Understanding and Nurturing Your Brand Ambassadors: A Key to Successful Employee Advocacy

Your brand ambassadors are not just employees; they are the authentic voice of your brand. To harness their full potential in an employee advocacy program, you must focus on understanding them and meeting their needs. In this LinkedIn newsletter, we'll explore how empathizing with your brand ambassadors can create a more persuasive and impactful employee advocacy experience.

To fully appreciate the importance of your brand ambassadors, you need to understand what drives them and how you could facilitate them to stay involved. 

The challenges of misalignment

Now, when it comes to challenges, let's talk about the elephant in the room: even the most passionate brand ambassadors can face challenges when the suggested content to post doesn’t align with their needs and interests. It can be frustrating as it may hinder their ability to connect with their audience authentically. In such cases, brand ambassadors may feel like their personal brand is at odds with the content they're asked to post, potentially impacting their credibility and enthusiasm. It's crucial to address this issue by providing a flexible content strategy that allows brand ambassadors to tailor their posts to what resonates with them and their unique audience, ensuring a harmonious alignment between personal interests and brand objectives.

Beyond content misalignment, brand ambassadors can encounter various other challenges when participating in an advocacy program. 

• Some brand ambassadors don't want to be the "spam king" or "queen" by bombarding their network with work-related stuff.👑
• Other colleagues have already posted about the same topic, so they are afraid of posting the same content.🫣
• Maintaining consistency in posting and engagement can be demanding. 
• Some brand ambassadors may worry about potential negative feedback or criticism they might receive, impacting their online reputation. 
• They may not view their daily work activities as something worth sharing with their network, as it often seems routine and unremarkable to them. 

A great example is a regional hospital in the Netherlands. With over 100 ambassadors, they work daily to improve their employer brand and tell great stories about their daily work. Despite the screaming staff shortage, they take the time to actively promote their organization and work on social media to interest potential employees. What was striking was that they did not realize that their work was interesting to share with the outside world. But saving lives every day is an admirable and very interesting profession! Meanwhile, they have spread a lot of information through employees and, in doing so, hire several new people and reduce the workload.

So, it’s essential to realize that what your colleagues do is worthwhile to share.

This is a classic case of brand ambassadors feeling that their daily work activities are too mundane to share. They underestimate the value of their unique perspective and insights from their day-to-day experiences, not realizing that what might seem routine could be highly informative and interesting to their network.🤷

Acknowledging and supporting these challenges is vital in enabling a strong and resilient advocacy program that genuinely empowers brand ambassadors to thrive while overcoming these obstacles.

Connect with your brand ambassadors🤝

Identifying the needs of your brand ambassadors is very important to keep them involved in your brand ambassador program. What motivates them? What drives them to post work-related content on social media? I’ll share a few tips to retrieve that information. 

1.  Survey for Insights

Start with surveys to gather insights into what motivates your brand ambassadors to post suggested work-related content. Ask about their personal and professional interests to align your content. 

At Apostle, we've done some groundwork behind the scenes and sent a survey to the brand ambassadors of some of our clients. We asked them their opinions on the frequency of proposed posts, their content, and why they sometimes don't share posts.

From the survey, there's often a disconnect between what the marketing/communication department wants to convey and what brand ambassadors find attractive to post. And how much they want to post. These are interesting insights for optimization and improvement. 💪

📊 Seeking some survey inspiration? Let us know in the comments if you'd love to get your hands on our survey for your own research! 🧐

💡Our TIP is, therefore: 

Ask your brand ambassadors for feedback and adapt your brand ambassador program. A good relationship between the project manager and brand ambassadors and mutual understanding is the key to a successful program.

2. One-on-One Conversations

We also encourage you to have a chat with your colleagues to hear their feedback instead of sending a digital survey. It's more enjoyable, and you can inquire further! Win-win 🙂This will allow you to delve deeper into their motivations and challenges and show that you genuinely care about their input.

Now that you understand their needs, tailor your support accordingly. This involves several key elements:

1.  Their social media, their rules

Empower brand ambassadors by granting them autonomy over what they share and when and allow them to customize content to fit their interests, personal brand, and the preferences of their audience. This empowers them to be authentic in their advocacy. 

1. Resources for Personal Branding

Provide resources and training to help brand ambassadors strengthen their personal brand. This can include guidance on social media best practices and content creation.

3. Recognition and Acknowledgment🙌

Recognize and acknowledge the efforts of your brand ambassadors. Publicly celebrate their successes and the impact they have on the brand.

4. Feedback and Improvement

Foster a feedback culture where brand ambassadors can share their thoughts and suggestions. Implement changes based on their feedback to enhance the advocacy experience.

A Collaborative Partnership🤝

Remember, your brand ambassadors are not just advocates; they are partners. Collaborate with them on key aspects of the advocacy program:

1. Setting Program Goals Together

Involve brand ambassadors in setting program goals. This helps align their personal aspirations with the company's objectives.

1. Co-Creating Content

Engage brand ambassadors in co-creating content. Their insights and perspectives can lead to more compelling and authentic materials.

1. Mutual Growth

Highlight how their involvement in advocacy can contribute to their personal and professional growth. It's a win-win situation.

Conclusion: A Collaborative Approach to Advocacy

Working together in a two-way street is key to unleashing your brand ambassadors' full potential. By really getting what makes them tick and giving and receiving valuable feedback, you lay the foundation for their active participation. Celebrating their personal growth and unique flair within the advocacy program paves the way for more impactful, authentic, and long-lasting advocacy efforts.

Ready to jump into this collaborative approach to employee advocacy? Together, you and your brand ambassadors can craft an exciting narrative that speaks to your audience, builds credibility, and drives home meaningful results. Start this collaborative journey today and see the positive impact it can have on your brand. 🚀

If you have any additional questions about employee advocacy programs or want to discuss the possibilities for your organization, feel free to reach out to me: 

📞+31 6 24111692 or 📧koen@apostlesocial.com

Or schedule a free meeting.

About the Author

Back in 2010, I cried out that I wanted to work on something big, something new, and that I would be able to serve companies worldwide. At the time, I was working in the hospitality industry, but I felt the need to do something different. At home, I got plenty of support, but those around me couldn't quite understand what exactly I wanted to do. My future was already pretty much mapped out, wasn't it? And I was earning quite a bit of money with my previous company, wasn't I? So why take so much risk?

A personal tweet changed everything back in 2011. I tweeted about my trip to New York and got in touch with the director of a large bank in the Netherlands. The topic quickly changed from New York to social media and it resulted in a new client. A new customer with just one personal tweet? The idea for a brand advocacy platform was born.

From an incubator in Venlo, I started my startup to further develop the idea of including personal accounts in the marketing mix. It gave me a great network and above all allowed me to get to know myself as an entrepreneur. As a true innovator and a builder. Before that time I didn't know that about myself. Ultimately, the step into this new world has been more than worth the risk!