The “2025 Employee Advocacy Report” from ADVOCACY by SocialPubli reveals how companies can achieve significant growth in brand visibility without increasing their marketing budgets.
The analysis examines three years of data from the insurance, telecom, and tourism industries, tracking employee advocacy activities across multiple social platforms. The report’s most striking finding: in the insurance sector, employee participation in brand advocacy grew from just 52 employees to 2,816 in a single year—a 5,350% increase that generated nearly 1.5 million monthly impressions on LinkedIn alone.
“The best ambassadors for your company are your employees,” explains Ismael El-Qudsi, CEO of SocialPubli. Ismael discovered this opportunity through direct market feedback after building his company into a global influencer marketplace with over 500,000 creators. When approaching potential clients like DHL with traditional influencer marketing proposals, he received an unexpected response: “We have 35,000 employees in the region. Why do we need to externalize that service?”
Founded in 2016, ADVOCACY targets enterprise-level businesses across the insurance, telecom, and tourism industries that need structured systems to mobilize their workforce as brand advocates. The platform serves as a corporate communication tool, helping companies transform their employees into key brand ambassadors through a structured framework. It offers guidelines, resources, and incentives that simplify and enhance the process of sharing branded content for employees.
“If you want your employees to promote your culture, you have to teach them the do’s and don’ts,” Ismael explains. Unlike traditional influencer marketing, ADVOCACY doesn’t rely on direct monetary compensation. Instead, companies can offer a variety of rewards through the platform. “You have to reward them not with money, but with gift cards, Amazon tips, experiences like travel, a dinner, or soccer tickets,” he says.
ADVOCACY also features measurement capabilities, allowing companies to track participation, measure content performance across platforms, and improve their employee advocacy strategies based on actual results. This approach helps companies quantify the ROI of their employee engagement efforts, creating a measurable marketing channel from what was previously difficult to track.
The Report’s Key Findings
The “2025 Employee Advocacy Report” offers a thorough analysis of employee advocacy effectiveness across various sectors, drawing on data collected from over 4,800 employees currently utilizing the platform. The study tracked employee participation rates, content performance metrics, and engagement across LinkedIn, X, and Facebook over multiple years, providing a clear picture of how employee advocacy programs develop over time.
LinkedIn emerged as the primary reach driver, with employee posts reaching an average of 894,290 people per month in 2024 across the analyzed industries. However, engagement metrics showed X and Facebook consistently outperformed LinkedIn in interaction rates. While LinkedIn posts in the insurance sector averaged a 0.62% engagement rate in 2024, X achieved 3.76%, and Facebook reached 3.01%.
“LinkedIn is the network that I love the most,” Ismael shares. “LinkedIn gives you an area of professionalism and trustworthiness. But for engagement, X and Facebook perform better.” This finding suggests an opportunity for brands to utilize LinkedIn for broad reach while tailoring content to achieve higher engagement rates on other platforms.
The report also noted a surprising return of Facebook usage among professionals over 40. “More people are using Facebook this year than the year before. I don’t know why. I think it’s some strategic move from Facebook,” Ismael observes.
The report documents notable adoption rates across all three analyzed sectors. Beyond the insurance sector’s 5,350% growth, the telecom case study showed employee participation growing by 765% in the first year, expanding from 296 employees at launch to 2,559 twelve months later. Even in the tourism sector, which initially had just 67 participants, the program expanded by 296% to reach 265 employees within a year.
This consistent growth pattern across various industries demonstrates that, when provided with the proper tools, incentives, and content, employees are willing to participate in brand advocacy programs.
After analyzing the 10 campaigns with the highest social media engagement and reach in 2024, the report identified key content categories that performed well, including company community initiatives, informational and educational resources, company recognition (milestones and awards), content about company culture, and company news.
The format of the content also proved important. While conventional wisdom often favors video content, the report found that posts containing URLs or links to external content showed the best performance in terms of reach and engagement, followed by pictures and short-form video content. This suggests that providing employees with informative content to share—rather than just visually appealing material—leads to better results.
Timing also emerged as a factor in content performance. Employee participation was highest from Tuesday to Thursday, with peak engagement occurring between 12:00 and 3:00 p.m., providing companies with clear guidance on when to release new content for employee sharing.
