Employee advocacy looks simple from the outside. Building it inside a global organisation is another story.

Jen Roth, Senior Manager of Global Social Media at JLL, joins Michelle J Raymond to share the reality of launching a global LinkedIn employee advocacy program. They discuss leadership buy-in, internal partnerships, employee adoption, Company Page strategy and how to decide whether content should come from the brand, an employee or both.

Key moments in this episode -

00:00 Meet Jen Roth from JLL

01:40 Where to start with global social media strategy

03:24 What employee advocacy needs before launch

04:00 Why leadership buy-in matters

05:42 Building a connected social media ecosystem

07:12 Why you shouldn’t force employee participation

08:12 Using technology to reduce barriers

12:20 Supporting the employees in the middle

14:18 Why people follow employees over Company Pages

17:24 Company Page content versus employee content

19:16 Bringing offline expertise into the LinkedIn feed

20:34 Using data to manage content requests

23:24 Setting boundaries and prioritising at scale

27:20 The LinkedIn Company Page analytics Jen wants

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CONNECT WITH JEN ROTH

• Jen Roth on LinkedIn

#EmployeeAdvocacy #LinkedInStrategy #B2BMarketing

G'day everyone, it's Michelle J Raymond, and I'm excited to be having

another episode this week with an expert who is actually doing the work.

Jen Roth from JLL, welcome to the show.

Hi, thanks for having me

Now, I like to start these conversations by asking you, what's a day in

the life of Jen Roth at work like?

Tell us what's your role, and are you supported by 1,000 people

because you work at a big company?

I wish.

I am the Senior Manager of Global Social Media at JLL, which is a

commercial real estate company, global commercial real estate company.

Gosh, a day in the life for me really varies.

I don't have any direct reports currently.

I'm kind of a one-man show right now doing a lot of the strategic

work for JLL, really amplifying what we've already got and making sure

that the foundations are set for us to be successful in social media.

While I work alone, I do have a lot of people that are available to support me.

I have a great manager.

I have great people that I collaborate with.

We have an entire team in India and Costa Rica who are there to support us with

community management and additional tasks as needed, and then a lot of governance

work a- and some strategic work as well.

Great people to work with, but I am a team of one

You're it, seems to be a pretty common theme across businesses of all sizes

around the world in different industries.

Now, you joined JLL roughly a little bit over a year ago, if I understand

correctly, and in that time you decided that it would be a great

idea to launch both a global social media strategy and an employee

advocacy program in your first year.

With so much you've tackled, like, how did you decide where to

start and what was the priority?

It was difficult.

When I first started, I met with a lot of stakeholders across the company just

talking about how they were using social media, what their needs were, what were

big priorities for the company overall.

There was a theme that was continuous throughout my conversations, which was

a really big need for employee advocacy.

They didn't really know how to say it or what it was.

We talk about it as like eminence, employee eminence, getting

people to use social media.

Our industry is built on relationships.

If you think about real estate overall it's really person to person.

So helping people enhance those relationships online building their

digital Rolodex was really important, I think, for all of our business lines

and all the people that we worked with.

So that was a common theme that stood out.

I think the other theme that stood out was we just had a lot of activity

happening and no reason for doing one thing or not another thing.

It was just like as me and my manager call it, random acts of content.

So we needed to start putting a lot of those guardrails around it and started

moving things into different locations.

And so starting with building an employee advocacy program gave us a great place

to move a lot of content into as we were setting up our global social strategy.

Amazing.

I can only imagine the free-for-all that was happening around the world

and you coming in and taking a look and go, " Okay then, where will we

start?" Uh, But I'm sure it's been fun to kinda get your teeth into it a-

and figure out how to make this work.

But if somebody that's listening to the podcast is thinking about, how do you

launch an employee advocacy program?

We all can agree that it's a great idea to have your team active and out

there, but it's not quite so simple.

What do you recommend needs to be in place before they invite their first

group of employees to take part?

Because I know everybody is keen to jump to content, but I feel like

that's a bit of a recipe for disaster.

Yeah, that's a great question.

I've set this up at uh, at my previous company as well, so I've

got a little bit of experience in setting up employee advocacy programs.

I think what helps is having buy-in not only from the people who would be

using it, but really top-down, top-down leadership buy-in to help advocate

for advocacy within the company.

