✍️ how we Owned the Internet

The whole storyarb crew just got back from our first full-team offsite, where we ate s’mores, kayaked in unbelievably clear waters, and got dusty as hell in the mountains near Bend, Oregon.

We also learned vital things about each other, like:

• who frontmans a midwest emo band,

• who has the meanest pickleball serve, 

• who conjures foxes and butterflies like a real-life Snow White, 

• who knows every word to the new Bieber album, 

• who has the grip strength to hang off the golf cart roof,

• and who swallowed 11 dimes as a “magic trick” in her childhood (don’t worry, she’s okay now).

It was a great opportunity to put our pencils down and celebrate our collective wins (like our Own The Internet campaign that racked up 7M+ impressions—more on that bad boy below).

It was also a good reminder of how good in-person time is….which has us thinking about future IRL events. Which city should we head to first?

Trying to get people to post on LinkedIn is a little like trying to get them to do karaoke sober at a work event. 

Awkward, forced, and incredibly off-key. 

But when you don’t encourage people to post on social, you’re ignoring your biggest amplification opportunity: your own employees.

No matter how many times you ask or how much boilerplate copy you share—employee advocacy programs fail when they lack these three things: 

1. Proper incentives,

2. team spirit, and

3. gamification—something to make posting fun, measurable, and just a little competitive. 

What does work? We put it into a simple little equation:

We get asked about employee advocacy on the regular. So we're answering the most common questions below:

How do I motivate sustained excitement + interest in posting? 

Keyword: sustained. That’s usually the hardest part, so try running week-long “mini-competitions” with smaller rewards (lunch, gift cards, coffee) throughout a longer competition, and award employees who achieve things like:

• Publishing 5 posts in a week

• Getting the most impressions in a week

• Writing the most-viewed post about a specific topic

• Most creative hook

Should participation be mandatory? 

Participation should be encouraged, but not required. Forced advocacy fails. Empowerment wins. Give your employees the tools to succeed—but let them opt in, make it their own, and watch the authenticity come through.

How do I easily track performance? 

Stop doing this manually! That is its own nightmare you will not wake up from. We used Shield to track impressions, top posts, and other key data for each employee account week by week, then shared both weekly and aggregate results in our all-hands meetings.

The Standard readers can snag a 20% discount on Shield with the promo code ARB20 to make measurement simple.

Check out the full FAQ (including our take on financial incentives, and how to track performance metrics) here.

Campaigns that got us talking: A dramatic rendering of a conversation we’ve all had. This is the perfect example of what happens when you get too many cooks in the advertising kitchen. 

AI spotlight: OpenAI just dropped Sora 2, its latest AI video generation model, in an announcement complete with James Cameron’s Avatar-esque planetscapes, professional giant duckling racing, and Head of Sora Bill Peebles riding a dragon. Sora now includes audio, as well as a “cameo” option that lets users insert themselves into a scene. 

Our big question about the release: Beyond “hey look, this is cool,” what is…the point? Or is “hey look, this is cool,” the point itself? (We will still be Sora-ing ourselves onto dragons.)

Stuff that made us scroll back up: Content is a loyalty tool. Here’s how to build trust in the long term, from sharing your expertise in a digestible format to regularly updating your top-performing pieces.

Thinking about launching your own employee advocacy campaign? 

Our CEO and co-founder, Abby Murray, has been talking about this nonstop with folks who want to replicate some of the success of storyarb’s Own the Internet contest (or stand up different versions of their own program).

What would actually motivate you to post regularly on LinkedIn? Vote here. 

• A clear link to KPIs 

• Public recognition from leadership

• Mad libs-esque templates

• Cold, hard cash rewards 

Previously we asked you your thoughts on B2B brands that use humor to stand out. We’d tell a dad joke about the results, but the data says we probably shouldn’t. Ba-dum tsss. 

Employee advocacy isn’t about pumping up those vanity metrics. (Though in our experience, yes, impressions and comments and followers do the “up and to the right” thing.) 

The lasting value is twofold: 

1. It gives your ICP the touchpoints they need to make you a familiar and trusted source. 

2. It elevates your internal SMEs as thought leaders in their own right, building their authority, visibility, and networks. 

And when you make it into a competition, where employees like, comment on, and uplift each other’s posts, it’s kind of like being in a really cool sorority of marketing nerds. Let’s go Alpha Rho Beta. 🫶

See y'all next time.

— the storyarb writers’ room 🫡

Oh! And another thing… Ancient Romans invented the first advertising jingles by having street vendors chant their wares in rhythmic verses. Turns out, getting songs stuck in people's heads has been an effective marketing strategy for over 2,000 years.