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name: linkedin-employee-advocacy description: > Designs and runs an employee advocacy programme: who posts what and how often, review rules, and what is never scripted. Use when getting a team posting, writing an advocacy policy, or fixing a programme that has stalled. license: MIT + Commons Clause metadata: version: 1.0.0 author: borghei category: tools domain: linkedin updated: 2026-10-07 tags: [linkedin, employee-advocacy, governance, team-cadence, social-policy]

LinkedIn Employee Advocacy

Advocacy programmes usually fail the same way. Marketing writes a post, sends it to thirty people with "please share", and eight of them paste it on the same morning. Colleagues like each other's copies for a week. A manager starts asking who has posted. By the second month the willing have gone quiet and the unwilling are resentful, and the company has taught its own staff that their personal accounts are a distribution list.

The cause is treating employees' accounts as a channel the company owns. This skill designs the programme the other way round: people opt in individually, write in their own words about subjects they know first-hand, at a cadence sized to the time they have actually agreed to, with review limited to a short list of risk triggers. It works offline. It plans from a roster file the user supplies; it does not post, schedule, log in to anything, or collect data from the network.

Scope boundary. This skill designs and governs the team programme. It does not write anyone's posts or comments (linkedin-post-writer, linkedin-comment-writer), clean up drafting-tool phrasing (linkedin-humanizer), or test opening lines (linkedin-hook-analyzer). It does not manage replies or follow threads (linkedin-reply-manager, linkedin-thread-tracker), build an individual's content calendar or recycle material (linkedin-content-planner, linkedin-content-repurposer), or interview a person to find their stories (linkedin-story-interviewer). Individual profiles are linkedin-profile-optimizer; working out who a post reached is linkedin-engagement-analytics. None of those is required to use this one.

When to use this skill

• A leader wants "the team posting" and there is no charter, roster or cadence yet
• A programme exists but output is identical, sporadic or has stopped
• HR, legal or a works council asks what the rules are and none are written down
• People are being nominated by managers instead of asked
• A review queue has become the reason nothing gets published
• The sponsor wants to know whether the programme is working, and the only numbers are a leaderboard

Inputs the skill expects

• The programme goal: pipeline, hiring, reputation or category
• A roster of people who have been asked: role family, seniority, how often they post today, hours a week they have agreed to, their own topics, and whether they said yes
• Honest answers to the governance questions in assets/roster_template.json
• Who the owner and the checkers are, and how much time the checkers have
• Any regulated or restricted roles on the team
• The countries the team works in, for the legal review of disclosure and employment wording

Clarify First

Before producing a plan or charter, confirm these inputs. If any is unknown or vague, ASK — do not assume:

• Whether each person has opted in themselves — the planner schedules only people with a recorded yes; a manager's list is not consent and changes the roster entirely
• The programme goal — decides which role families the plan depends on and what the outcome log counts
• Hours each person has really agreed to — every cadence is capped by it; an optimistic figure produces a plan nobody keeps
• Regulated roles and jurisdictions — decides who needs a pre-publication check and which sections of the charter need counsel

Stop rule: ask only the 2-3 that most change the output. If the user says "just draft it," proceed and list your assumptions at the top of the artifact.

Workflows

Workflow 1 — Quick start: plan a roster

1. Copy assets/roster_template.json. Add one entry per person who has been asked, and set opted_in to true only for those who said yes.
2. Answer every governance key. An unanswered key is reported as a gap.
3. Run the planner and read the findings before the matrix; blockers come first.
4. The agent reports the weekly matrix, the topic coverage map, each blocker with its fix, and the assumptions used (time model, review share).

python3 tools/linkedin/linkedin-employee-advocacy/scripts/advocacy_planner.py \
  --input tools/linkedin/linkedin-employee-advocacy/assets/sample_roster.json

Workflow 2 — Write the charter and clear the gate

1. Fill in assets/advocacy_charter_template.md using references/governance-and-consent.md: consent, never-scripted list, disclosure, triggers and checkers, incident pause, leavers.
2. Send sections 4, 5 and 8 for legal review in each jurisdiction.
3. Update the roster's governance answers to match what the charter now says.
4. Re-run the planner as a quality gate. It must pass with no blockers before anyone is invited to post.
5. Share each member their own row and record their acceptance in charter section 12.

python3 tools/linkedin/linkedin-employee-advocacy/scripts/advocacy_planner.py \
  --input tools/linkedin/linkedin-employee-advocacy/assets/sample_roster.json \
  --fail-on blocker

python3 tools/linkedin/linkedin-employee-advocacy/scripts/advocacy_rules.py --list-rules

Workflow 3 — Four-week review and recalibration

1. Collect plan versus actual at team level and each member's honest estimate of minutes spent. Do not collect individual reach figures unless offered.
2. Calibrate the time model with the team median (references/programme-design.md §10) and re-run for the current week.
3. Resolve crowded topics by vantage point and agree changes with the members concerned.
4. Update the baseline sheet and the outcome log (references/measuring-the-programme.md §3 and §5).
5. Verify that nobody has been moved up a stage without asking for it.

python3 tools/linkedin/linkedin-employee-advocacy/scripts/advocacy_planner.py \
  --input tools/linkedin/linkedin-employee-advocacy/assets/sample_roster.json \
  --week 8 --minutes-per-post 55 --format json

