Sharon McIntosh AMPlify eBook1

eBook Series

Empower Employees To Become Your Greatest Brand Ambassadors Sharon McIntosh

Contents Introduction Why Should You Consider an Ambassador Program How Do You Start an Ambassador Program Selling Your Ambassador Program

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How do You Expand Your Ambassador Program?

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Conclusion

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Questions

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Introduction As the president of And Then Communications, Sharon McIntosh is dedicated to employee engagement. She uses her expertise in the industry to provide valuable insights on internal communications strategies, employee ambassador programs, and measurement strategies. During her session at the AMPlify Conference, Sharon introduced an important question asked by Peter Thiel, the CEO of PayPal, “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”. According to Thiel, there are good and bad answers to this question; bad answers are about the present, and good answers are about the future. In this eBook Sharon provides an answer with the future in mind. She explains the importance of an Ambassador Program and outlines how to sell your Ambassador Program to the decision-makers at your company while sharing her insight on how to keep the Ambassador Program growing.

Sharon R. McIntosh President And Then Communications

[email protected] @mcintoshs www.andthencomms.com

Empower Employees to Become your Greatest Brand Ambassadors

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Why Should You Consider an Ambassador Program? Employees are extremely powerful and influential, and many organizations are just realizing that today. Employee engagements along with an Ambassador Program can actually influence and move engagement. An Ambassador Program not only helps to amplify the brand message better than anything else, but it also allows you to prep for a future crisis. Almost every organization at some point is going to deal with a crisis, and it’s a huge advantage to have an army of employees behind you. Speaking of employee engagement, leaders desperately need help addressing the issue of employee engagement. In fact, 78% of leaders say that employee engagement is an urgent priority -- one they don’t know how to deal with. Everyone agrees that it’s urgent, but they still aren’t moving to the employee engagement side. Second, employees have incredible reach. A study by Dell showed that 92% of employees’ Twitter followers are new to the brand, and a study by Cisco showed that employees have 10% more followers than corporate social media accounts. Edelman conducts a survey every year called the Edelman Trust Barometer. According to the survey,

“Employees are extremely powerful and influential, and many organizations are just realizing that today. Employee engagement along with an Ambassador Program can actually influence and move engagement.”

an individual -- a regular employee -- is the third most trusted and is trusted three times more than the CEO. But, who do we have out there speaking and trying to connect? CEOs and SVPs. But we should be having “regular” employees reaching out since we have these employees who are trusted and powerful and that have incredible reach. However, too many brands are afraid of or have a problem with employee engagement. According to a Gallup poll, 70% of American workers are not engaged, and this number hasn’t changed in almost 11 years. In fact, 18% of workers are actively disengaged. Studies have been shown saying that you would be better off just paying these types of employees to stay home. They can be toxic to your organization. Then you have a huge percentage - 70% in fact - that are just disengaged; they are not actually doing anything against your organization, but they’re not moving things forward either. Then, finally, is the 30% who are engaged. So when you are looking for your ambassadors, just walk away from the 18%- you’re not going to solve that. Instead, focus on that 70% because the 30% that is engaged will be able to influence them.


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“The power comes when the company starts trusting the employee.” Why are employees happy? This is the whole concept of employee engagement, and there are different schools of thought: Jon Clifton, CEO of Gallup: He feels the idea of trying to make people happy is a terrible idea. He used the example of Google and The Perks, which just doesn’t move employee engagement, at least from his perspective. Tony Hsieh, author of Delivering Happiness and founder of the start-up Delivering Happiness: He argues that if you make people happy at work, then they will drive engagement.

Passion A word to keep in mind when considering future ambassadors is “passion”; where is that ‘passion’, and how can you develop it? Passion unto itself is untapped. The power comes when the company starts trusting the employee. That is a key piece of empowerment that can be very difficult for employees to do. But what comes out of that are some exceptional success stories.


