A Strategic Guide to Employee Advocacy for Cybersecurity Brands

Employee advocacy is the promotion of a company by the people who work for it. In the high-stakes cybersecurity industry, where trust and credibility are paramount, leveraging your own team's expertise is a powerful strategy. When employees share company content and insights, they extend your brand's reach to new, relevant audiences and humanize your message in a way that corporate marketing cannot. This approach transforms your workforce into a network of trusted brand ambassadors, amplifying key messages, enhancing brand awareness, and ultimately supporting commercial success and pipeline growth. An effective program not only boosts marketing and sales efforts but also fosters a stronger company culture and helps attract top talent.

What is employee advocacy and how can it help our cybersecurity brand?

Employee advocacy is a marketing strategy that empowers employees to promote their company by sharing content and messages through their personal and professional social networks. For a cybersecurity brand, this is particularly effective because messages from technical experts and company leaders are perceived as more credible and trustworthy than traditional corporate advertising. Key benefits include increased brand awareness and reach, as employee networks often extend far beyond the company's followers. It also establishes your employees as thought leaders, which enhances the company's overall reputation. This strategy drives higher quality engagement, generates more qualified leads, and strengthens your employer brand, making it easier to attract top talent in a competitive field.

We have a tool called GaggleAmp. How can we use it more effectively?

GaggleAmp is designed to simplify and encourage employee advocacy by centralizing shareable content and notifying employees of new posts. To use it more effectively, focus on a few key areas. First, ensure a consistent flow of fresh, relevant content that aligns with your strategic themes, such as thought leadership, employer brand stories, and event promotions. Second, leverage the platform's gamification features, like leaderboards, to foster friendly competition and recognize top advocates. This can be tied to rewards such as company swag or gift cards to sustain engagement. Finally, use the platform to provide employees with pre-approved content that they can easily personalize. Even minor personalization significantly boosts authenticity and engagement compared to just resharing a corporate post. Regularly review GaggleAmp's analytics to see which content and advocates are performing best, and use those insights to refine your strategy.

How do we encourage our employees, especially our technical experts, to share company content?

Encouraging participation, especially from busy technical experts, requires a multi-faceted approach. The foundation is a positive workplace culture where employees feel valued and believe in the company's mission. From there, clearly communicate the 'why' behind the program, showing them how building their personal brand as a thought leader benefits their own career development and professional network. Make participation easy by using a tool like GaggleAmp to deliver pre-vetted, relevant content directly to them. Implement a recognition and rewards system. This can include gamification with leaderboards, as seen in GaggleAmp, and tangible incentives like bonuses, gift cards, or professional development opportunities. Most importantly, leadership must lead by example. When C-level executives and managers are actively and visibly participating, it signals that advocacy is a valued part of the company culture.

What kind of content is best suited for employee advocacy?

The most effective content for employee advocacy is diverse and provides value to the employee's network. Key types include:

• Thought Leadership: Bylined articles in industry publications (e.g., Forbes), deep-dive blog posts, and original research reports establish expertise and credibility.
• Third-Party Validation: Positive news coverage, analyst reports like the Forrester Wave™, and industry awards build trust.
• Employer Brand and Culture: Behind-the-scenes looks at company life, employee spotlights, and posts about benefits and company values humanize the brand and attract talent.
• Product and Service Updates: While less frequent, announcements about new features or success stories can be powerful when shared with an employee's authentic perspective.
• Events: Promoting upcoming webinars, trade show appearances, or local cyber drills helps drive registrations and attendance.

Should we provide pre-written posts for employees to share, or let them create their own?

A hybrid approach is most effective. Providing pre-written posts through a tool like GaggleAmp makes it easy for employees to participate with a single click, which is crucial for driving initial adoption. In fact, studies show a high percentage of employees are willing to share content if it's pre-written for them. However, authenticity is key to engagement. Content that is personalized by an employee, even with just a short introductory sentence or opinion, generates significantly more engagement than a generic reshare. The best strategy is to provide pre-approved copy as a starting point but actively encourage and train employees to add their own voice and perspective. This balances brand consistency with the authenticity that makes employee advocacy powerful.

How do we measure the impact and reach of our employee advocacy program?

Measuring an employee advocacy program requires looking at both internal adoption metrics and external business impact. Start by setting clear goals, whether it's brand awareness, lead generation, or talent acquisition. Key metrics to track include:

• Participation & Adoption: Track the active participation rate (what percentage of invited employees are sharing) and identify your top contributors. This can be done via leaderboards in platforms like GaggleAmp.
• Reach & Engagement: Monitor metrics like impressions (reach), clicks, comments, and shares on posts from employees. This data shows how far your message is spreading and how well it resonates with the audience.
• Website Traffic: Use UTM parameters on shared links to track referral traffic from employee advocacy efforts in your web analytics.
• Business Outcomes: Track conversions, lead volume, and even the influence on sales opportunities. This can be done by analyzing how many leads or opportunities engaged with an employee's post before converting. You can also measure the Earned Media Value (EMV) to compare the ROI against paid advertising.