Additionally, a really solid tool is super useful.

I-- you can do advocacy by sending emails and sending people content

and things like that, but it gets a little jumbly, and it's really

hard to measure the impact of it.

So having a really good tool that helps bring all that measurement back

in-house and measure your impact, you can do earned media value off of it,

you can see how much your employees are amplifying the reach of your overall

company, that is super, super helpful.

And then I think also marketing partners or partners within the

organization, communications partners, who will help set up the program.

Throughout the organization and throughout setting these up at

a different organization, we had people manage categories.

I couldn't do it all myself.

So the people who were in different areas of business were the ones who were

bringing the information in, making social content out of it, and putting it out to

the groups that were interested in it.

Partners from talent and culture who are constantly making stuff about uh,

those topics, people in corporate comms who are doing all of the press releases

and anything like that, just people from throughout the organization who are

typically going to be submitting content to the social media pages, giving them

their own sort of universe on employee advocacy within which to do that.

Not only are they gonna take pride in it, but they're also gonna help get

adoption with their own groups on it

Do you find if the leaders aren't involved, it's a bit of a do as I say,

not as I do, and that creates friction in the programs that you've managed?

Yeah, you kind of hit a wall i- with internal comms and getting adoption of it.

I think overall a lot of people where I work now and where I had worked

previously are definitely interested in it and it's just a little bit of a

culture shift, in terms of like thinking of like different places to put things.

With the global social media strategy, what we're doing is we're really

trying to build the ecosystem at JLL.

So not just focusing on like our LinkedIn page, and that's like the

only place to put things, we have some other category LinkedIn pages.

We have some geographic LinkedIn pages that we can use.

We have employee advocacy.

We have our C-suite folks.

We have um, subject matter experts that we can leverage.

Trying to get all that stuff to work together to be the expert in

s- in its own way, and then have them all engage with each other

is really like part of the whole.

So employee advocacy is a huge, huge part of it, but how we get it

all to sort of interact with each other is, is kind of the challenge.

That's where the magic happens.

So is there a lot of, I don't know, which way do you get people involved more?

Is it thou shalt go and do this?

Is it, do you have some kind of incentives that attract them to it?

Is it you start small and hope that people love it so much that they're

telling other colleagues about it?

Like, how do you get people wanna be a part of this, from both sides, the

employees that are actually gonna be active, and also those colleagues that

you said of, you know, "I'm gonna need your help. You're a team of one. It's

not just gonna happen by magic." What's the best way to get them on board?

Because not everybody loves social like we do.

And I don't need everybody to love social, to be honest.

The people who wanna do it, I wanna give them the tools with which to do it.

The people who are not interested like, fine.

If it-- Whatever you're doing is working for you, I'm not here to force you.

But I wanna provide you the tools and the best resources in order to

do it if it's something you wanna do.

I've had a lot of different ways of driving success.

At a previous company, we did use a lot of incentivizing.

We had leaderboards.

We would do a drawing every month um, and give away Amazon gift cards for the person

who shared the most or the person who was, like, getting the most impressions.

If we had a certain piece of content we wanted people to use we would say,

you know, "Share this content between X date and X date, and you'll be

entered for a drawing to win whatever."

My previous company was a lot smaller, so that was a little bit

easier to kinda get people, you know, amped up about and using.

So now that I'm at a global company and the shift is a little bit slower to get

people involved, I found like, doing the demos with certain business groups has

really gotten people excited about it.

Our tool makes it super easy to share on social media.

Instead of getting like, a PowerPoint of like, "Here's a picture to use

and here's some copy to use, and make sure you copy and paste this exactly

correctly, and don't forget your LinkedIn login." At some point it just becomes

the barrier is too high to overcome.

If we can just send them a link and we're like, "Here it is. Just click share,

you're done," that's so much easier.

And then we get the metrics on the back end, so we get to track it.

So from a marketer perspective, they're on board because we get the

tracking and we can see the results.

I think from uh, the perspective of the users it, it, again, it depends

on their acumen and what we have available for them on the tool.

We've really worked a lot this year to make sure that all of our processes

are in place for getting content onto the tool, and then working to ensure

that all of our commun- internal communications lead back to the

tool, and that's the one place we go.

