As the organic reach of brand content on social media declines and audiences become increasingly skeptical of polished corporate messaging, companies are seeking more effective ways to connect with their target audiences. According to Emma Powney, Customer Success Manager at employee advocacy platform DSMN8, the solution might be hiding in plain sight: a company’s own employees.

“The most powerful brand messages don’t necessarily come from the brand itself,” Emma explains. “When you’re thinking about a purchase, you may speak to a friend, family member, or look at a review. You don’t necessarily see what the brand is saying. The people behind it are what is most interesting.”

This insight is reinforced by DSMN8’s recent “Employee Advocacy Benchmark Report,” which revealed that content shared by employees generates five to ten times higher reach compared to content shared through official brand channels.

“We’ve always known that employees have that influence, but the scale of impact across industries is certainly eye-opening,” Emma says. “It validated that this type of content isn’t just a nice-to-have anymore, it’s a strategy in its own right.”

For creator economy professionals accustomed to working with traditional influencers, understanding the key differences between influencers and employee creators is crucial. These differences explain why employee-generated content (EGC) often outperforms traditional influencer content, despite having smaller follower counts.

“Employee creators bring authenticity and credibility that influencers don’t necessarily bring,” Emma explains. “The fact that employees aren’t being paid to promote the brand because they are the brand. They have that insider knowledge, real stories to back it up, and established networks of trust.”

Instead of producing highly polished, aspirational content, employees share practical insights and genuine experiences that their networks find more relatable and trustworthy. Audiences understand that employees have firsthand knowledge and that their professional reputation is linked to their content, creating a level of accountability that traditional influencer arrangements often lack.

“Audiences are craving authenticity from people,” Emma points out. “They don’t want to be seen with this branded message over and over again, and we don’t want to be seeing people as these walking billboards for the organizations that they work for.”

This audience preference for genuine content coincides with business constraints. “Something I hear a lot from clients is that organic reach is declining from their brand channels,” Emma reveals. “And marketing budgets are under more and more scrutiny. So, having this type of content and encouraging employees to share this content is a great way of just driving that engagement and building that credibility in a cost-effective way.”

This convergence of audience preferences and business needs creates the perfect conditions for a new approach to influence marketing—one that positions employees as genuine, trusted voices for their brands.

Identifying the Hidden Asset

Founded in 2016, DSMN8 has built a platform that enables employees to become brand advocates through simplified content sharing. However, the London-based company wasn’t about creating new technology, but about recognizing the potential of an existing but underutilized resource within every organization. 

Emma describes their approach: “Unlike traditional influencer platforms that rely on this transactional relationship with creators, DSMN8 taps into an existing and often overlooked asset, which is the employees themselves within an organization.”

The shift toward broader EGC came naturally as the company observed results. “We saw content shared by employees quickly outperformed any brand content in terms of reach, engagement, and trust,” Emma notes. “Recognizing that the future of brand influence would be built from the inside out, the product changed to make EGC easier, more natural, more personal, and measurable as well.”

This insight addresses multiple challenges simultaneously. Employee advocacy provides more genuine messaging than paid influencers, leverages existing networks of trust, operates more cost-effectively than traditional influencer campaigns, and activates the people who know the brand most intimately. Most importantly, it empowers ordinary employees to become influential voices for their organizations.

The Barriers to Employee Influence

Despite their potential influence, employees face several barriers to becoming effective content creators for their organizations. “What I tend to hear a lot is that employees often aren’t really sure what it is that they’re meant to be saying. They don’t want to get it wrong. They don’t know what it is that they’re meant to be sharing,” Emma explains.

Companies themselves often contribute to these barriers through inadequate support. “On the company side, it’s a support. Sometimes, the lack of enablement stems from a lack of support for and encouragement of colleagues, as well as inadequate processes. When it comes to social media guidelines, exactly what they should and shouldn’t do isn’t necessarily always there.”

These challenges prevent employees from exercising their potential influence, creating a gap between the theoretical value of employee advocacy and its practical implementation. This is precisely the gap that DSMN8 aims to bridge.

Making Employee Advocacy Scalable

DSMN8’s platform addresses the barriers to employee influence by streamlining the entire process from content curation to distribution to measurement. 