The ROI Benefits
One of the most compelling aspects of the report is its measurement of the return on investment for employee advocacy programs. “The program pays itself after two months,” Ismael states, pointing to the cost savings compared to paid advertising.
He notes that the economic value becomes particularly evident on platforms with high advertising costs. “If you want to reach all the people that these companies are reaching using their employees, you have to spend thousands of dollars per month on LinkedIn ads,” Ismael explains. With CPMs exceeding $20 on LinkedIn, the organic reach generated through employee advocacy represents clear value.
Beyond reach metrics, the report indicates that employee-generated content carries credibility that brand-created content often lacks. This genuine quality translates to higher trust levels and potentially better conversion rates, though the report notes that attribution remains a challenge in precisely measuring this effect.
Employee Motivation Factors
The report examines the motivational factors driving employee participation, revealing insights that challenge common assumptions about incentives. While the platform does incorporate gamification and rewards, the primary motivator for many employees is more personal than professional.
“The reason number one for people to contribute to these programs is that they feel understood by their colleagues or by their family or by their friends,” Ismael reveals. “It’s like a way for them to be proud of working within a company.” This finding was particularly strong among technical employees, such as engineers, who often struggle to explain their work to non-technical friends and family.
The report confirms that companies offering a variety of incentives see higher participation rates than those with limited or no incentive programs. Performance-based rewards are the most commonly used by companies, with household items, electronic devices, and gift cards proving to be the most effective.
However, the intrinsic rewards of recognition and improved communication with social circles appear to be powerful motivators that companies can leverage alongside material incentives.
“I was totally shocked because we have no clients paying an extra salary to their employees. It’s based entirely on gift cards, polls, and experiences,” Ismael says about the willingness of employees to participate without direct financial compensation. This challenges the standard influencer marketing approach, suggesting that a genuine connection to a brand through employment can be a powerful motivator for creating and sharing content.
Reshaping the Creator Economy
The findings from ADVOCACY’s report suggest a shift in how companies can approach the creator economy. Rather than viewing creators and brands as separate entities that must form partnerships, the employee advocacy model suggests a combined approach where brands develop their internal talent into content creators.
As Ismael notes, this model offers several advantages over traditional influencer marketing, as it builds on existing relationships, ensures accurate brand knowledge, and fosters ongoing, long-term advocacy rather than one-off campaigns. The report shows that this approach works across various industries, not just in naturally appealing sectors like tourism but also in more traditional fields like insurance and telecommunications.
Ismael notices the trends in the report indicating a shift in professional social media usage. “After Covid, we’ve been living in an exposure world where everyone wants to expose their lives on Instagram or TikTok. I think those are cycles, and I think there is a new cycle approaching now focused on privacy.”
He expects LinkedIn and internal professional platforms to grow as people transition from consumer-oriented social sharing to professional content creation. “Everyone is becoming an entrepreneur or a business owner, so we have to use business-oriented tools.”
Implementation Advice
For creator economy professionals considering employee advocacy programs, the report offers practical guidance based on real-world implementation data. Ismael recommends a testing approach, encouraging companies to try different content types, platforms, and incentives to find what works best for their specific workforce.
“Sometimes you don’t know that there are influencers inside your company because you haven’t tracked their Instagrams,” he points out. “I remember a guy who has like 300,000 people on Instagram—now he’s posting things for free for the company.”
The report shows that successful implementations adapt to employee preferences and platform-specific engagement patterns. This involves creating multiple versions of content to cater to the diverse communication styles of employees. “Sometimes it usually helps if you create two or three versions of the news that you want to promote,” Ismael advises, “because each one, every one of us, speaks with a different tone.”
Beyond the metrics and strategies, the ADVOCACY report reveals that employees want to be empowered as genuine voices for their organizations. “This is a very good way to humanize companies,” Ismael concludes. “We are always talking about empowerment, but we don’t give employees tools to feel empowered, or we don’t make it easy for them to collaborate with the company.”
All images are credited to ADVOCACY. The full “2025 Employee Advocacy Report” is available here.
