Engaging Employees In User-Generated Content Campaigns

$7k in prizes. Millions of impressions. And the best marketing ROI I've ever seen came from the most underutilized channel in B2B. This summer at Invisible, we ran what might be the scrappiest campaign I've run since I was 24. We called it Social Summer – a company-wide competition to see who could generate the most LinkedIn impressions. The budget? Just $7K in prizes. The result? Several viral employee posts, millions of organic impressions, and something even more valuable: we cracked the code on why most companies fail at employee advocacy. Here's the uncomfortable truth about LinkedIn: While everyone's obsessing over paid ads and influencer partnerships, they're sitting on a goldmine. Your employees' networks are 10x more valuable for pipegen than your company page will ever be. Why? People want to engage with people, not faceless brands. But most employee advocacy programs fail because they treat people like content distribution bots. Send this! Post that! Share our press release! 🙄 Instead of pushing corporate content, we encouraged employees how to tell their own stories. We coached them on the algorithm (yes, there's a method to the madness). We made it a competition because, for better or worse, gamification works. The magic happened when employees got over that initial hurdle of posting. Once they started, they couldn't stop. Our sales team was sharing why they enjoyed relationship building. Our ops team was dropping productivity tips. Our engineers dropped AI insights. Real humans. Talking about real work. The ripple effects were amazing: • Warm inbound from their networks (crucial when you're selling multi-million dollar enterprise deals) • Started showing up in VC market maps (the ultimate Silicon Valley validation) • Employees becoming mini thought leaders in their respective lanes The kicker? This whole campaign cost less than one month of LinkedIn ads (and got more impressions, too). Employee advocacy isn't about getting your team to shill your product. It's about unlocking the expertise that's already there. Teach them the game, give them the tools, and get out of the way. Your next best marketing hire might already be on your payroll. They just don't know it yet. 🚀 Huge shout out to our winners John Cutter, 🌎 Jacquelyn Nicholson, Korina Skhinas, Lydia Andresen, Carey Montgomery, to Aimee Stewart and Mechiel Louw for an amazing summer campaign, and to John Koelliker and the Leland team for the inspiration!

Stop asking your team to “like and repost” the company page. Here’s what actually works: If you're trying to grow brand awareness on LinkedIn, employee advocacy does matter — just not in the lazy “boost the brand post” kind of way. What actually works? ✅ Share assets & talking points with your team ✅ Let them post it in their voice ✅ Repost from those accounts to the brand page ✅ Have your team engage with each other’s posts We’ve been doing this at Kit — and here are 5 examples of how it works in real life: ◼️ 1. Tom Brady joined Kit The big announcement didn’t come from our company page. It came from our founder Nathan Barry. Because big news deserves a human face — not just a logo. ◼️ 2. Testimonials for our upcoming Craft + Commerce event We had a polished carousel ready to go. But instead of posting from the brand account, Haley Janicek took it, trashed my swipe copy, rewrote it with a more personal reflection, and posted it herself. She even tagged previous speakers and invited them to share their favorite moments — which they did. ◼️ 3. We were hiring a COO Melissa Theiss (our Head of People) shared the post with a photo of the full Kit team. The results of that one? Highest-impressions of any team post in the last 90 days. ◼️ 4. I interviewed a couple creators at a conference Since I was the one on camera, it made more sense to post from my account. Then I had the Kit account repost it — a proud moment of me engaging with… me. ◼️ 5. A carousel of creator education content Kyle Adams, one of our Creator Growth Managers posted this one since he is educating creators everyday in his role. Not to mention, he's already building a side-business around newsletter education (check out his newsletter Creator Glue!) Same content. Way better outcome each time. Why? Because people follow people. If you want employee advocacy to actually work:  – Give your team content – Let them make it theirs – Help them engage with each other’s posts – And use the company page to support, not lead What’s your approach to employee-led content?  Seen any creative examples lately?

