How to make your employees the ambassadors of your brand?

Communication has long been the exclusive feature of a dedicated service within the company. The craze for social networks has jostled this state of affairs and communication is now everyone’s business. How to make your employees the ambassadors of your brand? The solution.

What is a collaborator ambassador?

Making employees ambassadorial employees is part of the company’s communication strategy. It is about encouraging employees to relay positive messages about the company to their knowledge, in their family circles, friendly, associative … with the aim of a snowball effect.
This employee advocacy strategy also relies heavily on social networks. Their attendance remains very strong daily. Communicating regularly is therefore a significant showcase for the company that wants to promote its products or services.

Although companies often have their own pages managed by Community Managers, many employees have opened accounts on different networks. Employee advocacy consists of encouraging them to share messages related to their professional life in the different communities in which they are active.

This is all the more important as the recommendation system is more important than ever in the current consumption process. It’s also a way for the company to reach new communities.

The fundamentals of collaborative engagement

Acting as an ambassador requires a strong collaborative commitment. For such a strategy to be put in place, employees must feel involved in the life of the company and supported by their hierarchy.

Support and internal action plan

If talking about the company has its intimates is rather natural, it is not necessarily on social networks. It is therefore useful to accompany employees to employee advocacy. It’s about putting in place an engagement strategy, an internal action plan. This strategy aims to train ambassadors to good practices, to teach them the codes of social networks, the keys to manage their communities and to establish a relationship of trust regarding the relevance of the content broadcast.

The issues in communication and marketing

Collaborative engagement brings great challenges for the company, in terms of communication and marketing.
Social networks are very busy and communications follow one another very quickly. To rely on the relay of information by its collaborators is a way for the company to renew its contents permanently. This increases the chances for the company to animate its own communities and to be visible in previously unprivileged or even unknown communities.

In addition, each employee of the company communicates on a point that matters to him and related to the interactions of the moment in his community. The content fits naturally into the discussion and finds a legitimacy that reflects in terms of business, in a principle of Inbound marketing.

HR issues: Involvement and well-being

A collaborator fulfilled in his work and satisfied with his company will have more predisposition to communicate about his job and his employer. The social climate within the company and HR management have a real impact on employee advocacy. Conducting an employee satisfaction survey provides a clear idea of ​​employees’ willingness to communicate positively.

But employee satisfaction is not always enough. Employees must perceive their commitment as a mutually winning strategy. Because if the interest for the company is blatant in terms of reputation and business, the hired employee must also find his account. This will be the case, for example, if he succeeds in generating leads to facilitate the achievement of his individual objectives or if he feels some recognition of his work in his communities, bringing him a form of gratification, well-being.

These results are motivating for the employee, which further increases his involvement. Being integrated into such a project of employee advocacy, feeling supported by its hierarchy and accompanied in its approach provides some momentum. Collaborative commitment is crucial in the communication strategy and feeds on it at the same time.

With customers, employees are the best ambassadors of a company. Collaborative engagement is a strategic issue for the company. This new mode of communication provokes a real craze, because it ensures excellent benefits for the company that sets it up.