Empowering your workforce to become employee brand ambassadors is a powerful but often overlooked outreach strategy. Learn what an employee brand ambassador does, how to create an employee brand ambassador program, and review eight examples for getting started.
Human capital is the most valuable resource of any company. Your employees dedicate their effort and ingenuity to solving problems and bringing your offering to the world.
With a wealth of knowledge about your products and a vested interest in the company’s success, your employees are perfectly positioned to become employee brand ambassadors.
What Does an Employee Brand Ambassador Do?
Employee brand ambassador job descriptions are simple–use personal social media accounts to contribute to the company’s online brand.
Confused about what a brand is? The many different interactions your customer base has with your company add up to an overall impression or perception of the business. This is known as your brand. Your company already has a brand, whether you’re actively creating and cultivating it or allowing it to develop organically.
In the digital age, most consumers interact with companies on social media before making contact or stepping through their doors. Most applicants learn about companies through social media, as well. Therefore, for the long-term success of your company, it is essential that your social media presence is filled with stories that accurately represent who you are.
Current employees can become social media employee brand ambassadors through strategically sharing your content, as well as contributing their unique perspectives. Potential customers engage more readily with content delivered by an individual, especially if that individual has expertise.
Employee brand ambassadors support and reinforce your branding efforts by adding authority to the claims you make. The benefits to the company are clear, but participation in employee brand ambassador programs has advantages for employees, as well. When employees feel personally involved in the success and direction of their company, they tend to stick around longer - improving employee retention rates - and stay more engaged.
Not only can an employee brand ambassador program change the way your customer base sees you, but it can also attract top talent. High-value candidates prioritize culture and fit when seeking employment, and stories from current employees can help differentiate you from others in your field.
How to Make Your Employees Brand Ambassadors
Follow these steps to create employee brand ambassadors.
Check your work culture.
Happy, satisfied, engaged, and motivated employees make great employee brand ambassadors. Disgruntled, disengaged, or discouraged employees do not. Make sure that overall engagement is high before starting to work with employee brand ambassadors.
Formalize your employee brand ambassador program.
Simply encouraging employees to post about the company on social media isn’t a social media brand ambassador strategy. With a formal program, you attract interested and engage employees, clearly outline the benefits, and can track participation to distribute rewards.
Share your brand vision and goals with potential employee brand ambassadors.
Give them resources to make creating and sharing content easy. Put everything they need in one, easily accessible location, including logos, brand colors, and quality photographs.
Look to other employee ambassador program examples for ideas.
How are your competitors leveraging employee brand ambassadors? How can you use social media to position yourself in the marketplace?
Listen to your employee ambassadors.
Employees have a unique perspective and can help you fill gaps in your branding strategy. Employee brand ambassadors aren’t just mindless drones that push out the corporate message. They should be treated as valued contributors.
Eight Ways to Create Your Employee Ambassador Program
If you’re ready to move ahead with an employee ambassador program, check out these eight easily accessible ways to get started.
Start With Employee Recognition
Your employees are solving problems and making an impact every day. Recognize when their efforts go above and beyond by featuring employees on your social media account. Encourage employees to contribute their own stories of exceptionalism using an employee-specific hashtag.
Distribute Swag
Useful and high-quality branded materials are a great way to jumpstart your employee ambassador program. Encourage employees to share images of company swag, such as t-shirts, mugs, hats, or photos of themselves using these items.
Start a Newsletter
Give your employees something to share. Every week, gather everything worth posting about and send a round-up out to the company. Make the content easily shareable.
Lead by Example
Many employees may be fearful about posting content on social media while they are at work. Managers and directors can show their support for employee brand ambassadors by creating and posting content during the workday.
Hold a Competition
Competitions are a great way to obtain an influx of content. Identify a specific goal in your brand strategy, and think about the amount and type of content you would need to reach that goal. Then, create a challenge that elicits the kind of content you’re looking for. Choose a desirable incentive to encourage participation.
Make Use of Takeovers
One of the best ways to use employee brand ambassadors is for an inside look at your company's operations. Offer behind-the-scenes employees a chance to take over your social media accounts for a day or a week. Not only is this type of content one of the best ways to build trust with your customer base, but the contributing employee is also likely to share the content with their followers.
Tap Existing Talent
Among your wonderful employees, there are bound to be a few social media influencers. Whether they promote pictures of their dog or the best hikes in the area in their off-time, these are folks with an established following who know how to tell engaging and captivating stories. These savvy marketers are naturals at creating content that gets attention, considering how a post from a social media influencer is different than a comment from a regular consumer, and should be your first recruits into an employee brand ambassador program.
Focus on Storytelling
Potential employees and customers can get information about your vision, mission, and culture by visiting your website, but the decision to form a relationship with a business is heavily influenced by emotions.
Humans are wired to connect with stories rather than simply cold, hard facts. A personalized story about the extended parental leave your company offers is much more effective at establishing your brand than dry statistics.
