How employee advocacy works today
A program has three parts. Someone picks what's worth talking about: a launch, a customer story, an event, an open role. Employees get something to start from, usually a suggested post or a brief. Each person decides whether to post, and in what words.
For years the starting point was a company post to reshare, with suggested text. AI changed the middle step: a tool can now draft a different post for each person, from what they do and how they write, and the person edits and approves it. Done well, it avoids ten colleagues posting the same words, as long as each person still checks that every word is true and sounds like them.
What changed when LinkedIn removed its own tools
LinkedIn has stepped back from employee advocacy twice. In January 2020 it announced that core features of Elevate, its employee advocacy app, would move into LinkedIn Pages by December 2020, when Elevate would stop being sold as a standalone app (LinkedIn Pressroom). Then the Pages features that replaced it went too: the My Company tab, the Employee Advocacy tab and the curator admin role were gradually discontinued beginning in November 2024 (LinkedIn Help).
What's left on LinkedIn is lighter. A Page admin can notify employees about an important Page post, and employees can opt out (LinkedIn Help: Employee Notifications). A Page can reshare employees' posts and mentions. And with Thought Leader Ads, a company can pay to promote an employee's public post, with their permission (LinkedIn Help: Thought Leader Ads). For the full timeline, see what LinkedIn removed and what's left.
Why it works on LinkedIn
Three things explain it, and each has a number behind it, though none is recent enough to treat as a law.
Employees reach people the company Page doesn't
LinkedIn's own guide to employee advocacy says that, on average, employee networks have 10 times more connections than a company has followers (LinkedIn, Official Guide to Employee Advocacy). The guide dates from 2016 and gives no method, and the average comes from large companies, so check your own team: add up your colleagues' connections and compare them with your Page's followers.
People engage with people
When a company posts on its Page, 30% of the engagement comes from its own employees, who are 14 times more likely to share that content than other content, according to LinkedIn's data (LinkedIn Marketing Blog, January 2021). LinkedIn repeated it in December 2023, with a line that sums up the idea: people follow brands on LinkedIn, but engage with the people behind them (LinkedIn Marketing Blog, December 2023). The same 2016 guide reports that the click-through rate on a piece of content is twice as high when an employee shares it as when the company does (LinkedIn).
People trust someone like them
In Edelman's 2024 Trust Barometer, 74% of respondents trusted "someone like me" and 66% trusted a company's technical expert to tell them the truth about new innovations and technologies, against 51% for CEOs (Edelman Trust Barometer 2024, page 10; 28 countries, more than 32,000 people, surveyed in November 2023). In Nielsen's 2021 Trust in Advertising Study, 88% of respondents trusted recommendations from people they know more than any other channel (Nielsen; more than 40,000 consumers, September 2021). Both are consumer surveys, not B2B studies, so read them as direction, not as a forecast for your posts.
Running a program at 10 to 50 people
A small team doesn't need a program manager, a launch event or a leaderboard. It needs one owner, a steady rhythm and posting that stays optional.
Who owns it
One person, part time. In a team this size it's usually whoever owns marketing, or a founder if nobody does. The job is small and steady: pick the topic of each campaign, write the brief, send the reminder, answer questions and look at who took part. Plan on an hour or two a week once it runs.
How often
One campaign every week or two is a pace most small teams can keep. Ask each person for one post per campaign at most, and let them skip one when they're busy. Five people posting every week beats twenty posting once and stopping. For days and times, see our LinkedIn posting schedule.
How to keep it voluntary
- Say it plainly at the start: posting is optional, and nobody's review, pay or promotion depends on it.
- Never count posts per person in a team meeting, and never publish a list of who didn't post.
- Let people decline a draft without explaining why.
- Start with volunteers. Colleagues join when they see a teammate's post get a reply from a customer.
A first 30 days
| Week | What to do |
|---|---|
| Week 1 | Write a one-page policy (start from our social media policy template), name the owner and ask for three to five volunteers. Ask each one what they work on and what they'd be comfortable posting about. |
| Week 2 | Run the first campaign on something everyone can speak to from their own seat, such as a customer problem you solved this month. Each volunteer posts once, in their own words. |
| Week 3 | Look at what happened: who posted, what got comments or messages, what felt awkward. Fix the brief, not the people. |
| Week 4 | Run the next campaign, invite the rest of the team, and set the rhythm for the next quarter. Our LinkedIn post templates cover the usual moments: a new hire, an open role, a webinar, an event, a launch. |
For getting people started, see how to get employees to post on LinkedIn, and for what they can write about, employee-generated content, with real examples.
What employee advocacy costs
The time is the main cost: an hour or two a week for the owner, and a few minutes per post for each person. Tools range from free (LinkedIn's own notifications) to enterprise platforms priced by quote. Tools built for small teams publish their prices: Postfox costs $190 a month for 10 people. Our employee advocacy software pricing comparison shows what 15 tools cost for 10, 25 and 50 people, with each price's source, and the buyer's guide compares what each one does.
