Trying to expand your business’s reach on social media? One major resource for boosting your brand may be right inside your office. According to a recent study on employee activism, about 50 percent of employees share pictures and videos on social media about their work. A third do so without ever being prompted by their employer. Harnessing such in-house appreciation for your brand can amplify your business’s presence and attract new customers as well as top-tier talent. Learn more about how you can leverage your dedicated employees as brand ambassadors below.
What Is an Employee Brand Ambassador?
A brand ambassador is an individual who positively represents a business’s products or services to their network. Typically, this is a strategy to attract new customers and drive sales. Brand ambassadors often receive support from their employer, including training, guidelines, shareable content, and incentives, to help market the brand. In addition, employee ambassadors can promote a brand on social media by liking, commenting, and sharing their company’s content. Brand ambassadors use various sites, from business-centered LinkedIn to the more socially driven Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
How Do Employee Brand Ambassadors Expand Reach?
Investing in employee brand ambassadors to promote your business on social media has multiple benefits. Here are the top four:
-
Heighten brand awareness:
Each employee has a network of friends, family members, and other social media followers. These people may or may not follow your business’s social media pages. Still, they’ll be exposed to your brand whenever your employee chooses to like, share, or comment about it. Given that the average employee connects to about ten times more people than their brand, you’ll get a much larger organic reach by recruiting even one of them as a brand ambassador. Multiply this by the number of your team members, and your business could see as much as a 561 percent increase in the reach of your brand’s content.
-
Shape the public perception of your brand:
Employee brand ambassadors can showcase your company’s ingenuity and quality to an expanded audience. After all, they know your brand better than anyone, and people are more likely to take their word over the company CEO. Building a positive culture and keeping your team in the loop about company visions and plans is critical here. When employees are satisfied with their work and passionate about your business’s products or services, they’re much more likely to want to promote it to others.
-
Attract new clients:
Employee brand ambassadors’ posts are personal and relatable; they let people know what to expect in an experience with your brand and what makes it stand out from the competition. Depending on their level of engagement, brand ambassadors may also personally respond to any questions from their audience about choosing your company’s products or services.
-
Recruit top talent:
Just as customers can relate to “real” people using a company’s goods or products, people in the job market often seek out current and former employees as a part of their research about a possible employer. Brand ambassadors willing to engage with potential recruits can share their personal experiences about their time with the company. This can illustrate how the everyday work environment reflects the mission, vision, and values stated on a corporate website. Employees who become ambassadors can benefit, too, since they can expand their professional network through such opportunities.
Employee brand ambassadors can serve as a critical part of your business’s promotional platform. If you’re hoping to get your employees on board, remember to have a marketing strategy in place to increase engagement with your brand—and allow employee brand ambassadors to offer feedback and suggestions of their own. You should also create and share clear social media policies. This helps to provide some overall brand ambassador guidelines and resources for sharing your company’s content on relevant platforms. And, of course, make sure your business is producing high-quality products and services that your team gets excited about!
Need help promoting brand advocacy within your team? Not sure how to develop a social media strategy for your business? One Part Social can help you with that and more. Reach out today.