Some of the best creators for your brand are already in your org chart right now. But they lack the permission, tools, and strategies to create high-performing content aligned with your business goals. I’m big on employee-generated content (EGC) for B2B organic marketing in 2026. I’ve personally seen it work wonders. Examples below. I think a lot of brands will kick off and evolve these programs *next year.* The time is ripe for EGC because it’s: 💵 Low-cost (your main cost is time spent) 📈 High-performing (individual profiles get much better reach and engagement than brand accounts on social) 🏃♀️ Fast to execute (you can get it out much faster than traditional campaigns… and we all know everyone’s being asked to move fast) 🤖 Naturally human (people post how they actually talk, which performs better anyway) Implementing this as a strategic lever of your marketing program isn’t just telling people to post on LinkedIn and calling it a day. Instead, you’d build an EGC program with governance, strategy, and KPIs. Real examples: When I worked at Salesforce, we shifted the Sales Cloud newsletter to be voiced by a real internal sales leader. Turns out he got way more opens than “Sales Cloud by Salesforce” in the inbox. At Microsoft, we created an employee influencer program on LinkedIn and empowered employees to create their own videos about our products. This led to content that outperformed our brand channel benchmarks by hundreds of percentage points and garnered millions of views on LinkedIn. Will you be trying this in 2026? What other questions can I answer about this strategy?

How do you get employees involved on LinkedIn - without it feeling forced? Telling them it’s “great for their personal brand” isn’t it. Coming from an employer, that can sound like a thinly veiled corporate agenda. I'd go this route instead: tapping into their pride. Most people take their work seriously. They care about their field being represented correctly. They want their expertise to be visible - not just for the company’s sake, but for their own professional credibility. That’s why employee-led content matters. Not (only) because it’s a marketing play, but because the people closest to the work should be the ones talking about it. At Precis, we have “Project Spotlight”, spearheaded by B2B thought leader geniuses David Blinov and Yuliya Salorenko. It’s a Slack channel and a monthly meet-up where we help each other sharpen our LinkedIn game, workshop ideas, and celebrate wins. When people ask how they can support the content marketing team, my answer is usually: join Project Spotlight. It’s the easiest way to surface real expertise - straight from the source. You *can* throw in competitions or incentives, sure. But at the end of the day, the best way to get employees involved is to show them that their insights matter.

Brand advocacy is getting personal. People follow people. Not logos. In 2025, the top voices won’t be CEOs. They’ll be employees. Employee brand advocacy has moved beyond just sharing company posts.   It's evolving into something way more powerful. Moving beyond resharing corporate content to empowering employees as strategic storytellers.   Here are 9 trends reshaping how employees amplify brand voice:   1/ AI-Powered Personal Branding ↳ AI suggests perfect content timing ↳ Customized sharing recommendations   💡 Pro tip: Let AI analyze your top-performing posts first to establish your baseline engagement pattern   2/ Employee-Created Content Revolution ↳ Authentic storytelling takes center stage ↳ Personal experience showcases   💡 Pro tip: Start with day-in-the-life content - it has the highest engagement rate among employee posts   3/ VR Workplace Experiences ↳ Immersive office culture tours ↳ Virtual team collaboration stories   💡 Pro tip: Record VR tours during peak collaboration moments, not just empty office spaces   4/ Cross-Department Content Pods ↳ Combined expertise sharing ↳ United brand messaging   💡 Pro tip: Pair technical teams with customer-facing ones for the most compelling content mix   5/ Interactive Employee Spotlights ↳ Achievement storytelling ↳ Career journey showcases   💡 Pro tip: Update spotlights quarterly to keep content fresh and show real-time growth   6/ Diverse Advocacy Programs ↳ Multi-level representation ↳ Inclusive storytelling initiatives   💡 Pro tip: Create content calendars that align with global cultural moments   7/ Social Media Rotation Systems ↳ Employee account takeovers ↳ Behind-the-scenes access   💡 Pro tip: Brief employees a week before their takeover with trending topics in your industry   8/ Gamified Advocacy ↳ Recognition leaderboards ↳ Peer competition elements   💡 Pro tip: Rotate rewards monthly between digital badges and real-world perks   9/ Personalized Content Creation ↳ Individual voice emphasis ↳ Authentic personal branding   💡 Pro tip: Create content templates that are 70% customizable, 30% brand-aligned   Real-World Use Cases 🔹 Salesforce’s #LifeAtSalesforce Series ↳ Employees create short-form videos about career journeys ↳ AI tools help edit, caption, and optimize for platform-specific performance ↳ Result: 30% higher engagement on talent brand content compared to corporate posts 🔹 HubSpot’s Culture Code Amplification ↳ Cross-functional teams co-create culture content ↳ Gamified sharing with internal rewards for reach and impact ↳ Result: 4x increase in organic impressions from employee posts in under six months As employee advocacy evolves, the most impactful brands will be those that unlock the full potential of your team’s voice.   Which of these trends excites you most? Share below 👇   ♻️ Repost if your network needs to see where employee advocacy is heading. Follow Carolyn Healey for more like this.