And then people are gonna start getting used to it and seeing it

over and over again, and then they're gonna get more familiar with it.

But yeah, I've told people I will pop on any call at any time and do a demo.

I will talk to Australia at 7:00 p.m. I will talk to China at 8:00 p.m. while I'm,

like, trying to keep my kids out the door.

I'll be like, "Give me a half hour," you know.

"just eat chocolate and be on the iPad while I do this demo." But you

know, I'm like the one-woman dog and pony show with, "Here's how it works.

It's so easy.

Aren't you excited?"

I just love that you're sharing the reality because this is what

it's really like to try and get these programs off the ground.

And the thing that I laugh at as I scroll LinkedIn and I see you know,

in the feed, there's so many posts right now that are, "It's so great

to get your employees to share.

They'll get, you know, 10 times more reach, 100 times more reach," whatever

the magic numbers are that are going around at the moment, "And it's so easy.

Just go and flick some kinda magic switch that's in your business and everybody's

then going to go and start posting.

It's gonna be so easy.

You're gonna have your feet up, Jen."

And I'm just like, looking at these posts going, "You've never done it, have you?"

Because even if I look at myself, right?

So I've been creating content for 11 or 12 years now on LinkedIn, so a long time.

My business is teaching other people how to do that and

rolling that out to their teams.

Over the last few weeks, I've sat in front of my computer, looked at what I was

going to post, and then walked away from the computer and didn't post anything.

And

that's been going on for around two weeks.

Stopped yesterday because all of a sudden my brain decided that whatever

the block was, that's now gone away and I'm gonna start posting again.

Now, I'm someone with that experience.

I've got ideas coming out of everywhere.

I've got content that I could repurpose like crazy, and I still didn't wanna post.

And so this is what I, I like to have that conversation to say sometimes you

do need to hold people's hands and say, "It's gonna be okay." Whatever's the block

in their mind about why this is too hard basket, you sometimes need to slow down

and meet them where they're at instead of just saying, "This is all so easy.

Like, It's just posting, people.

You can write a sentence.

Like, And in your case, we've already written it for you.

But it's not that easy.

So I appreciate you sharing that it actually takes support of the

people in the program, not just the software, but actual support a- as

well to back them up if they need help.

I think that's why I wanna have these conversations with the reality of

what's going on out there to get these types of things happening because I

know that there are people trying to launch new programs and just going,

"I don't know how to get them moving."

I am trying.

I've seen so many burnt out kind of people in roles like you just

going, "I gave up dragging them along." Is your policy, "Look, if

you don't wanna do it, don't do it.

I'm moving on to the people that do"?

Is that the easiest way to deal with that?

Basically like, you know, I've got, again, I've got a ton of really great

partners within the organization who know the people that they work with the best.

They know their brokers the best, they know their salespeople

the best, they know all of the business the best that they can.

There are, again, there are gonna be people who are

really interested in doing it.

There are also gonna be people who are great at it, who don't need

this tool, who don't need our help, who have their own voice on social.

This is not for them.

They've got it.

They're good.

They're running.

They've got their own voice.

They've got their own brand like, have at it I think it's the people in the middle.

There's people who are very resistant, there's the people who are really good,

and there's people in the middle who are like, "I know I need to do this.

I don't know how to start.

I'm scared.

I don't wanna build my own platform.

I don't wanna be, like, an influencer." Which like, don't worry, nobody's gonna

be an influencer off of this stuff.

But I think just bringing the authenticity in and really sitting in your power

and knowing how much power you hold as an individual, not only for, you know,

furthering the brand and furthering the company, and if that's not of

interest to you, that's totally fine.

But like, for your own business, I think it's so interesting and so important.

Especially as millennials are starting to reach a lot of those

really high decision-making positions, and we're very online.

I sort of straddle both worlds of like, the pre-digital and the post-digital,

so I'm like, "You know, you had a Rolodex." And like, the Gen Z-ers I sit

next to are like, "What's a Rolodex?"

But you had a Rolodex.

You had your clients and the people you worked with and the business

cards, and you had that on your desk.

That is LinkedIn now.

That is your online Rolodex.

Those are the people you collect throughout your career, and that's

the best way to be reaching them.

Also there's email, also there's phone calls, also there's all kinds of stuff.

