If you’re looking to increase your following and place your business in a positive light you need to look to your team. They can be the greatest asset to any company image as they represent your company’s ethos, goals and insights. This is why your team are the best brand ambassadors you can have.
Social Influencers
We all know the power an influencer has on the world with their following and insights being constantly reviewed, retweeted and re-evaluated. So, imagine what a whole team of social influencers could do for your business. All the social efforts of your team that shed your business in a positive light can be a fantastic marketing tool and lead to more business.
This doesn’t mean you should police all your team’s social media channels. This could have the opposite effect. Leading to secret accounts or radio silence. Instead, look to create an environment where they are happy to share their positive experience at your business. A genuine message speaks a lot louder than forced pandering to the boss. Make them feel comfortable about openly speaking about their work-lives online. Just instil that any grievances are best mitigated on a less public platform.
Word-of-Mouth
The power of one person isn’t really felt until you can see it in action. You never know the reach of your words until they come back to us. One team member praising the business at home or with friends could have a huge impact on their immediate social circle. Suddenly their uncles, aunts and cousins are talking about your business. Friends are discussing your brand openly in bars, hopefully at a social distance but loud enough for everyone else to hear.
Opportunities
What do you look for when hiring for a new position? Do you look at potential or what they can achieve for you right now? We are all learning, each and every day. Some days obviously there are more lessons than others. Some lessons we learn the hard way, others are slowly learnt over time. Now consider what lessons you teach your team every day. A new hire with a fraction of the experience as others is going to be learning a lot more each day than anyone else. These opportunities to learn are unfortunately harder and harder to come by recently, especially for young people entering the workforce. If your company invests in learning within the company you’ve opened up a whole avenue for potential hires to consider.
Even the most established professional will consider joining your team if you offer them the ability to learn and grow within your business. Of course, the paycheck plays a part, but that is only one element most of us consider when joining a new team. We look at the business as a whole, how the change will impact our lives and how much we can progress in our careers.
Your Team are Brand Ambassadors Whether They Know It or Not
No matter how you look at it, you can’t stop people from talking about their lives. When it comes to your team they are going to talk about their work lives. It takes up a vast amount of their time each week. It’s hard to not discuss the business and how they’re feeling. Which is good, we should all be free to talk about our feelings openly. So you have to create a business worth praising. If your team is happy they will be the best brand ambassadors you could ever have. If they are upset and you try to silence them, they will be the worst brand ambassadors imaginable. Just because they haven’t written a scathing review on glassdoor doesn’t mean they can’t harm your brand.
It’s not a “be nice or else” situation. It’s the “be a great leader and your team will sing your praises” deal.