Can we train our sales team to use thought leadership content in their outreach?

Absolutely. Training your sales team to use thought leadership is a core component of modern sales enablement and social selling. High-quality thought leadership content, such as blog posts, white papers, and case studies, helps salespeople open doors, build credibility, and nurture relationships long before a hard sell is introduced. By sharing relevant insights, they position themselves as trusted advisors, not just vendors. Research shows that social selling generates 45% more opportunities, and buyers are increasingly using social media for research. The strategy involves aligning marketing and sales to equip the sales team with the right content and training them on how to use it effectively on platforms like LinkedIn to engage prospects at every stage of the buyer's journey.

How do we get our C-level executives more active and engaged on LinkedIn?

Getting C-level executives active on LinkedIn requires a strategic approach that respects their time and focuses on their goals. The key is to remove blockers and provide strong support. First, frame the value in terms they care about: business growth, attracting top talent, and building investor confidence, not just vanity metrics like likes and comments. Since executives are time-poor, the marketing team can act as a partner, drafting strategic posts for them, such as sharing a bylined article they authored in a major publication. This 'ghost-posting' or collaborative approach, where the executive adds a final authentic touch, is highly effective. It's also crucial for leadership to be visible to encourage wider employee participation—this creates a 'ripple effect' throughout the company. When employees see the CEO posting, it gives them the confidence to engage as well.

Are there any compliance or brand voice risks we need to consider with employee advocacy?

Yes, there are definite risks that require clear governance. The primary risks involve brand voice inconsistency, the inadvertent sharing of confidential information, and potential security threats. To mitigate these, organizations must establish clear social media guidelines that outline the brand's tone, what is appropriate to share, and what is off-limits (e.g., client information, internal data). It's also critical to provide security awareness training, teaching employees to use strong passwords, enable two-factor authentication, and recognize phishing attempts on social platforms. Remind employees to be mindful of their physical surroundings when taking photos for posts to ensure no sensitive information is visible on screens in the background. A structured program with pre-approved content can help maintain message control, but it's equally important to train employees on how to participate responsibly and authentically.

What's the difference between employee advocacy and a paid thought leadership ad strategy?

The core difference lies in the method of distribution and cost. Employee advocacy is an organic strategy that relies on employees voluntarily sharing company content with their personal and professional networks. Its power comes from the authenticity and trust associated with an individual's endorsement. The primary investment is in tools (like GaggleAmp) and the content itself, not in ad spend. A paid thought leadership ad strategy, by contrast, involves putting paid budget behind a specific post—often one from a key employee or executive—to amplify its reach beyond their organic network. This is a form of advertising used to target a wider, specific audience on a platform like LinkedIn. The two strategies can be complementary; a company can use its organic employee advocacy program to identify high-performing posts and then decide to put paid spend behind them to amplify them even further.

How can our marketing team support the content needs of our employee advocates?

The marketing team is the engine of a successful employee advocacy program. Their primary role is to make it easy for employees to participate by providing a steady stream of high-quality, relevant content. This support includes:

• Content Creation: Developing a variety of content types, including thought leadership articles, blog posts, company news, and event promotions, aligned with strategic themes.
• Curation and Distribution: Using a platform like GaggleAmp to create a central hub where employees can easily find and share pre-approved content.
• Developing Content Kits: Building targeted 'content kits' for specific campaigns, themes, or industry verticals to ensure messaging is cohesive.
• Providing Copy: Drafting compelling, pre-written social media posts that employees can use as-is or personalize.
• Communication: Keeping employees informed about new content and making them aware of the strategic assets available for them to use.

What does a successful employee advocacy program look like in the cybersecurity industry?

In the cybersecurity industry, a successful employee advocacy program moves beyond simple brand awareness to establish deep industry credibility and trust. Success is defined by several key outcomes. First, the program successfully transforms technical experts and leaders into recognized thought leaders whose opinions are sought after. This is demonstrated by their content being shared widely and sparking meaningful conversations. Second, it generates high-quality leads and supports sales enablement, as prospects are more likely to trust recommendations from credible practitioners. Third, it significantly enhances the employer brand, making the company a magnet for top-tier technical talent by showcasing a culture of expertise and employee pride. A successful program, like that of cybersecurity firm Kiteworks, uses advocacy to share blog content, hiring opportunities, and industry awards, effectively increasing brand awareness and promoting demos. Ultimately, success is measured not just by reach, but by the program's ability to build a trusted reputation and directly support commercial goals.