But if you're like, "Hey, I knew a guy who used to work at this company. Where

did he go? What is he doing?" You can look them up and see where they are.

They're a new lead.

Um, The other point I like to make with people, too, especially when it comes

to advocacy and why choose advocacy over utilizing the brand pages, is just think

about any other vendor you've worked with.

Think about how you use social media.

If you've worked with a vendor, if you've worked with a brand, if

you've partnered with somebody, have you followed their company ever?

Probably not.

But you followed that person, and that's where you're getting your

information about the company.

I'm gonna follow you, Michelle, and I'm gonna get information

about your company from you.

I'm not following your company, but that's where I'm getting the information,

and that's where I'm building sort of my algorithm of, of conversation

around the places that I've worked.

When I worked in architecture my whole feed was architects

and design and things like that.

And when I worked in telecom, it started to lean more telecom.

And now that I'm in CRE, I'm building my Rolodex of people in CRE, and it's

very like, commercial real estate-y.

But also, there's always been a background, at least in my

personal algorithm, of like, the social media experts.

So it's like real estate, real estate, telecom, social media,

social media, social media.

So, you know, just following the people around, building my algorithm and engaging

with them has been really important.

But yeah it's the person-to-person that really drives the authenticity,

the impressions, and just like, getting to know the company and

what the company's up to better than the company can do themselves.

There is no doubt that there is a massive benefit in nurturing relationships online.

I mean, that is literally why I fell in love with LinkedIn 11 years ago.

I was in sales at that time, so I was an account manager in

the beauty industry that had 80 clients spread around Australia.

Here you go, off you go and sell, in a new company, in a new industry, and I didn't

have any of those relationships built.

And so it was LinkedIn that I discovered that, hey, I didn't need to

go around door to door like I would.

I, you know, customer visits were a big part of my role, but ultimately,

how do I stay in contact with them when I'm not on the road and I can

only be in one place at one time?

And God bless Sydney traffic, getting around from place to place, I lose an

hour every time I w- wanna go anywhere.

And so being on LinkedIn allowed me to have that conversation with one

to many, so I could replicate myself in lots of different places, and I

built that beauty community globally.

It was the best time on LinkedIn ever 'cause … remember back in the

day when I was young, as a Gen X-er, when I could jump onto LinkedIn and

connect with as many people as I wanted because there was no restrictions?

I would send people DMs.

They would respond.

It didn't matter who they were or where they were, and it was really amazing.

I thought, "This tool is just like … Why is not everybody using

it?" Because you can access anyone in the world, subject matter experts.

You can get their ideas, their opinions.

You can learn from them and that's what caught me in the beginning.

These days it's a lot trickier because we're so crowded.

You know, We've probably got double the amount of people on the platform.

But for me, that was always the opportunity.

But the thing is I still love LinkedIn for those reasons.

That has never gone away.

And there's probably one question.

So I'm known for talking about the Power of Two, so bringing employees

and company pages together, and getting the best out of both of them because

as a brand, that's exactly what you're doing really in your day-to-day.

But how do you decide whether content should come from the JLL company

page or pages or an employee or both?

Is there a process that you're doing to kinda go, "You know what? This

belongs here. That belongs there"?

Yes.

I mean, I can tell you what it would look like in an ideal world, and we're

still building that universe at JLL, but I think we're really on the right path.

So in an ideal world where like, there's a thing happening, there's a big commercial

real estate conference happening, you know, our C-suite is all going.

We wanna, have people get this takeaway from us being there, that we're the

experts in commercial real estate, that we're the experts knowing like, what's

happening in the future, things like that.

What should we do?

So because we have so many experts and our C-suite is so prevalent on

LinkedIn, obviously we recommend them talking about it in their voice.

And then what JLL as a company can do is then re-share their content to

our page, let them be the voice, but re-share with our own point of view.

Look at our CEO who went and did this thing and, you know, he really

speaks to what we believe here at JLL.

Things like that.

That's a really good way to again, build the ecosystem so we're not

just like, duplicating content across all the different platforms,

but using them for their strengths.

Our CEO knows his voice the best.

We want him to be the most authentic that he can be, and then we can

sort of piggyback off of that.

Additionally, everybody else who's there liking all the things,

engaging with the people who are commenting um, or tagging us.