Decision frameworks

What the company may supply

Supplied by the company	Verdict	Reason
Facts, figures and names cleared for public use	[PROVEN] Yes	Removes the "am I allowed to say this" delay, which is the real blocker
Links, images, event details	[PROVEN] Yes	Source material, not speech
A list of possible angles by role	[RECOMMENDED] Yes	Prompts thinking without writing it
A conversation or interview that becomes the person's own post	[RECOMMENDED] Yes	The words and opinions remain theirs
A finished post to paste	No	Duplicate copy is recognisable and it puts words in people's mouths
Opinions, praise, testimonials, personal stories	Never	These are only true when the person originates them
A rota for liking and commenting on colleagues' posts	Never	Manufactured engagement misleads readers

Review design

Choice	Recommendation	Reason
Review everything or review by trigger	[RECOMMENDED] By trigger	Most posts carry no risk; a universal queue slows all of them and teaches people their voice needs permission
What a checker may change	[RECOMMENDED] Facts and timing only	Style edits push people into the company voice, then out of the programme
Missed review deadline	[RECOMMENDED] Escalate to the owner; silence is not approval	A post that tripped a trigger should not publish because someone was busy
Restricted roles	[PROVEN] Named specialist check before anything about the business	The exposure is real and specific to the role
Automated pre-screening of drafts for trigger words	[EXPERIMENTAL] Only as a prompt to the author	Helpful as a reminder; harmful if it becomes a gate people cannot argue with

Cadence decisions

Situation	Recommendation
New to posting	[RECOMMENDED] Start with comments only, then a post a fortnight
Engineer or designer with thirty minutes a week	[RECOMMENDED] Plan as comment-only or a post a fortnight, on purpose
Someone wants to post daily	Check it fits the job; raise agreed hours before raising the plan
Launch week	Supply more material; do not coordinate timing or raise targets
One person produces most of the team's posts	Spread the load and protect that person's time; do not present the programme as broader than it is

Blocker or warning

Finding class	Severity	Why
Not voluntary, tied to pay or review, company holds logins	Blocker	Removes the employee's free choice or control of their own account
No disclosure guidance, verbatim shared copy, engagement rota	Blocker	Misleads readers
No trigger list, restricted role without a check	Blocker	Leaves the company's real risks uncaught
No pause rule, no leaver rule, slow review, no owner	Warning	The programme can start, but will fail at the first hard week
Crowded topic, thin time budget, review overload	Warning	Sustainability problems the plan can fix

Anti-Patterns

The "please share" email

Mistake: Marketing sends a finished post to the team and asks everyone to publish it. Why it happens: It is the fastest way to produce visible activity, and it guarantees the message is on-brand. Instead: Send the facts, the link and one line of possible angles per role. Anyone who wants to mention it writes their own post or reshares with a comment of their own. Rule GV-05 blocks verbatim copy for this reason.

Enrolment by org chart

Mistake: The roster is "everyone in sales and marketing", announced at an all-hands. Why it happens: Asking people one at a time is slow, and a large roster looks like commitment. Instead: Invite individually, share the charter first, and record each yes. Start with the five who want to. The planner excludes anyone without opted_in: true and reports them (RS-01) so the gap is visible.

The leaderboard

Mistake: A weekly ranking of who posted most or reached furthest is shared in a team channel. Why it happens: It feels like recognition, and it is the easiest thing to build from the available numbers. Instead: Report team totals and thank people for specific posts. Ranking individuals makes participation a performance matter, rewards whoever already had the largest audience, and reliably produces padding and pasted copy.

Reviewing voice instead of risk

Mistake: Every post goes through a queue, and comes back with a new opening and brand vocabulary. Why it happens: The reviewer is a writer and wants to help, and nobody defined what the review is for. Instead: Review only posts that trip a written trigger, and limit the checker to one question about a fact or a date (references/governance-and-consent.md §6 and §7).

Uniform cadence

Mistake: Everyone is asked for three posts a week. Why it happens: One number is easy to communicate and easy to track. Instead: Size each row to the person's role, habit and agreed hours. A founder and an engineer with thirty minutes do not share a cadence, and a comment-only member is a full member.

Asking staff to defend the company

Mistake: During criticism or an incident, employees are encouraged to post supportive messages or reply to critics. Why it happens: It looks like a show of strength, and people offer. Instead: Call the pause in the charter, give people one agreed line that points to the official statement, and leave it there. Staged support is recognisable and extends the story.

Files

Tools overview and reference documentation for this skill:

File	Purpose
scripts/advocacy_planner.py	Builds a per-person weekly cadence matrix from a roster, capped by each person's time; maps topic coverage, estimates review load, and reports governance and roster findings; --fail-on turns it into a gate
scripts/advocacy_rules.py	Cadence starting points by role family, seniority and stage factors, the time model, goal emphasis, and the governance rule catalogue; --list-rules prints them
references/programme-design.md	Design principles, who to invite, how cadence is sized, stages, topic allocation, the weekly note, launch sequence, calibration
references/governance-and-consent.md	Consent, account ownership, the never-scripted list, disclosure, review by trigger, escalation, restricted roles, incident pause, leavers, audit
references/measuring-the-programme.md	Three measurement levels, what not to measure, building a baseline from your own history, honest attribution, health indicators, review rhythm
assets/sample_roster.json	Invented nine-person roster with deliberate governance and roster gaps
assets/roster_template.json	Blank roster with every governance key and member field
assets/advocacy_charter_template.md	Fill-in charter covering consent, never-scripted list, disclosure, triggers, pause, leavers and agreed plans