Without the support of employees, a company’s branding efforts can only be so successful. It’s when the whole team comes together to promote the business, and your employees have all become effective brand ambassadors, that your business’s brand is able to truly shine. But forcing employees to take part in branding efforts can seem demanding and may not have the same result as when they contribute voluntarily.
To offer some ideas on how business leaders can transform their team members into eager, authentic brand ambassadors, 10 successful entrepreneurs from Young Entrepreneur Council answered the following question:
What's one specific way you can encourage employees to help contribute to a company's branding efforts? How do you do this without seeming demanding?
1. Let employees use company time to act as brand ambassadors
Allow them to do it at work. As an example, asking a team member to promote your company on their social media accounts on their off time will come off as demanding and imposing. Letting them do it on the clock will make them feel more at ease and they will be more likely to do so, especially since they’re getting paid. —Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance
2. Treat your employees right
If you have a great company and treat your employees like they are truly part of the team, then they will also love your company and branding efforts. The more you take care of your team members, the more likely they will speak highly of the brand and what it has to offer. —Zac Johnson, Blogging.org
3. Draft social media copy for them to share as brand ambassadors
To help employees contribute to building our brand on social media, we'll sometimes have our marketing team draft copy that team members can use to share our company's content on their personal channels. Not everyone is great at coming up with pithy tweets, even if they're excited about the work they're doing! This takes away some of that friction. —Diana Goodwin, MarketBox
4. Build branding into your company culture
One of our company core values is "Always Branding." Every week we discuss how team members have lived that core value (or seen someone else exemplifying it). Utilizing fun colors and branding is another great way to boost branding efforts. Make it easy for team members to represent the brand by providing them with free T-shirts and apparel so that they can wear it out and about. —Nick Friedman, College Hunks Hauling Junk & Moving
5. Ask employees to write thought leadership content
We ask our employees to write thought leadership content that we publish on our blog or LinkedIn. Since we provide custom software development services, this serves as branding material to our prospects. Our employees also love to create content close to their heart since this increases their skills and also gives them increased visibility on the company's site and LinkedIn. —Piyush Jain, SIMpalm
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6. Incentivize employees to take action
Incentivize employees to take action. Encourage them to create user-generated content for the company, and then offer them something special in return. This could be a bonus, discounts, open recognition, awards, or another form of public praise that shows your appreciation. —Jared Atchison, WPForms
7. Feature employee work as your branding
Make it easy for employees to share and you will see a lot more participation and output. If you are a business-to-business services company, your employees are your brand. Want more participation? Feature your employees and their work as a part of your company branding. To make it easy, use an employee advocacy platform (our favorite is GaggleAMP) to measure and incentivize social sharing of company assets. —Dan Golden, BFO (Be Found Online)
8. Use employees as brand ambassadors in your video content
You can include employees in promoting your products and services. A great way to do this is through video content. You can create videos promoting your brand and its products, and feature your team. Including employees will encourage them to think creatively about how they want to be portrayed and how to position the products. —Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms
9. Ask employees to leave company reviews
I believe a good way to encourage employees to help with branding without seeming pushy is to simply ask them to leave a review on job sites like Glassdoor after a career milestone. We usually ask team members to leave feedback after their one-year work anniversary. We've learned a lot about our company through this feedback, and potential new hires and customers get exposure to our brand. —John Brackett, Smash Balloon LLC
10. Make them into brand ambassadors by offering swag they will actually use
A neat way to get your employees involved in building your brand without making it an additional task for them is to give them cool company swag. However, you do need to come up with useful and attractive product ideas that they are likely to use in everyday life. Send your team things like stickers, some warm socks, and other helpful things that can start conversations with friends. —Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner
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