A Glossary of Social Media & Digital Marketing Terms for Employee Advocates
In today’s dynamic talent landscape, HR and recruiting professionals are increasingly leveraging digital strategies, particularly employee advocacy, to attract top talent and enhance employer branding. Understanding the terminology associated with social media and digital marketing is crucial for effectively navigating these new frontiers. This glossary provides essential definitions, tailored to help HR and recruiting leaders understand and implement robust employee advocacy programs that seamlessly integrate with their talent acquisition goals, often enhanced by automation.
Employee Advocacy
Employee advocacy refers to the promotion of an organization by its workforce. This can involve sharing company content, engaging with brand posts, or speaking positively about the workplace culture and products/services on social media. For HR and recruiting, employee advocacy transforms employees into powerful brand ambassadors, significantly expanding reach and credibility in talent attraction efforts. Automated platforms can streamline content distribution, making it easier for employees to share approved messaging, thus enhancing recruitment marketing without significant manual effort. This amplifies employer brand visibility and attracts candidates who resonate with authentic employee voices.
Social Selling
Social selling is the art of using social media to find, connect with, understand, and nurture sales leads. While traditionally associated with sales teams, for HR and recruiting, it extends to engaging with potential candidates, building relationships, and showcasing company culture through genuine interactions on platforms like LinkedIn. Recruiters can use social selling techniques to identify passive candidates, initiate conversations, and present compelling reasons to consider opportunities, moving beyond traditional job postings. Automation tools can help monitor candidate activity, suggest relevant content for sharing, and track engagement, making outreach more strategic and less time-consuming.
Personal Branding
Personal branding is the conscious and intentional effort to create and influence public perception of an individual by positioning them as an authority in their industry, elevating their credibility, and distinguishing them from the competition. For employee advocates, a strong personal brand amplifies their influence and reach, making their shared content more impactful. HR can encourage and provide resources for employees to develop their personal brands, aligning them with company values. This not only strengthens the company’s message but also empowers employees, making them more attractive to external networks, including potential candidates, who are increasingly looking for authentic connections and thought leadership.
Content Curation
Content curation involves finding, organizing, and sharing existing, high-quality content relevant to a specific audience or topic. In the context of employee advocacy, this means providing employees with a curated library of pre-approved articles, blog posts, images, and videos about the company, industry trends, or career opportunities. This practice ensures consistent messaging and simplifies the sharing process for employees, who might not have time to create original content. Automation platforms are instrumental here, centralizing content, suggesting optimal sharing times, and tracking performance, ensuring that advocates always have fresh, relevant material to share with their networks, enhancing recruitment outreach.
Engagement Rate
Engagement rate is a metric used to measure the level of interaction a piece of content receives from an audience. It typically includes likes, comments, shares, and clicks, calculated as a percentage of total followers or reach. For HR and recruiting professionals managing employee advocacy programs, a high engagement rate indicates that shared content is resonating with potential candidates and industry peers. Monitoring this metric helps assess the effectiveness of advocacy efforts, identify top-performing content, and optimize strategies. Automation tools can track engagement across various employee shares, providing valuable insights into what content drives the most interest and leading to more effective talent attraction campaigns.
Reach & Impressions
Reach refers to the total number of unique individuals who saw a piece of content. Impressions, on the other hand, represent the total number of times content was displayed, regardless of whether it was clicked or engaged with. For employee advocacy programs, tracking reach and impressions helps quantify the expanded visibility achieved through employee shares. A higher reach means the employer brand message is getting in front of more unique eyes, while impressions indicate the frequency of exposure. HR uses these metrics to demonstrate the overall scale and potential impact of their advocacy initiatives on talent acquisition pipelines, justifying investment in such programs and identifying influential advocates.
Return on Investment (ROI)
Return on Investment (ROI) is a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of several different investments. In the context of employee advocacy for HR and recruiting, ROI can be measured by comparing the cost of the advocacy program (e.g., platform fees, time spent) against its benefits, such as reduced cost-per-hire, faster time-to-hire, increased quality of applicants, or improved employer brand reputation. Automation platforms can provide comprehensive analytics, making it easier to track these metrics and demonstrate the tangible value and efficiency gains of leveraging employees as recruiters.