If we're at a big real estate conference and other people are tagging us or we

get opportunities to sort of like do some work together, that's a really

good way to bring a lot of people in.

So it's just kind of seeing what the landscape is and what

the takeaway we want to be.

Sometimes there is not a narrative for the brand page, and that's okay.

Sometimes it really makes more sense for it to come from the

people, and I think that's really the power that we have to leverage.

But where we can craft a story for the brand page that sort of fits

like a global feeling that, that reaches people that are not there.

I like to talk about bringing the offline experience online.

Like, what can we bring back?

What kind of intelligence can we bring back?

What can we put directly in the feed that's gonna give people that feeling,

that experience, bring them the knowledge?

Um, And that has to go deeper than "Here's a picture of us at our booth.

Here's a picture of a guy talking at a thing.

Here's like, some beautiful music with people talking to each other, and they

were there." We have to go a lot deeper.

So that's really the goal and the focus of what we're doing overall is, is

just bringing all of those insights, all of that experience into the feed.

Amazing.

And, I can only imagine that with so many employees and so much going on

that you are constantly vetting what is the best way to get this out there

because I would imagine that the demand and the ideas that are out there for

content is overwhelming at times.

Do you have a process for, as our common friend Molly Hopkins says, "No, but…"

And she was kinda sharing on the podcast that when people come to her

and she has to say, "No, but go this way." Do you have like, a similar

thing that you need to do as well?

Because there is like, an element of, "Can we put this on social? Can we put

this on social?" Like, Just like it's this magic never-ending, you've got, you

know, a million followers, let's make sure all million people can see this.

How do you navigate that with people?

Oh, I like to use a lot of data to navigate that with people.

So my "no, but" is really employee advocacy.

Like, "No, this isn't a fit for us, but if you put it here, the people who have

the connections in that geography or who are going to that conference, they

will see it there." A lot of the times what I've been doing is, "Hey, we want

to geotarget a post to X location."

So I'll go into our LinkedIn page and I'll be like, "Okay, how many

followers do we have in X location?" I'm trying to figure it out.

Say it's Mexico.

I'm like, "Okay, so it's Mexico City. It's not all of Mexico, but I've got

13,000 followers in Mexico City." Okay.

Not all of Mexico, just Mexico City.

Anything under 2,000, I can't see, I don't know, it's not worth it.

Then I'm like, all right, brand pages are maybe reaching 1% of their audience.

So take that 13,000 and bring it down to 1%.

1% of that or 10% of that might be interested in the thing you have to say,

or the conference you're going to, or the listing you're putting out there.

Do you wanna go through all of this work to reach 130 people, or do you wanna

give it to the people who are there, who are gonna be there, and who are gonna

reach those people most authentically?

And that's like our "no, but." But the proof is really in the

pudding and proving it out.

It's difficult, but from what I've seen, especially when we're geotargeting stuff,

we're not reaching a lot of people.

We're reaching like 200-ish, and even that is an overestimate.

Look, I'm gonna just put it out there, I don't think anybody should

geotarget any posts at all in 2026.

I don't think they ever should've.

I think it's the biggest fallacy on a LinkedIn Company Page, and there's a

lot, but I think that one's at the top of my list because these days with the new

algorithm that's out there especially, it is designed to make sure that the

right content is connected with the people who would be most interested.

And I believe it already knows if you mention the country or, you know, language

around that, that it's gonna do it.

So I hate geotargeting.

I'm just throwing that out there.

I don't wanna hijack this whole podcast episode.

Maybe I should do one of my own and just talk about that because you're

right, the maths just doesn't add up, and sometimes it is that data that is

the easiest way to say, " I can do it, but it's not gonna be seen by anybody."

And so what's the point of all of this?

So I love that data is your no but, but I read one of your posts on LinkedIn

where you were celebrating your first year at JLL, and I'm gonna do a, you

know, a very short summary of it.

But you wrote about learning to set boundaries, radically prioritize,

and not sweat the small stuff.

What does this look like in the day-to-day of what you do now?

I think when I started there, it was like there was a lot of

opportunity, and I told my boss this.

I said, "There is so much opportunity for improvement, it's really difficult

to know where to start." And so sometimes you have to pick the things that are

either gonna make the most impact and think-- and forget all the other

stuff, or do some low-hanging fruit that's gonna be, like, quick impact and

get a few quick wins under your belt before you dive into the big stuff or

while you're working on the big stuff.

