How To Turn Your Socially Engaged Employees Into Brand Advocates?

In social media, there is nothing more powerful than someone advocating for your brand. Advocates give their friends, families and colleagues trusted advice that is far more credible than any source of advertising; they defend a business against negative messaging in the countless small interactions that determine a brand's health. They volunteer ideas for product and service improvements.

And they do it all for free.

It's no wonder, then, that just about everyone is looking for advocates. Companies are executing deliberate social media programs to find, activate and maintain these vital assets. Understandably, current engagement effort are focused on making evangelists out of customers, widely considered the most authentic and valuable spokespeople, influences in the news media, academia and other fields are also cultivated. But while businesses reach out to these external constituents, they often forget about the potential advocates -their own employees.

Here are a few ideas to help you turn your employees into brand rockstars:

1) Make It Fun

Hold a brainstorming session. Encourage your employees to tweet about your brand's personality, share images (or even videos) of an upcoming event. Summer is a great time to capture images of fun events and socials and if you start now, the buzz can carry through the fall and winter. Don't be afraid to show off your company's inner workings. The key is to ensure that your content is relevant to your audience and related to your industry. Interestingly enough, it also serves as a strong recruiting tool.

2) Make It Easy

Send out suggested tweets/posts every now and then. Although you don't want a bunch of copycat posts, it's okay to rally the troops by sending out suggestions. This is a useful strategy for companies/brands who may just be adopting social media in their strategies or asking employees to get involved. If you can start the initiatives by giving some helpful recommendations, it will get the wheels turning.

3) Make It Tangible

If you receive inbound leads or interest thanks to their social efforts, be sure to communicate that back to employees. If they can understand how their presence on social channels directly impacts the business, they'll be much more likely to maintain an active account.

Keeping an active, relevant social media shouldn't be one person's job. It really is important to involve your whole organization in order to have social media channels serve their intended purpose.

By empowering employees to be a brand advocate, you're ensuring that your audience gets a steady stream of content and that your employees feel connected to your company.

Are you nurturing your professional relationships to gain more brand advocates? What do you do to encourage your team to do more? Share your thoughts with me in comments