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Joshie the Giraffe Example: A family goes to The Ritz-Carlton and accidentally leaves behind Joshie the Giraffe, their young son’s favorite toy. A meltdown ensues and the father calls The Ritz-Carlton. The hotel informs the father that the toy was found in the hotel’s laundry. The father is very relieved and he asked the person on the phone, “Can you do me a favor? I told my son a little white lie, just to calm him town, that Joshie stayed on vacation a couple of extra days. Can you just take a picture of Joshie in front of The RitzCarlton?”. The employee replied, “Absolutely, sir. We will get Joshie right back to you.” So what came back to the family? Joshie of course- not with just one picture, but with an entire binder. There were pictures of Joshie out sightseeing, and got a massage and went golfing. This story ended up going viral. You may not know this, but The Ritz-Carlton employees are empowered up to $2,500 to delight the customers. The CEOs make the point that this is not just to solve the problem -- it’s to delight the customer. The employees saw a huge opportunity to tell this fantastic story and it went viral.


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How Do You Start an Ambassador Where Program? do you begin and where do you go? The first step is to assess and research and look into the social media policy. Not only do you need to have a social media policy, but you want to make sure that you update it regularly. Things in social media happen very quickly, so you need to make sure that you are adjusting your policy accordingly. The National Labor Relations Board is constantly looking over the changes in social media and making sure that there are no infringements on employees rights. Exercise: Look over these social media policies and see if you can tell which are legal and which are illegal. “Employees should refrain from commenting on the company’s business, financial performance, strategies, clients, policies, employees, or competitors in any social media, without the advance approval of your supervisor, Human Resources, and Communications departments.” This is illegal. This is part of Wendy’s social media policy. The primary reason that it is illegal is the idea of advance approval. “Be respectful of others and the Company.” This would be illegal because the NLRB would say that this wasn’t specific enough. So what if you have things in your policies such as you can’t disparage managers, or the company will take action against you? That is illegal. Make sure that you’re paying attention. This isn’t just something that can just sit there; it really needs to be out there.


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How Do You Sell an Ambassador Program Internally? Next, you need to start talking to the internal teams; they usually think you are a little nutty when you say you want to empower employees to talk externally. Typically, there will be a little push back, “Employees are not spokespeople, they’re not in the Media Relations Department” or “Oh great, another way to get employees fired.” Those that say this are coming from legal in HR and they are trying to reduce risk. And it’s understandable. But these concerns can be answered by talking to them about training and communication. Also, having a pilot is really the key. Just consider this: 50% of employees are already talking about the company, so would you rather have a trained or untrained employee?

“50% of employees are already talking about the company, so would you rather have a trained or untrained employee?” You need to complete research and perform surveys. Utilize focus groups, executive interviews, and online surveys. This helps to understand where the organization thinks, “We don’t have to educate people on Facebook, everybody knows Facebook, right?” Employees need an education on social media; we need to understand where employees are and where they want to be. From there, create an online training program around 20 minutes in length. It doesn’t have to be very fancy, but take people through the main tenants, not every bit and detail of the policy. For instance, make sure you’re identifying yourself as an employee when you’re posting. After the training, set up a pilot program, as this is a helpful part of your research. You should utilize this as a listening area.


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Where Do You Find Your Influencers? You can ask your managers, you can hand pick them, or you can ask for volunteers. In this instance, we ask them to do 3 things: They have to take the social media policy training called SmartYou, complete the survey at the beginning because we want to see if they change their views over the course of being an ambassador, and they have to be part of the orientation. From there, you need to market and measure. This is a key thought and is interesting to keep in mind for those who have ambassador programs, but what is in this for employees? You are talking about the employee’s personal brand, but what is their benefit for doing this? This is discretionary time, and they’re giving you a lot. It’s really in regards to employee communications in general, and most employees don’t expect a lot from corporate communications. So try something a little different; surprising employees is a good thing. You have to respond to their questions; employees ask tough questions because consumers ask tough questions. This doesn’t mean that you cannot respond. You’ve got to be able to get those things right in front of people and equip them with the messages so that they can respond to some of these controversial things that their friends and family are asking about. Hold monthly webinars where you can educate brand managers about the brand and really equip them; let them build their personal brand, talk about social media, and give them a variety of ways to share. Despite all the training, not all of those that participate in the training may feel comfortable sharing online- and that’s okay. You still want them to be able to use the skills they learned to communicate effectively with family and friends and other potential consumers for the brand.

