In early July, Khoros and EveryoneSocial announced a partnership that will leverage Khoros’ social media management solution with EveryoneSocial’s employee advocacy technology. The combination will be a boon to digital marketers as they attempt to align content, messaging, and campaigns with a brand’s employee advocacy program.
Dash Research spoke with Cameron Brain, CEO & Co-Founder at EveryoneSocial, and Chris Tranquill, Chief Strategy Officer at Khoros to learn more about the companies’ respective offerings, the partnership, and insights into some of the trends in this segment.
According to Chris Tranquill, “Khoros solutions can support an entire customer lifecycle, spanning discovery, buying, and advocacy. Our technology can connect them, taking in signals from digital contact centers, messaging, chat, online brand communities, and CX analytics as well as our social media management.”
The customer engagement platform offered by Khoros is multifaceted and includes:
- Social Media Management: Content management, publishing, social listening, and governance.
- Community Engagement: A digital space where you are facilitating user-generated content and brand. It includes self-service support, education, and collaboration.
- Digital Contact Center Solution: Omnichannel engagement platform with conversational artificial intelligence (AI) and insights.
- CX Insights: Provides a unified, actionable view of the customer, taking in unstructured data.
Tranquill continues, “We have always considered advocacy as a crucial piece of the customer lifecycle, and are excited to be able to partner with EveryoneSocial, a solution that can tap into the employee base and engage them in a meaningful way.”
EveryoneSocial was founded in 2009, and is a solution that supports employees authentically creating and sharing content on social media. Cameron Brain says the idea for the company came out of the growing realization that social media is critical to all business functions. Adds Brain, “While many still consider social media a brand-level activity, it’s much more than that. In its essence, it’s about people-to-people connection, and employees provide a powerful voice.”
EveryoneSocial focuses heavily on product and user experience so that the technology is easy to use. Activation and management are easily done, and the system is highly scalable. Other features include:
- The segmentation and organization of content at scale
- Localization capabilities to engage global employees
- Better communication to improve employee engagement
- Support social employee recruiting with consistent employer branding
- Employees can build their own personal brand and stimulate career development
As Dash Research delves into the employee experience segment, one of the most pressing challenges that is consistently rising to the top is the ability to recruit and retain employees. While it was not one of the initial use cases EveryoneSocial had in mind, it is one of the hottest ones.
“While our primary sponsor is pretty consistently a CMO, it has been interesting that that is not always the case all the time,” Brain says. “Employer branding and recruiting is getting a lot of attention right now and our platform works well to demonstrate, in the employee’s own voice, what it’s like to work at a company. Companies that are using our tool optimally really try to highlight their employees and there is a lot of downstream benefit to getting that information out there and building awareness.”
Having employees as company advocates helps increase involvement and build community. Aside from using the solution as a tool to keep employees informed and creating and sharing their own content, EveryoneSocial can be used to highlight milestones and collect insights and feedback from employees.
Both Khoros and EveryoneSocial are excited about the partnership and look forward to how they can move it forward. Brain says, “We have always felt like Khoros would be a great partner. It’s really exciting to be building integration between products and we feel there will be even more opportunities beyond the social suite. Our mutual customers are very excited about this partnership. It’s been our goal to activate every employee as an advocate and we believe we will reach this goal faster with Khoros.”
Tranquill adds, “EveryoneSocial is a leader in the space, and we think the world of Cameron and the team at EveryoneSocial. Employee interaction can sometimes be underutilized, but they are the ones talking with customers every day. There is real authenticity when employees have the freedom to share their own content with a broad audience. For both Khoros and EveryoneSocial, we are trying to build the very best tools for people to use social media at work. We need to trust them and get out of the way.”
Author Information
As a detail-oriented researcher, Sherril is expert at discovering, gathering and compiling industry and market data to create clear, actionable market and competitive intelligence. With deep experience in market analysis and segmentation she is a consummate collaborator with strong communication skills adept at supporting and forming relationships with cross-functional teams in all levels of organizations.
Sherril holds a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from University of Colorado, Boulder and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Rutgers University.