To size the reach before you start, the earned media value calculator estimates your team's monthly impressions and what they'd cost as LinkedIn ads, with sourced defaults.
Risks, and how to handle them
Forced posting
Required posts read stiff, and people notice when a colleague posts because they had to. Keep posting voluntary in writing, look at participation as a trend rather than per person, and never tie it to reviews or pay.
Identical posts
Ten people posting the same words look coordinated, and readers scroll past. Give each person a different angle on the brief, from their own job, and let them write or edit in their own voice.
Off-brand or false claims
A post with an invented number or a promise you don't make is a problem with someone's name on it. Ask people to state only what they know, keep a short list of facts they can use (dates, prices, figures), and check before anyone names a customer. With AI drafts, the author reads every word before it goes out.
Disclosure
When an employee posts about the company's products, readers should know the author works there. The FTC's staff guidance says employees who mention their company's products should disclose the relationship in the post, and that listing the employer on a profile isn't enough (FTC's Endorsement Guides: What People Are Asking). Put the disclosure line in every brief, and in your policy.
Employee advocacy examples
Five programs that companies or LinkedIn describe in public, from a small agency to a global company. The results are the ones they report; none is an independent audit.
Sweet Fish Media: a small B2B agency, volunteers only
Sweet Fish Media made its program voluntary and promoted it as a benefit. People who joined committed for a quarter, posted three times a week on LinkedIn, and got a social media specialist who coached them and wrote three posts a week for each of them. The agency reports more than $311,000 in annual revenue it attributes to LinkedIn (Sweet Fish Media, April 2022). The lesson for a small team: someone has to make posting easy, and people have to want to do it.
Dreamdata: employees' own videos, the best ones promoted
Dreamdata, a B2B software company of 51 to 200 people, asked a mix of executives, team leads and experts to post videos in their own voices, then paid to promote the posts that did best as Thought Leader Ads. LinkedIn's case study reports more than 300,000 impressions in one quarter from employee advocacy, and engagement three to four times higher for employee-led ads than for brand-led ones (LinkedIn case study).
BCG: start small
Boston Consulting Group started with a small group of active sharers and a few topics, with its CMO's backing, before inviting more people; LinkedIn's case study reports employees sharing nine times more than before (LinkedIn case study, 2017). Starting with a few volunteers works at 15 people as well as at 15,000.
Microsoft: from 15 sellers to 3,000
Microsoft's social selling program began as a pilot with 15 sellers using their own LinkedIn networks and grew to more than 3,000 in under two years, mostly by word of mouth. Microsoft's own analysis, presented as a correlation, found participating sellers 38% ahead of their peers in creating new opportunities (LinkedIn case study, 2015).
Dell: training and a disclosure hashtag
Dell has trained employees in social media since 2010; in 2015 it reported more than 15,000 people certified (Dell blog, 2015, archived). Its current policy asks anyone who posts about Dell to use #Iwork4Dell, and requires training for people who discuss its products or industry (Dell's Global Policy on Social Media). For a small team, the useful part is the hashtag: one fixed way to say you work there.
Where to go next
- Best employee advocacy software for small teams: 15 tools compared, with prices for 10, 25 and 50 people
- Employee advocacy software pricing compared: what each tool costs, with sources
- Employee social media policy template: free, LinkedIn-ready, to copy or download as a Word file
- LinkedIn post templates for teams: a new hire, an open role, a webinar, a conference, a launch
- Earned media value calculator: what your team's posts would cost as LinkedIn ads
FAQ
What is employee advocacy?
Employees sharing news and expertise about their company on their own social profiles, by choice. On LinkedIn, it means posts from people's own accounts rather than the company Page.
What is an employee advocacy program?
The routine a company sets up so that sharing happens regularly: an owner, topics, something to start from (a suggested post or a brief), a policy, and a way to see who took part. At 10 to 50 people, it can run on an hour or two a week.
How does employee advocacy work on LinkedIn now?
LinkedIn removed its My Company and Employee Advocacy tabs starting in November 2024 (LinkedIn Help). A Page can still notify employees about important posts, reshare their posts, or promote them as Thought Leader Ads with their permission. Teams that want more use a separate tool, or run the program by hand.
Should employee advocacy be voluntary?
Yes. Posts people are made to write read that way, and their networks notice. Ask, make it easy, and let people say no without explaining.
Do employees have to disclose that they work for the company?
When they post about the company's products, the FTC's staff guidance says yes, in the post itself; a job title on the profile isn't enough (FTC). This isn't legal advice.
How many employees do you need for employee advocacy?
There's no minimum. Three to five people posting regularly is a real program for a small team, and it's easier to grow from volunteers than to start with everyone.