Brands are paying $5K–$15K for a single post. From someone who learned the product last week. The DSMN8 2026 report confirms what I've been saying for years: employee advocates are posting more, creating original content, and doing it at a fraction of the cost. Your employees already have: • product knowledge • cultural credibility • distribution • trust You're renting influence from strangers when your team could own it. The gap isn't awareness. It's infrastructure. One is a request. The other is an engine. Most brands are stuck at the request stage, calling it advocacy and wondering why it doesn't compound. And here's what the data actually shows: sales teams are the #1 EGC participant at 33%. Not marketing. Not comms. Sales. That's not a content stat. That's a revenue signal. Building the engine looks like this: a shared content calendar, lightweight training on what good looks like, and explicit permission to adapt messaging to their own voice. But it also means doing the harder work of format-matching. Some people are writers. Some are built for camera. Some can live sell, and that's a specific skill, not a default. You don't hand everyone a mic and hope for the best. You run media training. You figure out where each person naturally creates credibility and you build their lane from there. That's the difference between a policy and a system. Employee-generated content isn't a trend. It's a structural advantage. But only if you build it like one. I've spent years inside organizations doing exactly this work: media training employees across formats, helping writers find their voice on LinkedIn, getting on-camera talent comfortable enough to convert, and coaching live sellers who didn't know they had the skill until someone built the container for it. The companies that get this right don't just save on influencer spend. They create media, demand, and revenue from the inside out. Not everyone is a natural, but everyone can be trained to make their brand proud. #CreatorDarwinism Leading a session on creator strategy at Google.

My post about Employee-Generated Content went viral a few weeks ago. I know exactly why. It hit two nerves at once. For employees: They're tired of being silenced by companies that claim to value "authenticity" while controlling every word. For marketers: They're exhausted from creating polished content that gets 1.4% engagement while watching employees' casual posts get 35%. That's a 25x difference they can't ignore anymore. Here on LinkedIn, the ultimate platform for EGC, millions lurk but don't share. Employees afraid to speak. Marketers afraid to let them. Both sides losing. The irony? Marketers KNOW employees are the most trusted messengers, and customers are right behind them. But they’re stuck between wanting authentic content and fearing loss of control. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝗚𝗖 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀: FIND YOUR HIDDEN CREATORS Survey anonymously. Your finance team might be LinkedIn thought leaders waiting to happen. FREE THEM FROM FEAR Kill approval chains. Trust beats control every time. PAY FOR PERFORMANCE If they're driving engagement like creators, compensate them like creators. BUILD A BENCH One voice is vulnerable. Twenty voices create a movement. "But what if they say something wrong?" What if they say something RIGHT and 25x more people listen than when you say it? The companies winning in 2025 aren't the ones speaking the loudest. They're the ones letting their employees speak clearly. Hope this helps you get closer to speaking your truth—whether you're the employee wanting to share or the marketer ready to let go. Your voice matters more than you think. #EmployeeAdvocacy #LinkedInVoice #EGC