So that's kind of where that's going.

Again, I'm, like, one person.

I can only do so much at one time.

I've got like, a family of my own and everything else, so I cannot

be working around the clock.

So it's sort of like, what's most important?

What's most impactful here?

What, what actually needs to happen right now, and what could I

maybe do next week or next month?

Or can I say, "Can we wait on this?

I've got X, Y, and Z going on, and it will make more sense when we're doing that."

So, um, Yeah, i- in a, in a role where I used to be able to tackle everything

on my plate prior, my plate is small and my meal is big, and so I have to

pick the bits that are gonna be the most nutritious and delicious to start with.

Oh, I'm going the opposite.

I'm having dessert first.

We'll work our way backwards.

But that's the story of my life.

Um, And you know, I, I get it though.

It, It is about, I think there's a balance between having some wins for yourself that

keep you going while you try and eat the elephant one bite at a time, as they say.

Because this doesn't stop.

From what I can figure, there is no end date to the improvements you could do

because you've got new people coming in, the program's changing, you're

learning, the business is evolving.

The algorithms are always changing

Oh, God bless the algorithms changing.

We love that.

How are you finding the algorithm now?

Do you enjoy it more than what it was, say, a year ago?

Because I didn't want to, but I think I'm actually liking it more at the moment,

and that's a bit of an update on my views.

But I'm curious, do you enjoy it more now, LinkedIn 2026, or historic?

I will tell you, never in my life have I spent so much time on

LinkedIn as I have in this job.

This is my first B2B position, so I've been spending way more time on LinkedIn

than I literally ever have in my life.

And like you mentioned Molly before, that's kind of where

uh, Molly entered the chat.

We had a mutual who commented on one of her posts, and I

was like, "This girl is me."

And then I commented on the post and I said, "I think we're the same person." And

then she struck up a conversation with me.

And then we've had this really great thing where we just

chit-chat every, like once a month.

We're two uh, people who work in commercial real estate in, like the

exact same positions at competitors.

We're not, like sharing any trade secrets, but we're like talking to each other,

not only about commercial real estate and doing social media for commercial

real estate, but just like what it is to be like a working mom as she's,

like coming into her own with that.

And it's just been an incredible friendship that, like I made online and

I've been able to see her in real life.

So I would say, yeah, the LinkedIn algorithm is, like doing it for me

right now because I, it's bringing me those opportunities to connect with

people I never would've otherwise, you know, outside of like local

professional organizations, and we do not live in the same locality.

So it's been incredible.

It's been really great.

I think it is too, and I mean, you wouldn't be here if the algorithm hadn't

changed because now it shows me posts that are talking about company pages.

I think Molly did a post around that.

You show up in the comments.

That's how we connected.

So at first I was like, "Where's all my old friends gone?" And now

I'm like, "Oh, actually these are the people I need to be talking to

around topics that I'm interested in."

So I, I'm on board.

But I have one last bonus question for you.

If the LinkedIn fairies were listening to this podcast and you had the opportunity

to ask for one new feature that is not … You can't have reach, right?

'Cause that's, no fairy can deliver that right now.

But what would you ask the LinkedIn fairies for?

I wanna know how many of our followers work for our company

or have worked for our company.

That's what I need.

It.

I love it.

I may have an answer for how you can do that, but we will talk

about that after this podcast.

But yeah, I mean, I think if we come down to more of those analytics on

Pages, this is what I keep telling the Pages team, if you're listening to the

podcast, Pages team, more analytics, more visibility around what's working

and what's not would be amazing.

So Jen, thank you again for coming on the podcast and sharing so honestly

about what it actually takes to do this.

And as a human, as a- an employee and somebody that is um, you know,

just out there trying to find a way through how do you do this at scale?

So I appreciate everything that you've shared today.

Thank you so much for having me.

This was so delightful.

Amazing.

Do make sure that you're subscribed to the podcast.

And if we're not connected on LinkedIn, I'm gonna put the details for how you can

connect with me and Jen in the show notes, so make sure you give her a follow and let

her know that you listen to the podcast.

That would be amazing.

So until next week, cheers.