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Inside Comm’ #8
How Do You Turn Employees into Ambassadors for Your Company?

Helene Renaud

Author

Helene Renaud

Welcome to Inside Comm’, the podcast in which I explore the internal communication landscape!
I’m Hélène Renaud, the host of this podcast. You’ll get to know me throughout these episodes where I alternate between shorter episodes with some quick tips & tricks and slightly longer episodes where I discuss with internal communicators some best practices and some of their inspiring projects.

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How do you turn employees into ambassadors for your company?

As a company or brand, you invest a lot in communication and marketing.

But have you really thought about the potential you could achieve if your employees were the voice of this communication?

It depends on the number of employees of course, but just imagine the snowball effect of your colleagues delivering messages to their various circles. Think about it, you’ve got the family circle, friend circle, community circle, sports circle…

Sounds pretty interesting, doesn’t it?

So today, I’m giving you 5 ways to start setting up employee advocacy, or how to make your employees become your brand ambassadors.

#1 Create shareable content

My first piece of advice seems obvious, but it’s vital. Make content available on social networks that your colleagues will want to share. No more dry communication focused on products! Make sure your communication plans include content that showcases the company, the work achieved by teams, the wins, the shared moments. In short, content that’s rewarding for employees and that makes them want to share it with as many people as possible without looking like sandwich men.

#2 Discount codes

My 2nd piece of advice is for BtoC companies. If you really want your products to be talked about and your employees to get their close circles to benefit from them, then go for discount codes. You’ll see that pride in getting your nearest and dearest to benefit from your products is contagious, and in no time at all, you’ll have new customers, with very little effort!

#3 Influencers

The 3rd idea for today is to find influencers in your company. Similar to how you see them today on social networks, it can be interesting to launch a company’s employee advocacy programme starting with a few people chosen for their network or their impact.

Don’t be afraid to approach them first to tell them about the campaign you plan to run. And don’t hesitate to get their feedback or opinions. It can always be interesting to get an expert’s opinion if you need to take the strategy in a new direction.

Once the influencers are on board and a plan seems in order, don’t forget the help of other colleagues.

#4 Share your plan

Which leads me to my 4th piece of advice…

An action plan and a strategy will then have to be put in place to maximise the results. This strategy is designed to tell the colleagues/ambassadors about the key aspects and codes of the networks.

Take the time to explain the entire campaign to them. This will make them even more committed.

#5 Gamify your strategy

And finally, my last piece of advice is to gamify this strategy if you want to maintain it long term.

This means setting up related challenges between teams or colleagues with rewards up for grabs. Like at AB Tasty for example. This start-up has set up a system of virtual credits where if an employee likes or shares a news item, they receive bricks that can then be converted into a team or individual reward. For example a drink with colleagues, plants for the office, etc.

So there are my 5 tips for getting started. In another episode, we’ll come back to how to make your business professional by setting up dedicated platforms or specific tools and by measuring the impact of your strategies so you can adapt them for maximum results.

But remember, before starting such an internal communication campaign, that any employee who finds their work fulfilling and is happy working for the company is more likely to say positive things about the company.

So don’t forget the internal satisfaction survey before starting anything!

I’ll just conclude by giving you my last reason for implementing such campaigns within your company, think about the new generations… having grown up in a world where the opinions and views of their circle are readily available, they are particularly tuned in to this type of approach. Employee advocacy can therefore be an excellent way to reach them.

See you soon for another episode of Inside Comm’ 😉

 

By Hélène Renaud