How To Create A Social Media Ambassador Project For Your Employees. It’s not the only problem brands face on social, but one that will probably reflect the fact that social media is always changing. In a nutshell, your employees spread the brand message on their personal social accounts, and therefore expand that organic reach even further. So when they do share Humana content, they have a more qualified audience.” Recommended for You With nearly 3,000 employees now actively engaged in the ‘advocacy’ program, it looks like using employees as brand evangelists is a strategy that works. Leads will come as people find your brand through these new, multiple sources of reach and engagement. Most brands can’t do this, or won’t. Remembering what makes employees like the company their work for in the first place is where you need to start. Make your team a happier one, and when you build out your advocate crew, they will be more open to being on brand message. People need to know that social media has a huge impact on the brand and how it handles itself. It’s not the hardest thing in the world to do, this ambassador idea.
You may not have noticed (we guess that you have) that social media organic reach is dwindling. It’s a problem. It’s not the only problem brands face on social, but one that will probably reflect the fact that social media is always changing.
Things happen in cycles, so we reckon that as new platforms and methods spring up in the coming years, organic reach will become a ‘thing’ once again.
Until then, brands are kind of scrambling for ways in which to reach a bigger audience. Social media can be incredibly powerful, but if the old ways are running out of steam, what can you do?
Turn to your team, perhaps? Brand ambassadors can be created using your employee base. These guys can then use their social media accounts to wax lyrical with your brand message.
In a nutshell, your employees spread the brand message on their personal social accounts, and therefore expand that organic reach even further. It’s a simple concept, based around the idea of having ‘evangelists’ out there spreading the word. And it’s a simple concept that works, with minimal costs involved.
Spreading the word doesn’t just happen overnight, though. First, we will take a look at the benefits of doing this, and then some strategies you can put in place to make it all happen.
Humana is a (healthy) healthcare brand, and it’s doing pretty well in fact. But it recognised that it needed to work on the organic reach issue, and simply get out there in front of more people.
And it pulled together a program that allowed it to dip its toes into the employee brand ambassador concept. The content that employees share and engage with is part of a unique balance of brand message and industry relevance. The two components work together and create a qualified audience that has lead generation potential.
According to Jason Spencer, Humana’s Social Media Community Manager: “Sixty percent (of the content) is health and well-being content, which allows [employees] to grow followers and become influencers in the space. So when they do share Humana content, they have a more qualified audience.”
With nearly 3,000 employees now actively engaged in the ‘advocacy’ program, it looks like using employees as brand evangelists is a strategy that works. Just a few months ago, Humana only had 500 employees involved. There’s obviously something to think about here.
The more engagement advocates bring into your social media platforms, the more likely it will be that revenue starts arriving. Leads will come as people find your brand through these new, multiple sources of reach and engagement. It is more than useful to start a project that involves identifying, nurturing and growing a brand advocate group in your team.
Generally speaking, though, it probably isn’t a good idea to just ask your employees to send out gushing tweets on their personal Twitter profile. Something has to happen between the point where you decide to ‘empower’ employees, and the point where they decide to talk about the brand…
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