps to spread it more widely.

Qualitatively: Social network users naturally follow their ‘peers’. The audience of “leaders” is therefore made up of other “leaders”.

Messages shared by people within a company have a reach 561% greater than the same messages shared on brand channels.

👉 Increasing brand credibility & personal branding for executives

Humanisation: Messages sent out by an individual are received more positively than those from a brand.

Personal Branding: In 2023, the legitimacy of managers depends on their presence on social networks. Working on the Personal Branding of your executives is not optional, but a must, otherwise you run the risk of experiencing crisis situations without being able to respond.

👉 Strengthening confidence in the company

By embodying the company’s messages, we can communicate in a more authentic and less biased way. It engages discussion and generates virality. By sharing their vision, expertise and values, employees forge links with Internet users and strengthen the feeling of belonging to their company.

👉 Encouraging internal commitment

Management involvement strengthens the corporate culture and encourages employee involvement.

Leader Advocacy is an essential lever for implementing Employee Advocacy.

85% of employees say they are more motivated when their managers keep them regularly informed about company news.

👉 Communicate effectively at lower cost!

The cost of online advertising has risen steadily: up to €10/click for Google SEA or Linkedin Ads, and the use of external BtoB influencers is limited and requires budgets in the thousands of euros. In contrast, a Leader Advocacy strategy starts at less than €500/month!

How to set up a Leader Advocacy strategy?

From defining objectives to measuring results, here are the key steps to implementing an effective Leader Advocacy strategy in your company:

1. Define your objectives

The first step in deploying a Leader Advocacy programme is to define your objectives in terms of your company’s needs and challenges. Here are a few examples of objectives:

Raising your profile,
Improved reputation,
Building customer loyalty,
Attracting new talent…

2. Identify the most suitable executives & managers

Not all managers are suited to the role of influencer.

It is important to select the managers who are most in tune with the company’s strategy and who are capable of embodying its vision and values on social networks. This creates a solid foundation by showing their commitment to ethical and responsible principles. These managers can be:

Chairman / CEO,
Product managers,
R&D managers,
Customer management…

3. Establish an editorial policy

Social media are powerful platforms for managers to express their ideas, share their expertise and interact with stakeholders.

Having guidelines in place will help to ensure that what is said is consistent with the image conveyed by the company. They can include recommendations on the tone to adopt, the communication channels to favour, etc.

4. Defining communication topics

It is vital to define communication topics in advance, based on the objectives of the strategy.

Leaders must be able to share content that is interesting and relevant to stakeholders, based on their expertise and their vision of the company.

To be more accessible and credible to others, leaders can also share personal stories and authentic experiences that resonate with the company’s values.

5. Measuring the impact of the influence strategy

It’s important to measure the impact of your influencer strategy on a regular basis. For example, by using online monitoring tools, performance indicators for publications on social networks or customer satisfaction surveys.

Companies whose leaders are active on social networks enjoy 58% revenue growth in revenue.

Limber, specialist in Leader Advocacy

Limber has been designed to simplify the deployment of your Leader/Employee Advocacy, Employer Brand and Social Selling strategies, making it the ideal tool to support your strategy. The platform responds to the two types of leader profile that we generally encounter:

Experienced leaders on the networks

For this type of profile, Limber makes meticulously selected content available to your leaders, so that everyone can share the content of their choice on their social networks (see the Content Walls feature).

If the leader is comfortable with the written word, he or she can write the post independently and plan it in advance if he or she wishes.

Leaders who need support to strengthen their presence on the networks

Many managers are short of time or simply don’t have the best pen to share quality content.

👉 To make up for the lack of time, the account delegation feature is your ally! This allows you to schedule shares via your leaders’ social accounts while leaving them the choice of applying moderation.

👉 With the semantic engine offered by Limber, you have the option of writing text suggestions in advance to accompany your leaders’ publications. With this customisation, writing a post is no longer an obstacle!

By developing a Leader Advocacy approach with Limber, managers can not only strengthen their own influence, but also enhance the reputation and visibility of the company as a whole. This helps to create a culture of trust and authenticity, key elements in today’s world of Employer Branding.