4 Reasons Why You Need to Let Your Employees be Your Biggest Fans

Mar. 24, 2011

I’m sure that you’ve all heard the term “brand ambassador” at some point in time. A brand ambassador is someone who helps drive demand for a product, service or company by directly interacting with your target audience. In the past, brand ambassadors have been employees that are hired to go out and promote a product often at tradeshows and events, but, now that social media exists and is seen as a mainstream marketing tactic, your employees can directly interact with your potential customers using those platforms, allowing every person you employ to act as a brand ambassador, if you let them.

There’s a lot of fear among organizations that giving their employees free reign to promote their brand is a risky initiative. I mean, your brand is your most valuable commodity and, if you let them just go and say what they want, then there’s the chance they’ll actually say whatever they want, and what if it’s not what you want them to say, right? I’m not here to tell you that there isn’t the risk for some of your employees to go and say things that you don’t want them saying about your brand, but, in my opinion, the benefits strongly outweigh the potential negatives and the risks can certainly be mitigated through proper communication and support within your organization.

Why should you let your employees become brand ambassadors?

It puts a personal and real face on your brand. People like to hear about a brand from other people. They don’t want a faceless corporate social media manager telling them what to think, they want to hear from real people!
It creates buzz and helps expand your reach. The more people you have talking about your brand, the more people that will hear about it.
They represent your brand anyways. Your employees are out there representing your brand every day, with your consent or without it.

So now you know why you should, but that doesn’t mean I’ve convinced you. You’re still concerned about the possible implications of just letting your employees go out on their own and promote your brand. So—how can you mitigate the risks? Well for one thing, you can ensure that you’re communicating your company’s brand message to your employees all the time. You want your employees to live your brand, to believe in it and to understand exactly what your brand is and what that means. This is something that every organization should be doing anyways, but, if you’re doing it successfully, you’re helping to significantly reduce the likelihood that one of your employees will go out and completely misrepresent your brand’s message. You want your employees to understand your corporate brand and you can help them to become brand ambassadors through this process by doing several things including: leading by example to show them how you talk about your brand and give them a model to work towards and supporting their use of social media. The fact is that people are going to talk about their jobs through social media whether you endorse it or not, and by supporting their actions you can help to ensure that the things that they’re saying about their jobs helps to spread and support your brand’s identity.

So—what’s the bottom line?

Don’t be afraid of what people will say. Help your employees become brand ambassadors and you may be surprised by the great benefits!

Image by Uncleweed on Flickr.

Posted by Amberlie Denny at March 24, 2011 10:30 AM