How IBM Got 1,000 Staffers to Become Brand Advocates.

A year ago, IBM created an internal online hub that allowed employees to easily share promotions on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, while they could also privately pass information back and forth to help their marketing and sales.

A thousand employees have participated in the program, which gives them about six pieces of content every day they can choose to share or not share with their followers. The program has been a resounding success with more IBM employees dying to participate. 

Here is one of the reasons why: The company late last year launched a business-to-business appeal called #NewWayToWork, which accrued 120 million digital impressions and drove 141,000 clicks to campaign content thanks largely to the employees sharing content throughDynamic Signal's VoiceStorm software. Interestingly, IBM staffers are only incentivized by a points-based leaderboard and last week, the #NewWayToWork effort garnered Armstrong's team a Viral Marketing Campaign of the Year distinction during the 13th Annual American Business Awards in Chicago.

So, if you are a manager wondering how much better your team's results would be if employees shared business items with their social followers, IBM's initiative suggests it might be worth a shot. IBM mostly pushes content on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook—in that order.