The “2025 Employee Advocacy Report” from ADVOCACY by SocialPubli reveals how companies can achieve significant growth in brand visibility without increasing their marketing budgets.
The analysis examines three years of data from the insurance, telecom, and tourism industries, tracking employee advocacy activities across multiple social platforms. The report’s most striking finding: in the insurance sector, employee participation in brand advocacy grew from just 52 employees to 2,816 in a single year—a 5,350% increase that generated nearly 1.5 million monthly impressions on LinkedIn alone.
“The best ambassadors for your company are your employees,” explains Ismael El-Qudsi, CEO of SocialPubli. Ismael discovered this opportunity through direct market feedback after building his company into a global influencer marketplace with over 500,000 creators. When approaching potential clients like DHL with traditional influencer marketing proposals, he received an unexpected response: “We have 35,000 employees in the region. Why do we need to externalize that service?”
Founded in 2016, ADVOCACY targets enterprise-level businesses across the insurance, telecom, and tourism industries that need structured systems to mobilize their workforce as brand advocates. The platform serves as a corporate communication tool, helping companies transform their employees into key brand ambassadors through a structured framework. It offers guidelines, resources, and incentives that simplify and enhance the process of sharing branded content for employees.
“If you want your employees to promote your culture, you have to teach them the do’s and don’ts,” Ismael explains. Unlike traditional influencer marketing, ADVOCACY doesn’t rely on direct monetary compensation. Instead, companies can offer a variety of rewards through the platform. “You have to reward them not with money, but with gift cards, Amazon tips, experiences like travel, a dinner, or soccer tickets,” he says.
ADVOCACY also features measurement capabilities, allowing companies to track participation, measure content performance across platforms, and improve their employee advocacy strategies based on actual results. This approach helps companies quantify the ROI of their employee engagement efforts, creating a measurable marketing channel from what was previously difficult to track.
The Report’s Key Findings
The “2025 Employee Advocacy Report” offers a thorough analysis of employee advocacy effectiveness across various sectors, drawing on data collected from over 4,800 employees currently utilizing the platform. The study tracked employee participation rates, content performance metrics, and engagement across LinkedIn, X, and Facebook over multiple years, providing a clear picture of how employee advocacy programs develop over time.
LinkedIn emerged as the primary reach driver, with employee posts reaching an average of 894,290 people per month in 2024 across the analyzed industries. However, engagement metrics showed X and Facebook consistently outperformed LinkedIn in interaction rates. While LinkedIn posts in the insurance sector averaged a 0.62% engagement rate in 2024, X achieved 3.76%, and Facebook reached 3.01%.
“LinkedIn is the network that I love the most,” Ismael shares. “LinkedIn gives you an area of professionalism and trustworthiness. But for engagement, X and Facebook perform better.” This finding suggests an opportunity for brands to utilize LinkedIn for broad reach while tailoring content to achieve higher engagement rates on other platforms.
The report also noted a surprising return of Facebook usage among professionals over 40. “More people are using Facebook this year than the year before. I don’t know why. I think it’s some strategic move from Facebook,” Ismael observes.
The report documents notable adoption rates across all three analyzed sectors. Beyond the insurance sector’s 5,350% growth, the telecom case study showed employee participation growing by 765% in the first year, expanding from 296 employees at launch to 2,559 twelve months later. Even in the tourism sector, which initially had just 67 participants, the program expanded by 296% to reach 265 employees within a year.
This consistent growth pattern across various industries demonstrates that, when provided with the proper tools, incentives, and content, employees are willing to participate in brand advocacy programs.
After analyzing the 10 campaigns with the highest social media engagement and reach in 2024, the report identified key content categories that performed well, including company community initiatives, informational and educational resources, company recognition (milestones and awards), content about company culture, and company news.
The format of the content also proved important. While conventional wisdom often favors video content, the report found that posts containing URLs or links to external content showed the best performance in terms of reach and engagement, followed by pictures and short-form video content. This suggests that providing employees with informative content to share—rather than just visually appealing material—leads to better results.
Timing also emerged as a factor in content performance. Employee participation was highest from Tuesday to Thursday, with peak engagement occurring between 12:00 and 3:00 p.m., providing companies with clear guidance on when to release new content for employee sharing.