Want to do employee-generated content but have no idea where to start? 😳 You’re not alone - it’s come up in nearly every conversation I’ve had with B2B brands in the last few months. EGC can be a great tool for building trust and expanding reach on LinkedIn, but it also needs to be tailored to your people and your business. Asking them to “just post” and expecting immediate results won’t get you very far. (Copy-and-paste templates won’t either 👀) Here’s where I tell brands to start 👇 — 1️⃣ Education ↳ Run workshops showing them what good looks like, how the algorithm behaves, and some mistakes to avoid. Providing prompts is also a great way to get people started if they’re struggling to know what to talk about and need a springboard. 2️⃣ Alignment ↳ Different teams need different levels of support. If people are already posting organically, launching a competition or leaderboard campaign could help build momentum and add some structure. If that’s not the case, you might have better luck starting with a few willing voices and helping them set the standard so that others can follow. 💡 If you’re looking for inspo, Giulia de Oliveira Camargo ran a really cool initiative over at Chameleon: https://lnkd.in/e8ktc7RB 3️⃣ Incentives ↳ It’s not all about money. There are so many benefits that come from posting on LinkedIn, not just for the company but for them too (stronger connections, personal brand, opportunities to speak on panels etc.) If they’re fully bought into the “why”, they’ll be much more likely to stick with it and reap the rewards. 4️⃣ Data There’s not much point in launching an initiative like this if you can’t measure whether it works. Tracking performance by individual and by team helps you understand what’s landing, where people might need additional support, and how the program is influencing engagement overall. 💡 Tools like SocialKit make this so much easier, and give you data you can share internally - I’ve used it before for employee advocacy reporting and love what they're building over there! (#ad #partner) — If you’ve ran an EGC program, what did you learn from the process? Let’s chat in the comments 💬

What if I told you your biggest marketing asset is already on your payroll? I've been reading a lot of lead-generation strategies that incorporate employee voices, which could use some improvement. Here’s how it looked: The challenge: → Tech company struggling with lead generation → High CAC through traditional marketing → Low trust signals in a crowded market The solution wasn't another ad campaign. It was activating their employees as brand ambassadors. Here's what was suggested to them: 1/ Employee Stories Program ↳ Team members shared authentic experiences weekly 2/ Expert Spotlight Series ↳ Engineers explained complex concepts in simple terms 3/ Behind-the-Scenes Content ↳ Real workspace moments, not staged photoshoots 4/ Cross-Departmental Collaboration ↳ Sales + Product + Support = Complete customer journey insights Results after 90 days: → Increase in qualified leads → Reduction in customer acquisition costs → Growth in organic social reach → New leads mentioned employee content as a trust factor Why does employee-generated content work so powerfully? Authenticity: Real people > corporate speak Diversity: Multiple voices create a wider appeal Trust: Employees are seen as more honest than official channels. Expertise: Shows the real talent behind your solutions Scale: More creators = more content without more budget Think about your marketing budget right now. What if instead of another $10K on ads, you invested in empowering your team to share their experiences? The digital landscape is shifting toward authenticity. Your employees are the key to that authenticity. P.S. If you're a founder looking to activate your team as brand ambassadors, DM me to create a customized framework for your employees.

Stop paying influencers. Start paying your employees. Here's a controversial truth: the most diverse, high-performing ad creatives already live inside your org. You just haven’t built the system to use them. Why employee-generated content scales performance better than random UGC or paid creators: 1️⃣ Employees pre-qualify customers ↳ Their voice attracts the right psychology. A store manager’s "how we make it" clip pulls quality buyers, not bargain hunters. 2️⃣ They map to micro-segments you already own ↳ Turn your people into Level 0 in your targeting stack: product experts, veteran users, shipping team, founders. Each becomes a unique persona for the algorithm to learn from. 3️⃣ Volume + metadata = algorithm fuel ↳ Tag every clip by employee, persona, angle, and intent. Meta eats diversity. The system sequences journeys better when it sees who said what. 4️⃣ Speed beats polish ↳ 2-minute raw clips per employee beat a $5k influencer shoot when you need test velocity. Iterate, not perfection. 5️⃣ Incentives fix culture friction ↳ Pay per approved creative or give micro-royalties. Ownership creates output. How to launch this week: → Build an Employee Creative Taxonomy → Give micro-brief templates (30s hooks, 15s demos) → Batch 10 clips per employee, tag rigorously, feed to ad library → Reward performers with paid credits or royalties Treat your payroll as a creative asset, not a cost center. Found this useful? Like, follow, and repost ♻️ so others can too!