Employee Advocacy and Tools of the Trade: A Q&A with Citrix’s Rhonda Hughes

In continuing our conversations with employee advocacy experts we interviewed Rhonda Hughes from Citrix, who is going to be one of our panelists at the Flipboard/Voce Employee Advocacy Meetup on August 15, 2016, to be hosted at Flipboard’s HQ in Palo Alto.

What is your role and what organization do you work in at Citrix?

I lead our corporate social media strategy acting as the voice of Citrix in our social communities. I am also an internal consultant and educator on social media related topics across the business. My role sits within the global corporate communications team which is within marketing.

A big area of my focus is on helping people “do social” well. That includes both our social media practitioners who are responsible for a Citrix brand social account and, more generally, our employees.

How did the idea of an employee advocacy program come about at Citrix? Why was it needed?

The idea for our employee advocacy program actually came from employees.

At the time, I was the community manager for the Citrix SaaS division (GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, etc.). Our marketing team was creating really fantastic content including webinars and infographics on broad topics like how to be a better presenter, better manager or better leader – things most business professionals care about. I’d promote the latest webinar, for example, with Dan Pink or Guy Kawasaki on the GoToMeeting Facebook page and would see comments from coworkers about how great the topic was. I realized we had an internal awareness issue.

We were creating all this interesting, relevant and shareable content but most employees didn’t know about it or understand how they could properly share it with their social communities.

From there, I built a proposal, outlined requirements and evaluated vendors. While we were in the evaluation stage, a VP, at the time, made an introduction to a small start-up that an investor friend of hers knew about and we became their 4^th customer.

The goal for our program was simple: make it easier for employees to:

• See the latest Citrix content & news
• Share the things they find interesting with their social networks

In Spring of 2013, we launched a pilot with 40 employees. The response was incredible. We used the results — traffic to the website, webinar leads and also qualitative feedback from our pilot participants—to make the case for further investment extending an invite to the entire division. Shortly after I was promoted into my current role, now with global purview across the entire company, not just a single business unit or division, I continued to grow the program to its status now at nearly 1000 employees.

What was your experience with advocacy programs before you started the one at Citrix? 

Three years ago, employee advocacy wasn’t really a term I’d heard of. Most of my prior experience was geared towards customer advocacy –collecting and amplifying social testimonials, surprise and delight campaigns, etc. I did build a process for collecting stories and photos from employees but it was more focused on gathering content to share via our product social accounts vs. encouraging employees to tell a story on our behalf.

How do you determine what content is going to perform well with employees? 

With nearly 1000 participants from across the globe, it became really difficult for me to select content that would appeal to everyone. That’s why our program continues to evolve.

Earlier this year we introduced a new option so employees can personalize what content/news they see. Participants have access to a web app where they create a customized content library and can schedule social posts and see analytics. Like before, we started with a pilot and used the results to make the case for further investment but the results and feedback from employees has been phenomenal.

Join us on Monday, August 15, 2016, from 6:00-9:00pm, at Flipboard’s HQ for networking and a panel discussion about best practices & pitfalls in starting and growing an employee advocacy program.

About the Author
Andy is responsible for developing and implementing social media and digital publishing programs for Voce clients.

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Employee Advocacy and Authenticity: A Q&A with Autodesk’s Julie Hayes

Authenticity. It’s one of the most unique elements employees represent that typical marketing channels simply cannot. At Autodesk, equipping employees to convey that sense of authenticity by telling great stories has been a core tenet of their employee advocacy program.

We sat down with Julie Hayes, Senior Brand Communications Manager at Autodesk, to uncover this and other best practices from her work building out a successful employee advocacy program.

Julie will be a featured panelist at the Flipboard/Voce Employee Advocacy Meetup on August 15, 2016, to be hosted at Flipboard’s HQ in Palo Alto.

 

What’s your role at Autodesk?

​​​​​​​My team focuses on driving greater awareness and understanding for Autodesk, both internally and externally.

When did you start the advocacy program at Autodesk and what and who does it all encompass?

While rolling out our new corporate brand in 2013, we realized how passionate our employees were for who we are, and where we’re going. Finding an easy means to activate that passion, and getting out of the way, became my priority. We launched Bonfire, our first formal employee advocacy program, in May 2014. To date over 25% of our employees in 35 different countries are actively sharing content with their personal social networks, and over 600 Channel Partners are doing the same. We’ve since expanded our advocacy opportunities beyond social sharing, and market the many ways employees can stand-up offline as an Autodesk Advocate based on their location, skill set, and area of interest.

Has the definition of employee advocacy changed since you started the program at Autodesk?

Not exactly. For our online efforts we’ve remained true to the original spirit of Bonfire, but as our program has evolved we’ve made room for strategic social sharing efforts that cater to more niche audiences or content. We’ve also trained sales employees on social selling principles, which is less about advocacy and more about personal brand building and relationship marketing. As we move into the offline space of Employee Advocacy, our wins with Bonfire have opened doors to more broadly define employee advocacy, both the who and how.

If you could give one tip for others to get executive buy-in in buying a platform what would it be?

If there’s no risk, there’s no reward. Convince your executive team to let you pilot a small effort to determine if there’s an appetite, test and learn, and build the business case to expand. The practice and infrastructure behind employee advocacy programs is still somewhat new, and what works for one company may not work for another. You can only find that out by doing something first.

How do you keep employees motivated to share Autodesk content? How can you prevent it from being just another app they launch once a month?

For a voluntary program like ours, we recognize there’s always going to be turnover, and our goal has never been to have all 9,000 employees on Bonfire. I truly believe the core of our success has been our approach to content. Promoting products is the job of traditional marketing channels, not our advocates. Our employees are motivated by telling and sharing great stories, and we have lots of them. We curate content daily, in an authentic voice, across a diverse range of topics, and in 8 different languages. There’s something there for everyone. We take a conservative approach to gamification, choosing to incentivize during thematic content pushes. And by tapping into our company-wide rewards program to recognize great advocates, we’re integrating what might look like a marketing program on the outside, into the cultural fabric of our company.

Join us on Monday, August 15, 2016, from 6:00-9:00pm, at Flipboard’s HQ for networking and a panel discussion about best practices & pitfalls in starting and growing an employee advocacy program.

About the Author
Randy Ksar is VP of Digital at Voce Communications. You can follow him at @djksar on Twitter.

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