Brands Sitting on Secret Army of Marketers

Every brand and organization is sitting on a secret social media weapon—employees. New ad technology and software helps plug these workers into marketing strategies, according to ad industry experts. Companies from social networks like LinkedIn to social software firms like Percolate have developed tools that harness these social media worker armies behind most brands. This week, LinkedIn, the professional social network, introduced a new metric that scores how well content performs on the site—the Content Marketing Score. Employees are key to lifting the score, and the more they post the better the content fares, according to LinkedIn. LinkedIn can now tell how influential employees are, a company representative told Adweek. Its new score is meant to help brands and companies share content that has the best chance of being seen on the platform, and gauge how well their messaging is faring compared to rivals. Employee activity is just one part of the content score, which also factors in how often a brand posts and its reach and engagement. The score is the latest development out of LinkedIn as it encourages brands, companies and executives within the organizations to post more to the platform, which now has more than 200 million users. Monitoring social media activities is a complex issue, and it used to be that employees on Facebook and Twitter were only seen as landmines companies hoped didn’t explode. Now, coordinating with workers—so long as it’s not creepy—could be the key to content marketing, according to the experts. Percolate helps brands manage their social media, and increasingly that includes enlisting the help of employees, CEO Noah Brier said. “This is a huge opportunity for a few reasons,” Brier said. “The reach of a brand's employees can be much greater than the reach of the brand.” Percolate’s services include software that makes it easier for companies to share their social content with workers and simplifies the process for employees to re-share the messages. “It's just good to keep folks inside a company engaged with what the brand is producing,” Brier said. “Ideally, if the brand is producing interesting content, it is a point of pride and also keeps them informed.”

Performance Marketing

Brands Sitting on Secret Army of Marketers

LinkedIn's new content score shows workers are key to success

Garett Sloane

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Garett Sloane