Answer engine optimization (AEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO) rely heavily on brand recommendations, mentions, and citations within AI-generated answers. Employee advocacy directly feeds these artificial intelligence models by distributing highly trusted, human-sounding employee-generated content (EGC) across social channels and communities like LinkedIn and Reddit.

We are joined by Gabrielle Herrera, Leader of Community Growth at HubSpot, who details her fascinating journey taking HubSpot’s employee advocacy initiative from a 12-person pilot program to a global framework accessible to over 9,000 employees. Gabrielle shares how her extensive experience at the intersection of customer marketing, scaling growth, and global email strategy helped her design a sustainable roadmap for widespread workforce adoption.

Throughout our chat, Gabrielle outlines why traditional SEO is evolving into Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), making decentralized community conversations across LinkedIn and Reddit vital for brand survival. She offers a masterclass on why customer success teams make the ultimate pilot testing ground, how to provide actionable content structure without destroying employee authenticity, and the continuous battle between deep-link attribution tracking and social algorithm health. Listeners will walk away with an exact understanding of how to move past uniform "lazy copy" and create an enablement framework that fosters intrinsic creator motivation, driving real enterprise growth.

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 The World's Biggest Employee Advocacy Study.

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

Ever wonder how G2 employees manage to completely dominate your LinkedIn feed with high-value content?

In this episode, Lewis Gray and Elliot Elsley sit down with Jenny Gardynski, Senior Director of Content and Communications at G2. With over 13 years of PR agency experience representing fast-growing B2B tech giants, Jenny knows exactly how to build authentic brand awareness from the inside out.

Listeners will dive into the exact mechanics behind G2's manual advocacy program, learning how their communications team builds high-performing social kits, launches tactical Slack engagement loops, and embeds custom LinkedIn branding into new-hire onboarding.

Jenny shares strategies on why workforce personalization outpaces corporate channels by 5x, how to execute strategic quarterly contests that prompt passive employees to start posting, and how to effectively build custom GPT structures to scale executive voices while completely eliminating robotic "AI-isms".

If you're currently struggling to prove a proof of concept with a manual social pilot, or if your employees are hesitant to share content because they are afraid of sounding unauthentic, this episode provides a realistic blueprint.

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 The World's Biggest Employee Advocacy Study.

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

How do you turn employees into active brand advocates in less than 90 days?

In this episode, Anna Laura McGranahan, the driving force behind the social media strategy at Aptean, an AI-enhanced enterprise software, shares her blueprint for migrating from manual, untrackable social sharing to a high-performance advocacy engine that hit its end-of-year goals in just four weeks.

Listeners will discover how to build a structural foundation for scale, from navigating IT requirements like Single Sign-On to leveraging executive leadership to drive immediate adoption. Anna Laura also pulls back the curtain on her use of Generative AI agents to remove the “blank page syndrome” for employees, ensuring that even engineers and R&D teams feel confident posting 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 the 2026 Employee Advocacy Benchmark Report.

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

Can you run a successful employee advocacy program when every single post is subject to regulatory enforcement?

Beatrice Edera Panariello, Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Aviva Investors, joins the show to reveal how she built an award-winning program that’s delivered over half a million pounds in equivalent media value within one of the world’s most tightly regulated industries.

This episode provides a masterclass in navigating the risk of social media by co-creating guardrails with legal teams, reframing advocacy as a tool for personal professional growth rather than just a corporate megaphone, and leveraging AI to streamline the compliance process. Beatrice shares how to transition to a high-trust, expert-led LinkedIn presence that reaches four times the audience of a corporate account.

Whether you are struggling with low engagement or high-risk barriers, this conversation offers a proven roadmap for scaling influence globally while staying 100% compliant.

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 the 2026 Employee Advocacy Benchmark Report.

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

Your employees are your company’s most underutilized marketing channel. Relying solely on corporate pages means missing out on the authentic, human-centric voice that modern buyers and candidates trust.

