Anyone who attended, or considered attending, SXSW can tell you there is nothing if not a plethora of panels to choose from, on an expansive range of topics.

On the topic of employee engagement however, there weren’t many. And actually only one with the actual concept in the title - “Creating Brand Advocates via Employee Engagement.”

As manager of internal communications for MRM, I thought this would be a relevant topic for me. I also thought I might run into some old colleagues from JWT INSIDE, the employee engagement advertising division of JWT, and I did {shout out @kellyshoe}. 

What I didn’t think I would find was a line out the door…

southX 

 …and around the corner to get in, {which I almost didn’t!} For a term that really only started to be tossed around with any weight say 5 years ago, the idea that engaged employees help businesses thrive has been slowly catching on. But, after what I saw – I think that people get it – they get that engaged employees make companies more profitable, more productive and delivers greater customer satisfaction – as well as drives hiring costs down. And now they are looking for the how to get there. 

To be honest, the panel was a brief 15-minute session born out of the panel picker – and it made not have provided all of the answers people were searching for as it was more of a product demo, but it did provide a beacon for those searching for this type of content.

The session conversation focused on way to leverage employee engagement by empowering employees as spokespeople to create external brand advocates. The presenter, Jim Larrison from Dynamic Signal, shared the stat that “68% of employees said if they got more content and knew what to share, they would share it.” This is interesting, because while companies typically share information with employees and those that are doing it well find ways to engage these employees, but this idea is about the next step – taking engaged employees, and empowering them to spread the message with real actionable steps. To give employees answers to the questions: “What should I share?” and “What can I share?”

So my conclusion is we are all on board with the WHY to engage. Great companies understand HOW to engage. And if we can get to the point of engagement, we need to figure out how to EMPOWER.