“We’ve built a platform that’s made it easy and intuitive for employees to share their voices,” Emma explains. “The fact that I get to work directly with our clients to bring that to life in these measurable ways and see the impact is what keeps me excited every day.”

The implementation process is methodical, beginning with clear objectives and guidelines. “When a program starts off, we ensure that we’re having clear guidelines and set clear objectives as to what it is that an organization is looking to achieve, whether that’s building on brand awareness, whether that’s trying to attract talent.”

From there, DSMN8 identifies champions within the organization and develops personas to target specific employee groups. Artificial intelligence plays a role in making the process more efficient. “We’re definitely introducing AI more and more into the platform,” Emma notes. “We have a new feature that we are working on at the moment, which provides a smart prompt on the back end. During that content curation, the AI will then provide examples of content that could be used or certainly post captions that are in the company’s tone of voice, their messaging style, and their personality.”

This technological approach ensures that while the content remains genuine to the individual employee, it also aligns with the brand voice.

The Business Case for Employee Influence

When considering employee advocacy programs, the potential return on investment is a key factor. DSMN8’s platform offers tools to measure this value clearly.

“We have a full analytics suite that we have that’s on offer, the ability to be able to see things such as earned media value,” Emma explains. “So certainly for those companies who are using ad spend and understanding how much they’re spending on paid advertising versus how much the employee-generated earned media value costs looks like.”

As Emma shares, the results can be impressive. One client reported “a 10x increase on their reach compared to their company’s LinkedIn page and a 40% boost in engagement as well.” Beyond these metrics, they also experienced “a noticeable uplift in internal morale,” highlighting how employee influence programs create value beyond marketing results.

Content That Turns Employees into Influencers

For brands, understanding what types of content perform best when shared by employees is essential. Emma offers clear guidance based on platform and objective.

“On LinkedIn, what we’re seeing doing particularly well is thought leadership content,” she explains. “The idea that people want to learn something as opposed to being sold to.”

Video content is proving especially effective in elevating employees to influencer status: “Something else that’s driving forward at the moment is short-form video. Especially when it comes to company culture and talent, which, again, we’re seeing huge results from people sharing this kind of content, this is what it’s like to work at this organization as opposed to having those perfect branded clips.”

A New Category in the Creator Economy

Emma predicts that “employee creator” will soon emerge as a formal job title and career path—effectively creating a new category of professional content creators.

“Without a doubt. We’re already seeing the early signs of it as well,” she confirms. “I often ask clients, ‘Who are your influences in your company? Who are the standout people who are pushing their content out and have this great network?’”

This development represents a change in how we think about content creators, expanding beyond independent influencers to include those creating from within organizational structures. “Having those internal creator programs and these ambassador communities are pushing forward as well,” Emma observes. “And it will really be a strategic element of brand and talent marketing when we see these individuals curating this content and adding that authenticity.”

As companies develop employee creator roles, new opportunities may emerge for content creators within organizational settings.

The Future of Employee Influence

Emma sees employee influence transcending social media sharing. “It could end up being this full-spectrum strategy where employees are asked to be involved in more. I see more and more employees being asked to join podcasts and webinars, even helping with content strategy.”

This broader integration of employee voices represents a change in how brands approach communication, moving from centralized, polished corporate messaging to distributed, genuine storytelling from within. “It goes back to that humanization side of things again,” Emma explains. “Moving away from polished corporate messaging to relatable storytelling.”

For organizations interested in tapping into the potential of employee influence, Emma offers practical advice that emphasizes starting small but starting now.

“People can get overwhelmed with the idea of where to start? I’d say start right away. There’s nothing stopping people from starting,” she advises. “They don’t need hundreds or thousands of employees to start sharing this content. They need to just identify a few engaged team members, give them the support, the freedom, the confidence, and learn from their feedback.”

This approach allows organizations to refine their strategy before expanding. However, Emma also emphasizes the urgency of beginning: “If you’re not doing it, your competitors probably already are. In a world where social media is a driving force, brands are turning towards social media more, and their employees are the most powerful and underutilized marketing channel they can use.”