Building a team of brand advocates can make a huge impact because in today’s marketplace, social media advocacy can be one of the best advertising tools in the marketing tool belt. Consumers trust what friends, family, and end users have to say about a product or service more than scripted advertising or public relations spin. Consumers want to know what real people think.
Building a Team of Brand Advocates
Customers Are Watching You
Potential customers are vetting you, and they find the good and bad. They read reviews and testimonials shared by other consumers, and this directly affects their purchasing decisions. One bad review can lose many sales. What employees have to say about an organization carries weight.
Therefore your team of employees can have a significant impact on social media marketing. The majority of your employees are on social networks daily. Americans are active on social media for more than 2 hours per day. What is the average time spent on social media each day? In that time, they can help your brand—or hurt your operation.
Social Media Policy
So, building a team of brand advocates and training your team to be brand evangelists begins with a social media policy. If you don’t have one, it’s time. Stop Ignoring Your Social Media Policy. But it doesn’t end there. A policy gathering dust in a manual sitting in a desk drawer does little good. Your team needs advice, reminders, and examples. They need to be trained. To become advocates, your employees need to know what to do and what not to do. And if you believe one signed policy or one or two meetings will accomplish this, you may be in shock.
It’s About Training
I recently conducted a leadership training session about social media with our managers. I reviewed the business’s social media policy, and we shared examples of how employees can hurt or help a brand on social media.
Then, we asked the managers to take the message to their teams. We made it easy. To introduce the idea, we gave them a 10-minute meeting to conduct with their individual teams. Please feel free to copy and use this meeting.
Here’s the Meeting—Social Media and Your Team
Social Media includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok and more. It’s any network open to the public where comments and images may be shared.
Sharing comments and images of employees, customers, and work can be a great way to market our company or…it can get us in a jam. The bottom line is, we can only share what we’ve been given permission to share or what was shared by our customer.
Do
DO share from company networks and sites.
DO follow the company on social media.
DO submit ideas for blogs, news about customers, and interesting work-related stories.
DO share customer-created content.
DO be yourself, have fun, and share good news about the company—it helps us all.
Don’t
Don’t be disrespectful or mean to employees, customers, or vendors.
Don’t connect the company with political, religious, or controversial subjects.
Don’t be stupid, such as mentioning the company and then posting unsavory comments or images. For example, “Hey, I’m on vacation from [insert company name] and this is me at the nude beach!” Really, nobody wants to see.
Don’t let social media interfere with work.
What’s the Next Step?
At the end of the meeting, we informed our teammates that the marketing department would randomly hand out company-branded apparel and promotional products to teammates who shared our content on social media.
The “Social Media and our Team” meeting is a good follow-up to reviewing your social media policy. It opens the conversation, solicits questions, and identifies advocates. It can also help your organization avoid social media mistakes that lead to disaster. And it only takes one social media miscue to lose a client forever. If you’d like advice on conducting this meeting, let me know.
How Can I Help You?
I like to help people and organizations, but I have three criteria I consider before taking an assignment – I believe in what the organization stands for, I know I can help, and it looks like fun. If you have any questions, Contact Me.
So, does your business have a management training plan? Because if not, many organizations, large and small, use my book, The New Manager’s Workbook, a crash course in effective management, as the basis for their leadership development program. Check it out.
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