Why do employee advocacy programs need a dedicated manager to succeed over time?

In this episode of The Employee Advocacy & Influence Podcast, hosts Lewis Gray and Elliot Elsley welcome Brittney Gilbert, Employee Advocacy Strategy & Program Lead at Global Payments.

Brittney manages the 'Genius Social Club' at Global Payments, leading program strategy, user enablement, and advocate scaling across the enterprise.

In this episode, listeners will learn how dedicated management transforms an advocacy initiative from an overstretched add-on into a primary marketing driver.

Brittney shares how Global Payments grew their user base from zero to 400+ advocates in five months, used gamified invite mechanics to trigger internal FOMO, coached subject matter experts toward original thought leadership, and used Earned Media Value (EMV) to prove hard ROI to executives.

As organic corporate reach falls on social media, dedicated human leadership is the secret to scaling trust. This episode offers a clear playbook for social leads aiming to build sustainable, executive-backed advocacy programs.

Resources:

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Want to know how your employee advocacy strategy really stacks up? ⁠⁠⁠⁠Grab your FREE Employee Advocacy Health Check⁠⁠⁠⁠ and see how you compare against your competitors.

⁠⁠⁠⁠Book a call⁠⁠⁠⁠ to discover how employee advocacy can benefit your team.

Ready to elevate your employee advocacy? Get a free copy of Bradley Keenan’s essential book, ‘⁠⁠⁠⁠Employee Advocacy: 101 Cheat Codes⁠⁠⁠⁠’ for deeper insights and actionable strategies.

⁠Download 'Stop Copy-Pasting Your Employee Advocacy'⁠⁠,⁠ a study of 517,374 LinkedIn posts.

Subscribe to The Employee Advocacy & Influence Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Buzzsprout so you never miss an episode!

Most brands struggle to get a single colleague to share a post. Biffa built a program that people now ask to join.

Erica Perazza is Social Media Lead at Biffa, the UK waste management and sustainability business, where she owns everything from LinkedIn and TikTok to community management and employee advocacy.

In under four years, she has turned a fragmented social presence into a structured advocacy program built around one goal: changing the perception that Biffa is just bins and trucks.

In this episode, Erica explains why she treats employee advocacy as part of Biffa's wider social media strategy rather than a separate channel, and why the employee is the channel.

She walks through organizing advocates by region instead of department, the social masterclasses that took colleagues from never using social media to posting with confidence, and the gamification and recognition that keep momentum going.

She also gets practical on measurement, covering why brand perception and sentiment come first, how she reads impressions and engagement together, and how advocacy reach stacks up against the corporate page. She closes on why every program needs relaunching over time.

If you are trying to prove that advocacy is worth the investment, or you are stuck at the first fifty advocates, this one is for you. Perception, trust, and credibility are hard to attribute and easy to undervalue, and Erica makes the case for measuring them properly rather than forcing everything into an ROI spreadsheet.

Follow The Employee Advocacy & Influence Podcast on Spotify or wherever you listen, and connect with Erica Perazza on LinkedIn.

Resources:

Want to know how your employee advocacy strategy really stacks up? ⁠⁠⁠⁠Grab your FREE Employee Advocacy Health Check⁠⁠⁠⁠ and see how you compare against your competitors.

⁠⁠⁠⁠Book a call⁠⁠⁠⁠ to discover how employee advocacy can benefit your team.

Ready to elevate your employee advocacy? Get a free copy of Bradley Keenan’s essential book, ‘⁠⁠⁠⁠Employee Advocacy: 101 Cheat Codes⁠⁠⁠⁠’ for deeper insights and actionable strategies.

⁠Download 'Stop Copy-Pasting Your Employee Advocacy'⁠⁠,⁠ a study of 517,374 LinkedIn posts.

DSMN8 x OUTFRONT Media ⁠Case Study⁠.

Subscribe to the Employee Advocacy & Influence Podcast on Spotify or your favorite platform to never miss an episode.

How do you build a global employee advocacy program in a high-stakes, highly competitive industry like cybersecurity? In this episode of The Employee Advocacy & Influence Podcast, hosts Lewis Gray and Elliot Elsley welcome Ashleigh Perissi, Employer Brand & Social Media Strategist.

Ashleigh brings a decade of experience building talent brands across defense, healthcare, pharma, technology, financial services, and cybersecurity.

In this episode, listeners will learn how to leverage employee advocacy as a core talent acquisition strategy that cuts ad spend and attracts passive candidates. Ashleigh shares actionable tactics on empowering recruiters with ready-to-share content, establishing brand safety guardrails against unauthorized AI graphics, navigating regional privacy cultures during a global rollout, and structuring rewards so every participant feels recognized.

In competitive talent markets, candidates trust real employees far more than corporate ads. This episode provides employer brand leads and marketers with a blueprint for turning their workforce into their ultimate recruiting advantage.

Resources:

Want to know how your employee advocacy strategy really stacks up? ⁠⁠⁠Grab your FREE Employee Advocacy Health Check⁠⁠⁠ and see how you compare against your competitors.

⁠⁠⁠Book a call⁠⁠⁠ to discover how employee advocacy can benefit your team.

Ready to elevate your employee advocacy? Get a free copy of Bradley Keenan’s essential book, ‘⁠⁠⁠Employee Advocacy: 101 Cheat Codes⁠⁠⁠’ for deeper insights and actionable strategies.

⁠⁠Download 'Stop Copy-Pasting Your Employee Advocacy'⁠⁠, a study of 517,374 LinkedIn posts.

Subscribe to the Employee Advocacy & Influence Podcast on Spotify or your favorite platform to never miss an episode.