How to Make Advocates Your Collaborators: Ambassify’s Ideation Feature

Employee advocacy programs are a powerful way to extend your company’s reach, boost brand awareness, and strengthen internal culture. However, at Ambassify, we believe advocacy should go beyond simply sharing pre-approved content on social media. 

True advocacy thrives on collaboration, where employees contribute ideas, give feedback, and play an active role in shaping the company’s messaging. Only then can advocacy find its fullest expression. And this is where Ambassify’s Ideation feature comes into play.

What Is Ambassify’s Ideation Campaign Feature

An Ideation campaign is a helpful tool to collect ideas for all kinds of purposes. One of its biggest advantages is that it gives your advocates the possibility to come up with and share their own ideas on a specific topic. Plus, it gives other members the opportunity to upvote the ideas they like the most.

Ideation campaign form, Ambassify platform

This allows you to leverage the knowledge, creativity, and ideas that live within your employee community. By involving your employees as advocates and ambassadors, you can increase the feeling of belonging and engagement.

Here are some examples of how you can use the Ideation campaign feature:

• Give advocates the chance to come up with ideas for the next team-building event, giving them ownership of an important culture-building initiative.
• Leave them room for creativity and let them invent new themes or names for the meeting rooms.
  
  
• Ask for their input about new meeting formats to improve personal and team efficiency and productivity.

How Ideation Campaigns Work

By default, ideation campaigns contain a form for employees to fill in. This is what it looks like in the front end:

Ideation campaign form, Ambassify platform

All the ideas that your members submit, depending on what the campaign description requires, will be collected in the backend. Here, admins can approve or reject incoming ideas. 

The approved ideas will show up in the ideation campaign, where users can upvote the ones they like the most. The number of upvotes is shown in the campaign and visible to all members within the targeted audience:

Ideation campaign, approved ideas, Ambassify platform. 

In the backend, where, as an admin, you can approve or reject the submitted ideas, you can also click on the details of each idea to see all the community members who upvoted a certain idea.

Why Go Beyond Social Sharing in Employee Advocacy?

Many Employee Advocacy programs focus on encouraging employees to share company content on social media. While this is valuable, it only scratches the surface of what employee advocacy can achieve. 

True employee advocacy is about engagement and participation—employees who feel heard, valued, and involved are much more likely to become authentic company brand advocates.

By involving employees in the content creation process, you:

• Tap into their expertise. Employees have firsthand knowledge of their industry, customers, and trends, making them valuable sources of insight. By tapping into their expertise you can take your strategy to the next level and even learn how to think outside the box and expand your view on certain issues and subjects. Utilising the wisdom of the crowds as it were.
  
  
• Encourage authentic advocacy. Employees are more likely to share and engage with content they helped create: making them your collaborators will not only yield more involvement but also renew commitment and engagement.
  
  
• Boost motivation and retention. People feel more connected to their company when they see their contributions recognized and implemented. Showing that you care about them and their genuine contributions (and not only about them re-sharing your content) will secure long-term motivation and retention.
  
  
• Generate fresh, relevant content. Needless to say, content creation can be more than a full-time job. Employee contributions ensure content is aligned with real-world experiences and needs and that there’s a lot of it. Plus, employee-generated content will perform a lot better than corporate content.

Ambassify’s Ideation feature makes this process seamless, allowing companies to crowdsource ideas, gather feedback, and empower employees to contribute meaningfully.

How to Leverage Ideation Campaigns (The Right Way)

Ideation campaigns on Ambassify are designed to be an interactive and collaborative space where employees can submit ideas, vote on suggestions, and engage in discussions. Here are two important steps we notice customers often skip or simply forget about when launching such campaigns or initiatives.

1. Recognize and Reward Contributions

One of the key factors in maintaining employee engagement is ensuring that employees feel their input matters. The fact that you’re asking for it alone is already a sign that the company cares, but taking it a step further won’t hurt.

Depending on the importance of your ideation campaign and initiative, recognizing and rewarding contributions can take various forms, such as:

• Highlighting top ideas in company-wide communications.
• Giving shoutouts to employees whose ideas have been implemented.
• Offering small incentives or gamifying the process with points and rankings.

2. Implement and Communicate Outcomes

The effectiveness of an Ideation campaign is determined by how well companies act on the ideas generated. If you’re asking employee advocates to share their ideas and input, they need to know that you’re going to listen to what they have to say. 

That’s why it’s crucial to:

• Review and analyze submissions to identify common themes and promising suggestions.
• Keep employees informed and always provide updates on which ideas are being implemented and why.
• Showcase success stories and share examples of ideas that turned into real changes within the company.

This continuous loop of contribution, recognition, and implementation builds long-term employee engagement and trust.

Summary

Ambassify’s Ideation feature is a game-changer for companies looking to take their Employee Advocacy program beyond simple social sharing. By engaging employees in content creation, gathering insights, and fostering collaboration, businesses can build a more authentic, motivated, and involved workforce.

If you want to empower your employees to be more than just employee advocates but true collaborators, integrating the Ideation campaigns into your employee advocacy plan is the way forward. Not only will it enhance engagement, but it will also strengthen company culture and create more meaningful and effective advocacy efforts.