When you livestream a major event—whether it’s a pro football championship game or a king’s coronation—there’s a good chance that Edgio is the edge network supporting your fast, secure and friction-free experience. The same is true if you’re shopping online and enjoying instant page loads and dynamic content, or you’re immersed in a next-gen, fantasy sports gaming experience.

Edgio provides powerful solutions across web apps, content delivery and video streaming—servicing approximately 4% of global internet traffic and clients in 38 countries worldwide. While the company isn’t new, its brand name is. Previously known as Limelight Networks, Inc., the business rebranded in June 2022 following its acquisitions of Layer0 and of Yahoo’s Edgecast. What followed was a year of significant change for the company as they pivoted from a CDN vendor to an edge company providing applications and solutions that take advantage of their global edge network.

LinkedIn post from Edgio that announces that their event operations team has successfully managed over 180k live events since 2018.

When Lindsay Moran, Senior Manager, Content and Brand Strategy, joined Edgio in the summer of 2022, her challenge was to amplify the company’s new brand on social media with a strategy that could deliver results quickly and cost-effectively. Moran led the charge to implement Sprout Social’s Employee Advocacy platform, a decision that not only drove employee engagement, but helped the company generate $126,000+ in earned media value (EMV) in just three months after launching its advocacy program company-wide.

The extra reach from our employees—not paid advertising—is helping us grow our audiences on social. Our earned media value was over $126,000 in the first three months of our program
Lindsay Moran
Senior Manager, Content and Brand Strategy

Reinvigorating employee advocacy during a time of significant transformation

Before its rebranding, Edgio had tried to launch an employee advocacy program, but it did not gain much traction internally. Moran said she recognized that the time was right to try again after helping Edgio develop a host of new assets, from blogs to web content, to help the business “rebuild” its position as an industry thought leader. Delivering consistent messaging about the company’s products, solutions and brand across social media channels was also a priority.

LinkedIn post from Edgio announcing general availability of its applications platform with new performance and security features. Post was distributed via Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social

“Social media is a no-brainer for sharing this quality content,” said Moran. “We have small audiences on our key corporate social media channels, like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. But we knew we could amplify our reach by inspiring employees to use their personal networks to help promote our brand.”

Helping employees feel connected to our brand and aware of our news was also a top factor in the decision to reinvigorate employee advocacy at Edgio. “When merging companies and pivoting to new value-added capabilities for our customers, there’s a lot to share,” she said. “Employee advocacy is helping us stay abreast of all the good news and stay focused on the future by inspiring our employees to play a front-line role in telling our brand story.”

Employee advocacy needs to feel natural and authentic. What’s great about Sprout is that we can equip our employees with the content we want them to share, but they still have the opportunity to put their individual spin on it and make it their own.
Lindsay Moran
Senior Manager, Content and Brand Strategy

Impressive post-launch results that inspired a “happy dance”

To get the new employee advocacy program off to a successful start, Moran said she leaned on the team from Sprout to provide training to a select group of handpicked brand enthusiasts at Edgio who took part in a 30-day pilot program in February 2023. “It was a great experience,” Moran said. “Sprout let us record the pilot training session, and we’ve since turned it into an internal training tool for our new hires.”

She added, “The pilot program helped us to ensure we had plenty of content prepared going into our company-wide rollout of Sprout’s Employee Advocacy platform. And through a post-pilot survey, we gathered more valuable insights on how to make our program successful from the outset.”

Edgio officially introduced the new employee advocacy program to its workforce through a monthly sales awareness call and a companywide “EdgeTalks” presentation (Edgio’s version of a TED Talk). Moran said these forums were a vital way to communicate the “why” for the program clearly, and to offer a solid overview of program basics plus “tips and tricks” for users to make the most of employee advocacy.

Moran also emphasized that the “tremendous support” of Edgio’s Chief Marketing Officer, Nancy Maluso, who played no small part in helping to build momentum around the employee advocacy effort. “She continues to promote and encourage the program among our leadership teams,” Moran said.

With Sprout’s Reports, Moran tracks the impact of Edgio’s employee advocacy program and shares the results with employees to help them stay motivated “cheerleaders” for the brand.

Image of data points that reads "In three months since launching Employee Advocacy: 655% growth in impressions, 2.8K% growth in engagements, 102% Net audience growth 5k% increase in post-link clicks"

 

There’s been new business activity percolating at Edgio, too, which can be attributed to the company’s use of Employee Advocacy by Sprout. “During a recent team meeting, our sales leader in EMEA told us she’d received a lead from content shared through Advocacy,” said Moran. “I did a happy dance! It’s so exciting that we’re already starting to see fruit from our labor. It validates what we’re trying to do as a company, and why we’re working so hard to promote this program.”

Sprout makes it easy to jumpstart and grow employee advocacy

Moran said the employee advocacy program at Edgio is blooming, and the sales, marketing and customer success teams are particularly active in sharing content. But several product specialists and other subject matter experts have also become frequent users, and Moran said their outreach is particularly valuable for helping Edgio grow its reputation as an innovator.

“The ease of adopting a tool like Sprout helped our team embrace the new employee advocacy program quickly. After just the first month, the adoption rate was 34%,” Moran said. “Today, 20% of employees are active users, sharing content with their audiences more than three times per month, on average. Over time, I’d love to see our adoption rate hit 50%. That’s my aim.”

To learn more about how Employee Advocacy by Sprout can help amplify your brand’s social presence and engage your team—without spending more on paid promotion—request a demo today.