Call to Action (CTA)
A Call to Action (CTA) is a prompt on a website, social media post, or piece of content that encourages the user to take a specific action. For HR and recruiting, CTAs in employee advocacy content might include “Apply Now,” “Learn More About Our Culture,” “Connect with Our Team,” or “View Open Positions.” Effective CTAs are clear, concise, and compelling, guiding potential candidates from awareness to consideration or application. Automation tools can help integrate CTAs seamlessly into shared content and track their performance, optimizing the journey from social engagement to applicant conversion and talent pipeline building.
Algorithm
An algorithm is a set of rules or instructions that a computer follows to solve a problem or perform a task. In social media, algorithms determine which content users see in their feeds, based on factors like engagement, relevance, and connections. For employee advocates, understanding how social media algorithms work is crucial for maximizing the reach and impact of their shared content. HR teams can provide guidance on best practices, such as consistent posting, engaging with comments, and using relevant hashtags. Automation platforms often optimize sharing times and content formats based on algorithmic insights, ensuring advocacy efforts align with platform preferences for greater visibility among potential candidates.
User-Generated Content (UGC)
User-Generated Content (UGC) refers to any form of content—such as images, videos, text, and reviews—that has been created and published by unpaid contributors, often fans or customers, rather than by brands themselves. In the HR and recruiting context, UGC can include employee testimonials, behind-the-scenes glimpses of company culture, or reviews on employer branding sites. Employee advocacy programs often encourage and facilitate the creation and sharing of UGC, as it is perceived as more authentic and trustworthy by potential candidates than traditional corporate messaging. This approach significantly enhances employer branding and talent attraction efforts, often amplified through automated sharing workflows.
Employee Advocacy Platform
An Employee Advocacy Platform is a specialized software solution designed to streamline and manage employee advocacy programs. These platforms typically offer features such as content libraries, sharing tools for various social media networks, analytics to track performance (reach, engagement, ROI), gamification, and communication channels. For HR and recruiting, these platforms are indispensable for scaling advocacy efforts, ensuring brand consistency, and providing employees with an easy way to share approved content. They automate many manual tasks, from content distribution to performance reporting, freeing up HR professionals to focus on strategic talent acquisition initiatives rather than administrative overhead.
Brand Storytelling
Brand storytelling is the practice of using a narrative to communicate a brand’s values, mission, or culture to its audience. For HR and recruiting, authentic brand storytelling through employee advocacy humanizes the organization, making it more appealing to potential candidates. Employees can share personal anecdotes, career journeys, or insights into daily life at the company, providing a genuine glimpse into the workplace. This approach builds trust and emotional connection, differentiating the employer brand in a competitive talent market. Automation tools can help curate compelling stories and facilitate their distribution across employee networks, ensuring consistent and impactful narratives.
Candidate Nurturing
Candidate nurturing is the process of building and maintaining relationships with potential candidates over time, even before a suitable job opening arises. This involves providing valuable content, updates, and personalized communication to keep them engaged and informed about the company and its opportunities. Employee advocacy plays a key role in nurturing, as employees can share insightful content, participate in discussions, and act as informal mentors or connectors, slowly guiding prospects through the candidate journey. Automation can assist in segmenting candidate pools and delivering targeted content, ensuring that nurturing efforts are consistent and efficient, leading to a stronger talent pipeline.
Talent Pipeline
A talent pipeline is a pool of qualified and interested candidates who are proactively identified and engaged by an organization, even if there are no immediate openings. For HR and recruiting, building a robust talent pipeline is critical for future hiring needs, reducing time-to-hire, and improving the quality of candidates. Employee advocacy significantly contributes to pipeline building by expanding the reach of employer branding and continuously engaging passive candidates through authentic shares and interactions. Automation tools can help manage and track these interactions, segmenting candidates and delivering relevant content to keep them warm and ready for future opportunities, ensuring a continuous supply of potential hires.
Automation Workflow
An automation workflow is a sequence of automated tasks designed to complete a specific process or achieve a particular outcome with minimal human intervention. In the context of HR and recruiting for employee advocacy, workflows can automate content distribution to employees, schedule social media posts, track engagement metrics, and even trigger follow-up actions based on candidate interactions. For example, an automation workflow might push new job openings to employee advocates for sharing, then track clicks, and add interested candidates to a nurture sequence. This significantly boosts efficiency, consistency, and scalability of advocacy efforts, freeing up HR professionals for more strategic, human-centric tasks.
If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: Supercharging Talent Acquisition: Leveraging AI and Automation in Employee Advocacy
