How to Turn Employees into Brand Advocates

Your employees are the backbone of your company’s success. As a key player in your social media marketing strategy, your employees have the ability to wear the hat of a brand marketer! Your reputation and brand image are not things that can be faked or bought, so employees who advocate your brand are essential to building a loyal network of engaged users and interested customers. GaggleAMP aims to utilize employees as advocates, and knowing how to empower your employees to become successful social media brand advocates can drive your social media campaign and gain your company traction in the virtual world.

• Engaged and empowered employees have the ability to tell your brand story, and their efforts can be the turning point for your social media campaign. Take a look at your employee base, and consider these ways to turn those employees into your brand advocates:
• Encourage your sales team to use social selling tools. No matter what business you’re in, you’ve already got a team of salespeople working for your company to earn profits. Turning these employees into brand advocates starts with the introduction of social media into their everyday lives. According to a report, 42.3% of surveyed salespeople use social in their current selling process with 5% of those attributing 50% of their closes to social. Encourage employees to use social selling by posting regularly. With an active online presence, not only is there an already built-in incentive, but they will indirectly promote your brand with their social networks as well.

• Encourage employees to promote within their personal networks. With the understanding that those employees who promote new products will likely also see an increase in their personal sales to follow, it’s enough incentive for most employees to want to be the first to get news out! They appear to users as ‘in-the-know’, and they’re likely to influence those users to perceive that employee as reliable and trustworthy. The best part is that the result is a more interactive employee/user connection that promotes your brand. And should the need ever arise for a crisis strategy (think: rogue ex-employee), then your brand advocates that have diligently been promoting and revealing the most up-to-date information can also utilize these highly-interactive networks to broadcast company-approved messages.

• Encourage already-active employees on social media to start posting for the company as well. Have a look at some common social media websites - Facebook, Twitter, and the like - and see which employees you have that are already active with personal profiles. These are the folks who would probably be most interested in becoming brand advocates! It’s not too difficult to convince an active social media user who is a loyal employee to mesh the two together. Once you’ve approached those employees, provide guidelines and empower them to post within the guidelines as they see fit!

Your employees are your biggest resource when it comes to social media marketing. They have personal networks where they can tap into customers with a genuine personality that is supportive of your company. Ask department heads about who they see as passionate and active employees who would be fit as brand advocates, and create social media guidelines before sending them off on a brand advocacy mission.

According to the National Business Research Institute, engaged employees produce twice as much work as unengaged employees. These people may also stick out from the rest because they:

• Believe in your company’s values, mission and goals
• Want to work to make things better for their teams, employees and the company
• Understand your business context and the bigger picture
• Are respectful to colleagues and always willing to help
• Stay up to date with developments, news and happenings within your industry