Roularta Media Group aims to onboard ALL employees

Implementation

How Roularta Media Group started with employee advocacy

Roularta Media Group communicated about the launch of the employee advocacy program widely within the organization. They first invited employees to workshops in small groups. The goal was to explain the program to people and excite them.

A small group of about 40 power ambassadors who were eager to share their love for Roularta Media Group emerged from the workshops. They received a weekly campaign through Social Seeder that they could share online. "Social Seeder is very easy to use. Virtually no explanation is required to share campaigns. However, we got tips and tricks from Social Seeder's Customer Succes team that helped us develop our program. For instance, Social Seeder advised us to include the results of previous campaigns in every new campaign we send. We now copy results from the dashboard every time we send a campaign. By systematically sharing the number of shares and clicks a campaign triggered, employees see how they create impact."

Besides sharing results with employees, Roularta Media Group also incentivizes occasionally. Once they rewarded a top ambassador with a bottle of champagne, for example. And the HR department sometimes foresees a token of appreciation, out of the blue. Around Christmas time, everyone enlisted as an employee advocate received one of their magazines with a thank you note. But Katrien De Nolf recognizes that some incentives are less tangible: "When we need to fill a vacancy, we often send it out through Social Seeder. Colleagues like it if they can help each other out, even if they are on other teams."

How the employee advocacy program grows

The number of brand ambassadors within Roularta Media Group has grown steadily to about 200. To ensure growth, HR sends out an internal promotional email two times a year, to get people excited about the program, reminding them that they can still enroll anytime to share their love for their brands.

Roularta Media Group also pays a considerable amount of attention to onboarding new employees. Onboarding implies the process in which they help new colleagues familiarize themselves with their job and the organization. As new employees are generally very excited about starting, Roularta Media Group now invites them to register as a company ambassador as a part of the onboarding process. Usually, they enroll immediately.

Katrien De Nolf: "We will probably do a session on employee advocacy in our Roularta Academy soon. Roularta Academy is a monthly themed webinar where we involve employees closely in the ins and outs of our company and provide deeper insight into our sector and relevant topics.”

Sharing content with the community

Every six months, Roularta Media Group reviews the program. They take a deeper look at the analytics to determine what employees love to share. They evaluate top campaigns and look at optimal days/times for sending content. They also verify the genre of content that scores well. Based on those conclusions and Social Seeder's bi-annual suggestions, they adjust their strategy and content calendar.

"Now, employees actually email us to provide content! We include this in the planning as much as possible, but sometimes there is a waiting list. Determining which content to share might be the most challenging aspect of our program. We have enough content, that's for sure. But we focus on content that is interesting to our external audience, and we want to make sure we have enough variation in content. We want to highlight different brands, share different formats. We distribute corporate news and vacancies too. We strive for a well-balanced content mix. As social media needs to be teasing, it's also a priority to find a killer intro and a great image with every campaign."

Social Seeder has become an essential part of Roularta Media Group’s corporate communication. The biggest win of the program is increased employee involvement. Even though employees don't share every campaign they send, Katrien notices that people read them all.