Your Employees As Brand Ambassadors, Engaged in Social Media – by John Hendrie

It can be daunting, as we trumpet our message, build that relationship with our Customer and promote our product/service integrity and value.  Our effort is usually top-down, ensuring that the message and the chosen social media match our voice and goals.

Back in the 1980’s we had a movement afoot called Employee Involvement, coalesced around Quality.  We came up with Quality Circles, brainstorming, SPC,  Pareto analyses, for example.  The objective was to harness the ideas, creativity and energy of the full employee population directed to specific results.  In the last thirty years, these philosophies have languished, crushed by corporate greed and expediency, a faltering economy, and a very suspicious workforce.  There is little trust.

But, we have an opportunity to build our Brand and reputation, and this revolves around how we communicate, potentially integrating the social network of our employees with the network we use to reach our customers.  Make no mistake about it – your employees share their opinions about their employer through their social media, and, depending upon the culture you have created, their commentary may be positive or not.  The social web is still an untamed frontier, as noted by Igloo, but there are ways to engage your employees and advance your Brand.  “The question boils down to this: If a brand is supposed to give customers something to identify with and add meaning to their lives, shouldn’t helping employees express themselves as individuals help the brand as well?”

Ultimately, this still comes back to your culture and sense of trust.  There are several guidelines to consider:

-         Do not issue too many Orders

-         Give employees resources, a roadmap with helpful pointers

-         Provide your “internal” Fans a voice on-line

This effort is not without risk, as you can imagine, for not everyone is a true believer, but, particularly if you have identified your stellar employees, the convergence of efforts on the social web (the trickle-up social communication of your employees meeting the top-down Management effort) can be extraordinary.  We are in the age of the Customer Experience.  They are wired, too, perhaps to one of your employees!

 

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