Revamping Your Employee Advocacy Strategy for 2025: Beyond the Brand Page

It’s tough to create engaging social media posts. In 2025, with an even more saturated digital landscape, the challenge of breaking through the noise is greater than ever.

Looking at our own Sendible 2024 Trend Report, we saw an immense volume of content scheduled across platforms:

• Over 637 million posts for Facebook Pages,
• 391 million for Instagram, and
• 146 million for Google Business Profile.

Even X (formerly Twitter) saw over 63 million posts. The sheer volume means your audience needs to sift through millions of posts before reaching yours.

How can you break through the noise and create something unique—while also being in with the chance of finding new clients?

The answer, more potent than ever in today's social climate, lies in employee advocacy.

What is employee advocacy, and why does it matter more than ever?

First things first, let’s quickly iron out what employee advocacy means. The goal of an employee advocacy programme is to get your employees to promote your place of work.

You can run your programme using social media—either posting from your accounts or their own. It doesn’t have to be complex; an employee advocacy social media post can be as simple as snapping a photo at their desk (and tagging your brand’s account).

Now, let’s talk about why it's more crucial than ever in 2025.

The digital landscape has shifted. People are increasingly interested in real people, not faceless brands. This is a significant trend we've observed, particularly on platforms like LinkedIn. While company pages still serve a purpose for official announcements and brand information, their engagement rates have seen a notable drop in recent years.

Conversely, engagement on individual LinkedIn profiles is on the rise. This is because authentic voices and personal narratives resonate more deeply with audiences. When your employees share their experiences, insights, and even "unhinged" thoughts, it builds trust and creates a more human connection with your brand. Think about it: who are you more likely to trust—a polished corporate message or a genuine perspective from someone working within the company?

Here’s the compelling data directly from our Sendible 2024 Trend Report that illustrates this shift:

• LinkedIn Profiles: Over 56.6 million posts were scheduled through Sendible to individual LinkedIn profiles.

• LinkedIn Company Pages: In contrast, just over 42.8 million posts were scheduled to LinkedIn Company Pages.

Beyond our own data, industry reports confirm this trend:

• Decline in LinkedIn Company Page reach: According to the Algorithm InSights 2025 report by Richard Van Der Bloom, a typical company page post is shown to only 1.6% of its followers – a 15% drop from late 2023. This report further notes that brand posts now account for just 1–2% of the LinkedIn feed, down from 7% in 2021.
• Increase in Personal Profile Engagement: Studies consistently show that posts by employees generate significantly more impressions and engagement than those from company pages. For example, a Refine Labs study found employee posts generated 2.75x more impressions and 5x more engagement than the company page, despite having 46% fewer followers. LinkedIn's algorithm increasingly prioritises content that sparks genuine interaction between individuals, often favouring personal posts over corporate broadcasts.

This shift underscores why more and more social media managers are acting as brand personas themselves, and why businesses are investing in empowering their employees to do the same. A company's employees are its most trusted resource, which explains why nearly 31% of high-growth firms had a formal employee advocacy program in 2019, a number that has only continued to climb in 2025 as businesses recognise the undeniable ROI.

Plus, running an employee advocacy program helps with staff morale and engagement. The latest data from Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2025 report reveals that global employee engagement dropped to 21% in 2024, down from 23% in 2023, marking the steepest decline since the onset of the pandemic. In the U.S., engagement has fallen to 31%, the lowest since 2014.

You’re involving them in the process of running your business! This can be a competitive advantage—especially when employee engagement levels remain critically low.

How to set up your social media employee advocacy programme in 2025

Are you ready to take advantage of an employee advocacy program? Before giving your employees free rein over the content they post, here are a few quick tips to make sure your program runs smoothly and is optimised for today's social landscape.

1. Create clear, empowering guidelines

Chances are, you’ll already have brand guidelines for your team to reference, typically including things like brand colours and logos. But for employee advocacy, you’ll need to go further to make sure your brand voice and personal brand alignment are clear, yet empowering.

To do this, create brand guidelines that include things like:

• The words you do/don’t use
• The “vibe” you’re trying to put across (e.g., informative, witty, empathetic)
• Your brand's morals and values
• Guidance on maintaining professionalism while embracing individual personality.
• Best practices for optimising personal LinkedIn profiles: This is crucial. Encourage employees to have professional, branded profile photos (like our Sendible team with our brand colour accents), headlines that clearly state their role and company (e.g., "Head of Content @Sendible | SEO, GEO, and 10+ years of giving your content a higher purpose before AI became a thing ► Because your content deserves to be Queen Elisabeth - not Queen Pauline."), and "About" sections that highlight their expertise and connection to the company.

Ask your employees to take a look at these guidelines before they tag your brand in any social media content. It’s the best way to make sure your branding is consistent—something that could increase your revenue by 23%.

2. Start small, scale smart

It’s tempting to go full throttle with your employee advocacy program. But don’t make the mistake of getting too many people involved when you’re first starting out.