In this episode, we are joined by Zach Blew, a Talent Brand and People Programs Leader formerly of Meta and Glassdoor. Zach shares his experience from his time at Meta, including the nuts and bolts of building an employee advocacy program from the ground up, starting with a pilot that achieved a staggering 40% adoption rate.

Zach shares his “Goldilocks method” for engaging everyone from the on-the-go sharer to the high-touch executive, and explains how to move past vanity metrics to track hard ROI, such as cost-per-click and direct job applications. He also debunks the myth that advocacy requires a massive content production budget, highlighting how authentic employee voices now take priority over flashy, polished content.

Whether you’re struggling to get executive buy-in or looking to scale an existing program, this episode provides a masterclass in driving reach, trust, and bottom-line results through the power of your people.

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 the 2026 Employee Advocacy Benchmark Report.

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

Stop treating employee advocacy as an “optional extra” and start treating it as business infrastructure.

Download the free 2026 Employee Advocacy Benchmark Report.

In this special episode, host Lewis Gray breaks down the insights from the second annual Employee Advocacy Benchmark Report. Drawing on data from global programs, including giants like Cisco, Nissan, and Toyota. Lewis reveals why 2026 is the year advocacy moves from an optional extra to a vital revenue and talent-attraction engine.

Lewis shares that the 2026 Employee Advocacy Benchmark Report indicates sales teams are emerging as the driving force behind employee advocacy, accounting for 33% of all activity, as their involvement directly links to stronger pipelines and higher win rates. At the same time, 92% of managers are using AI to handle the heavy lifting, while 41% of employees continue to personalize content to maintain authenticity. The episode also explores how uncertainty remains the biggest barrier to posting, and how structured training can significantly reduce non-participation, alongside why 80% of the most successful programs actively involve senior leadership to build legitimacy and spark internal competition.

Whether you are struggling to prove ROI to your CFO or trying to get your CEO to post their first update, this episode offers the data-backed evidence you need to move the needle.

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.

Download The World's Biggest Employee Advocacy Study.

Get Certified in Employee Advocacy.

DSMN8’s case studies.

How do you transform a global icon known for luxury cars into a performance-driven technology powerhouse through the voices of its own people?

In this episode, we are joined by Steven Brand, Global Employer Brand Lead at Rolls-Royce. Listeners will hear why employee voices carry more weight than corporate channels and how Rolls-Royce uses a unified employer brand to challenge and correct market misconceptions about its business. Discover the importance of shifting the narrative from corporate requirements to individual career benefits and reputation building, while still finding the room to play within strict tone-of-voice and design guidelines. Plus, understand why early-stage advocacy programs need a balance of hard metrics and powerful anecdotal stories to successfully win over leadership and drive long-term adoption.

This episode offers a practical, step-by-step guide to proving the business value of employee advocacy.

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 the 2026 Employee Advocacy Benchmark Report.

Subscribe to The Employee Advocacy & Influence Podcast for more expert insights into employee influence!

What happens when you stop shouting into the void of corporate social media and start empowering your most authentic assets: your people?

In this episode, we are joined by Vicky Cunningham, Marketing Director at Efficio. With a background in financial services, journalism, and even acting, Vicky brings a unique perspective on how people buy from people, particularly in the niche world of procurement and supply chain consulting.

This conversation dives into the practicalities of scaling a global advocacy program. Vicky shares how Efficio uses “LinkedIn Post Pro” (a custom GPT) to help consultants overcome blank-page syndrome by providing a simple starting point for posts, and why empowering early adopters to lead with microcasts and interview-style content proved more effective than relying solely on written articles. Discover how a single LinkedIn post translated directly into a new business bid, highlighting the real impact of social selling in niche consulting, and the crucial role a dedicated employee advocacy manager and regular drop-in sessions play in supporting employees and removing common barriers to participation.

If you’ve struggled to turn employee intent into action or need to prove the ROI of advocacy to a time-poor leadership team, this episode provides the blueprint for a steady, sustainable rollout that delivers real-world business opportunities.

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 the 2026 Employee Advocacy Benchmark Report.

Subscribe to The Employee Advocacy & Influence Podcast for more expert insights into employee influence!