The ROI Benefits
One of the most compelling aspects of the report is its measurement of the return on investment for employee advocacy programs. “The program pays itself after two months,” Ismael states, pointing to the cost savings compared to paid advertising.
He notes that the economic value becomes particularly evident on platforms with high advertising costs. “If you want to reach all the people that these companies are reaching using their employees, you have to spend thousands of dollars per month on LinkedIn ads,” Ismael explains. With CPMs exceeding $20 on LinkedIn, the organic reach generated through employee advocacy represents clear value.
Beyond reach metrics, the report indicates that employee-generated content carries credibility that brand-created content often lacks. This genuine quality translates to higher trust levels and potentially better conversion rates, though the report notes that attribution remains a challenge in precisely measuring this effect.
Employee Motivation Factors
The report examines the motivational factors driving employee participation, revealing insights that challenge common assumptions about incentives. While the platform does incorporate gamification and rewards, the primary motivator for many employees is more personal than professional.
“The reason number one for people to contribute to these programs is that they feel understood by their colleagues or by their family or by their friends,” Ismael reveals. “It’s like a way for them to be proud of working within a company.” This finding was particularly strong among technical employees, such as engineers, who often struggle to explain their work to non-technical friends and family.
The report confirms that companies offering a variety of incentives see higher participation rates than those with limited or no incentive programs. Performance-based rewards are the most commonly used by companies, with household items, electronic devices, and gift cards proving to be the most effective.
However, the intrinsic rewards of recognition and improved communication with social circles appear to be powerful motivators that companies can leverage alongside material incentives.
“I was totally shocked because we have no clients paying an extra salary to their employees. It’s based entirely on gift cards, polls, and experiences,” Ismael says about the willingness of employees to participate without direct financial compensation. This challenges the standard influencer marketing approach, suggesting that a genuine connection to a brand through employment can be a powerful motivator for creating and sharing content.
Reshaping the Creator Economy
The findings from ADVOCACY’s report suggest a shift in how companies can approach the creator economy. Rather than viewing creators and brands as separate entities that must form partnerships, the employee advocacy model suggests a combined approach where brands develop their internal talent into content creators.
As Ismael notes, this model offers several advantages over traditional influencer marketing, as it builds on existing relationships, ensures accurate brand knowledge, and fosters ongoing, long-term advocacy rather than one-off campaigns. The report shows that this approach works across various industries, not just in naturally appealing sectors like tourism but also in more traditional fields like insurance and telecommunications.
Ismael notices the trends in the report indicating a shift in professional social media usage. “After Covid, we’ve been living in an exposure world where everyone wants to expose their lives on Instagram or TikTok. I think those are cycles, and I think there is a new cycle approaching now focused on privacy.”
He expects LinkedIn and internal professional platforms to grow as people transition from consumer-oriented social sharing to professional content creation. “Everyone is becoming an entrepreneur or a business owner, so we have to use business-oriented tools.”
Implementation Advice
For creator economy professionals considering employee advocacy programs, the report offers practical guidance based on real-world implementation data. Ismael recommends a testing approach, encouraging companies to try different content types, platforms, and incentives to find what works best for their specific workforce.
“Sometimes you don’t know that there are influencers inside your company because you haven’t tracked their Instagrams,” he points out. “I remember a guy who has like 300,000 people on Instagram—now he’s posting things for free for the company.”
The report shows that successful implementations adapt to employee preferences and platform-specific engagement patterns. This involves creating multiple versions of content to cater to the diverse communication styles of employees. “Sometimes it usually helps if you create two or three versions of the news that you want to promote,” Ismael advises, “because each one, every one of us, speaks with a different tone.”
Beyond the metrics and strategies, the ADVOCACY report reveals that employees want to be empowered as genuine voices for their organizations. “This is a very good way to humanize companies,” Ismael concludes. “We are always talking about empowerment, but we don’t give employees tools to feel empowered, or we don’t make it easy for them to collaborate with the company.”
All images are credited to ADVOCACY.
The full “2025 Employee Advocacy Report” is available here.