Social media is all about creating brand awareness and delivering your message to the right people. Companies are seeking brand ambassadors to spread their message across social media, but many companies forget that their most important and loyal brand ambassadors are their employees themselves. Especially companies targeting Millennials, people born between 1980 and 2000, should seek ways to empower their employees to become brand ambassadors. For Millennials, the Internet, connective technology, smart phones and social media have pretty much always been around. They are connected, share online, speak up and believe they can change the world. When Millennials want to buy a service or product, they go online to research the products, compare prices and read reviews. This is where it becomes interesting – reviews and recommendations from friends and family are the most valuable source when researching products. So start to spread your brand message through the right people and follow the next steps to empower your employees to become your social media brand ambassadors.
Educate your employees
Do your employees know what your business stands for? Do they know your values and your goals? Before you can turn any employee into a brand ambassador, you need to educate your employees on your brand’s values, your products or services, and your customer service policy. This is a very important step because you don’t want your employees to jeopardize your brand’s values.
Create a social media policy
Create a social media policy with guidelines that explain what can be shared across social media platforms and what not. However, when creating the policy, it is important that you encourage sharing and reduce fear. Create clear guidelines, but don’t stipulate many restrictions that employees need to go through before they can share a status update on Facebook or tweet.
Make it easy
Don’t make your employees search for content to share. Be open and regularly communicate with your team about new product developments, marketing initiatives and new strategies. When you share these updates through email, you could for example include pre-formulated status updates and suggest they use them when posting on social media. This will also help your employees familiarize themselves with your brand’s tone.
