Remember, with brand advocates, it’s all about the relationships you forge.

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First, you need to find out who you already have as advocates. Look for those who are leaving positive reviews. Who is liking and sharing your content? Who is producing content about your brand? One excellent way to identify brand advocates is through social listening. Sprout Social’s Social Listening tools let you search for specific terms and hashtags related to your company. You will then be able to tap into conversations online.

Sprout's social listening query builder showing options to include amazon data or exclude keywords
Once you have an idea who your advocates and audience are, offer incentives for further engagement. Some incentives could include running social media contests, sending company swag, or shout-outs on the company website or social media.

To maintain relationships with current or prospective advocates, respond to reviews, comments and posts quickly. Provide excellent customer service. Conduct surveys and ask for reviews in newsletters, chats, receipts and phone call confirmations. Google provides an easy way for you to get Google reviews through a direct link.


When we talk about employee advocacy, it’s a bit different. What is employee advocacy? As mentioned earlier, your employees are some of your best advocates because they know about your brand inside out. Some will already be posting about you, but you could harness their networks to increase brand awareness, create a wider personal network for sales team members, and showcase subject-matter expertise for industry leaders. Having employees in an employee advocacy program will be to your benefit.

Data from Sprout’s Employee Advocacy Report reveal that 72% of all employees would post company content on their personal pages if their company wrote it for them. And engaged users (spending 60 minutes or more daily on social media) are 11% more likely to post this content than casual users.