How to Turn Your Employees Into Brand Ambassadors

People who work for you are your most precious asset. Engaged employees will bring your business several times more revenue. If you treat your team with respect, acknowledge their efforts and reward for their work, let them grow professionally, they will become highly involved in your company. They can develop into your brand ambassadors — those who are willing to share your company’s mission and values, those who build trust around your brand and its products.

Channel your team’s commitment and enthusiasm into raising your brand awareness, boosting its credibility, and building a community of engaged customers. Give your employees tools and watch the magic happen. Here are some tips on how to unlock the full potential of your staff and turn them into employee brand ambassadors.

01) Encourage Open Communication

If you want your employees to talk about the company, then give them information. Keep your staff updated on new projects, partnerships, products, and processes. Communicate with them, listen to them, and encourage them to speak up. Make them truly involved in the work process.

02) Stay Connected

Ask your employees to like or follow the company pages on social media. Let them add their place of work on their social profiles so that the company page looks alive and populated. Connect with them on LinkedIn, Xing, or other professional social networks. You might also want to ask people in your company to leave reviews on Google, Foursquare, or any other service they might be using. Make sure you are not pushing anybody.

03) Incentivize Sharing

Don’t limit or block access to Facebook or Twitter in the office. Your employees will just use their phones to get online. Instead, let them use social media and encourage them to share updates about work. You can help them by providing content that is worth sharing. Create experiences — have lunch together, go see a movie, celebrate someone’s birthday. Invent unique corporate hashtags and use them on Instagram or Twitter.

04) Customize Email Signatures

Make sure email signatures of your future business ambassadors include the person’s position and the name of the company with a website link. Rather than constructing a generic signature, you can design the one that stands out and draws attention to your company. Choose a template among email signature examples or create a fully customized one for each employee.

05) Welcome Employee-Generated Content

You might want your employees to write articles for a corporate blog. They are experts in what they do and certainly have something valuable to share. Let them talk about their area of expertise, describe their unique way of solving problems, publish a thought leadership piece, or just tell the world about a usual day in the office.

Apart from the blog, you can feature them in other media. A nice way to keep your team engaged is to give them access to the company Instagram account for a day. Make them a guest editor. Let them take photos or share work-related stories. You’ll be surprised how much interesting and fun content you can create with their help.

06) Use Custom Tools

Every person has his or her preferences for online communication tools. Let everyone pick what they feel most comfortable with. Don’t force them to stick with what you believe is your best-performing channels. Let them represent your company on a variety of services.

07) Training

If there are people in your team who do not feel comfortable with online communication, you can offer them some training. Briefly instruct your employees on how to use social media for networking or self-promotion by organizing a fun workshop or by handing out info materials. If you succeed to engage them, they will probably post about it.

Fostering Employee Brand Ambassadors

To make your business bloom, you should use the full potential of your most valuable asset — people working for your company. Under the positive conditions of information transparency, mutual respect, recognition, and trust, your staff will become employee brand ambassadors. They will gladly share their enthusiasm and positive experience with others. So cherish your employees. Provide them with all the necessary communication tools and encourage them to share. And keep in mind that even a group of PR and marketing experts won’t be able to create a more appealing image of the company than your regular team.