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

Four Ways To Get Foot Traffic To Your Retail Store

As the online landscape continually changes, retailers are getting more creative to drive store traffic and keep customers coming back. 

There are a variety of ways to connect with customers through social media, but not all strategies are created equal. The most important thing to keep in mind when driving traffic from social media is that you should target people who are interested in what you have to sell.

Here are some smart ways to connect with your customers and bring them in:

1) Facebook Likes

Start by offering incentives for customers to ‘like’ your store’s Facebook page. Offering a fan only special is one of the most effective ways for business to drive traffic with social media. Make the offer truly valuable and then build a sense of immediacy by imposing a reasonable deadline. Upon liking your page, all of your customer’s friends will be notified through their newsfeed, highlighting your store.

For example, while customers are in-store, encourage them to ‘like’ your page and get a discount. Or you can send out an email offer to claim a free store item or discount for responding within 3 days. With a web-based point of sale, you can track who likes your page in the same browser you use to ring sales.

2) Twitter Targeting

Sometimes, business owners have to go out and find their new customers. Twitter is a great place to find customers whose preferences are in line with what you have to offer. Use the Advanced Search function is a great way to help you narrow your communication to customers who are geographically close.  You can even layer a little behavioural targeting to search for those who have tweeted about you or your competitors.

Upon finding these potential customers, start putting relevant content out there to motivate them to visit your store.

3) Word-of-mouth Interactions

As the first form of real advertising, Word-of-mouth (WOM) promotions should not be undervalued as part of a social strategy.  Although it may seem intangible, it can be quantified to build store loyalty. Offering incentives to write reviews on outlets like Google Places is a great place to start. For example, “Love [brand/store name]? Share your thoughts on our Google Places page and get 10% off your next purchase.” It can be a very easy, honest approach if you already have a loyal customer base. Simply, increase loyalty within and have them share the love online to open doors to new customers.

4) Building Loyalty

A great deal of using social media to drive traffic involves incentives. With multiple variations, there are big retailers out there who do it right and reap the benefits. 

For example, if a store that provided services or products aligned with your interests offers 15% birthday discount, wouldn’t you want to take advantage of it? Or for example, if you buy flowers every Friday, wouldn’t it be great to choose the store that gave you a free bouquet with every 5 that you buy?

There are lots of channels to bring people into your store. Social media is just one out of many that will contribute to both your existing and future customers.  

Which social media strategies have you tried before? What worked, what didn't? Share your thoughts with me in comments.