Start small—maybe with just a small selection of employees in the mix—to test which strategies get the most engagement before inviting everyone.

That way, you don’t place as much risk on the program before knowing whether it works. This also allows you to refine your processes and content strategy before a wider rollout.

3. Incentivise and empower your employees

What will your staff get out of your social media advocacy program? It’s important to think about this—and communicate that with staff—before you get them involved. The most powerful incentives often revolve around personal and professional growth.

For example, you could explain that the program gives them the opportunity to:

• Build their personal brand and professional network. This is a huge draw for employees in 2025, as a strong personal brand can open doors to new opportunities and establish them as industry leaders.
• Position themselves (and their employer) as a thought leader.
• Gain visibility and recognition within the company and industry.

Almost 86% of employees involved in a formal advocacy program say it had a positive effect on their careers. Try to make that possible for your team by communicating the value it will have, should they take part.

4. Provide targeted social media training and support

It’s important to give your employees some pointers before putting them across your brand’s social media profile—especially if they don’t use it themselves or aren't familiar with LinkedIn's nuances.

For example, you could:

• Show them how to optimise their LinkedIn profile for maximum visibility.
• Provide tips on crafting engaging long-form posts, carousels, and video content for LinkedIn.
• Explain the importance of responding to comments and engaging with their network.
• Address common pain points: One of the biggest challenges for employees is knowing what or how to post. This is where Sendible's features shine! You can leverage Sendible's Content Library to populate it with ideas, relevant articles, company news, and even pre-drafted posts that employees can customise and schedule directly to their LinkedIn profiles. This removes the guesswork and makes it incredibly easy for them to participate.
• Introduce an AI assistant: We at Sendible have created a GPT for employee advocacy that can help employees come up with new ideas, content themes, and even draft posts. The key here is that it's not generic; it's super tailored to match their individual voice, tone, and interests, ensuring authenticity.

This pre-posting training and ongoing support are a win-win: Your team learns valuable social media skills, and you ensure high-quality, on-brand content.

5. Set relevant KPIs

Why are you running your employee advocacy program: To get more customers, website traffic, or reach more people? The answer will determine how you’ll measure the success of your employee advocacy program.

Let’s say that your goal is to reach more people, for example. You could set these KPIs for your employee advocacy program:

• Reach and Impressions (especially on individual profiles)
• Website traffic driven by employee shares
• Engagement metrics (likes, comments, shares on employee posts)
• Employee participation rates
• Lead generation or conversion rates attributed to employee advocacy efforts.

Just like any marketing campaign, it’s crucial to understand how you’ll measure the success of your new social media posts before publishing employee content.

6 bonus tips for creating great employee advocacy posts

1. Leverage personal stories and “day in the life” content

Authenticity wins. Encourage team members to share:

• A behind-the-scenes look at their job

• FAQs from their network

• What they’re working on

• Lessons they’ve learned.

2. Embrace authenticity and personality

Let them be themselves—within reason. Ideas include:

• Humour and anecdotes

• Hot takes on trends

• Emojis and interactive elements.

3. Create serialised content and thought leadership threads

Keep people coming back with ongoing series like:

• “SEO tip of the week”

• “Journey at Sendible” lessons

• “Feature spotlight” insights from Sales.

4. Utilise live videos and interactive sessions

LinkedIn Live is booming. Try:

• Q&A sessions

• Interviews

• Event updates

These formats are engaging and personable.

5. Weave in cause marketing and personal values

Bring company values to life with employee voices. For example:

6. Create a branded employee hashtag and encourage cross-promotion

Track and amplify employee posts with hashtags like:

• #SendibleLife

• #SendibleInsights

• #Zapponians

• #MicrosoftLife

These help expand reach and create community.

How we do employee advocacy at Sendible

We recently amplified our employee advocacy at Sendible. We wanted our followers to feel the real people behind the brand—so we started with a voluntary rollout.

Examples include:

• Connie shares her social media journey, authentic thoughts, and professional tips.

• Tamara (me!) talks SEO wins, content strategy, and social media trends.

• Anthony, our Head of Sales shares updates, feature insights, and personal moments.

We’ve branded our profile photos, created a rich content library, and even launched our own employee advocacy GPT—so team members can create authentic, high-impact content that aligns with their personal voice.

It’s helped us upskill, increase exposure, and showcase our culture in a powerful way.

Final thoughts for 2025 and beyond

In 2025, employee advocacy is no longer optional. It’s your opportunity to build trust, showcase your team, and stand out with authentic, human-led content.

Empower your employees with guidelines, tools, and training. Incentivise participation. Track success. With the right strategy, your team will become your most valuable brand ambassadors—driving reach, connection, and results.

And if you need a safe space where you feel heard, I recommend you sign up to Connie's chronically online newsletter. Trust me, she gets your social media frustration, and she's there to help.