Title of the book

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How Do You Expand Your Ambassador Program?

Join our Ambassador Program

Start with volunteers, then use your ambassadors to recruit other ambassadors. These existing ambassadors are influencers, so they know how to bring people in, and they can bring in hundreds of volunteers just from doing that. Beyond the social media, you want to move from messaging to action.

Example: For instance, for a client Muller Yogurt, they discovered that if people taste the yogurt, people will go out and buy it again. So instead of hiring people to hand out samples, they had brand ambassadors do it. They gave the brand ambassadors coupons and encouraged them to take it home and have their friends and families try it. This shows how you can utilize your brand ambassadors outside of simply social media scenarios.

Finally, partner with legal and HR and decide how to approach dealing with hourly employees. These employees do need to be paid for discretionary time outside of the work hours. It’s certainly a solvable issue, but it is a scenario that makes legal and HR teams nervous.


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Conclusion Employees are extremely influential to help you share your brand story, but you are going to need to advocate on their behalf. It will not happen without your leadership, and that’s what is important to keep in mind. Research is critical and it needs to be done in the beginning, middle, and end, as it is going to help with your selling. Start simple and try out new things to get your feet wet; GaggleAMP is a great way to do this. Then you can build and expand from there. Finally, celebrate and recognize wins. It is important that you recognize the employees that are giving back. Don’t relax simply because you have a lot of ambassadors; their participation will lag if you don’t recognize them. You’ve got to say thank you on a constant basis.


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Questions

How long will setting up an Ambassador Program take? The pilot program can be up and running in about 6 months; surveying the upfront takes the most time. How do you deal with employees “going to war” for the company? The idea in training is to let someone else fight the fight. If there is a complaint online, you want to get that customer back to the Consumer Relations Department. At training, it is made clear not to engage because situations can go south very quickly. How do you approach senior leadership with the idea of an employee ambassador program? Begin with the influence piece and that you cannot be doing this in a vacuum. You need to consider what business piece that you are trying to solve. For instance, if you want to work on corporate reputation and are trying to do corporate reputation with influencers out in the community, then explain, “Internally, this is a huge area of opportunity from an influence standpoint.”


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Questions What is included in the ambassador training? The training is voluntary, so you need to figure out how to get employees to take training on social media and a policy. Then, sell them on the idea that you’re going to train them to be better on social media. That’s going to be your trade-off. Also, training will include how to deal with controversial posts as well as key principles to keep in mind. The training also gives employees permissions. That was really important- to encourage the employee to have a voice and to use that voice. What kind of content should be posted in Facebook group for the ambassadors? The Facebook page will be employee-driven and they post like crazy; they post brands, they post pictures from vacations, they post if there is a webinar coming up, etc. There is certainly a lot of engaging of the ambassadors, but most of the content comes from the employees. How do you thank the ambassadors? One of the most appreciated gestures was having the CEO write thank you notes to all of the employees which were posting on their walls. The gesture of appreciation doesn’t need to be monetary. Another way was to offer them a preview when launching something new and encouraging them to provide feedback. This makes them feel valued. There are a lot of different ways; you just want to make sure that they are constant. Are there any concerns with people using their social profiles? And what if they leave the company? A common policy is that they can’t have Twitter accounts with the brand name in it. But more, it is time to re-think the relationships that we have with our employees when they leave companies. In fact, with the number of millennials in the workforce, its is important to keep in mind that millennials will likely come and go, but as ambassadors, they are part of that 10%, and you will want to stay in touch with them. Even if they leave, you will want to continue that positive relationship that you started with them.


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Monetize your stakeholder engagement and advocacy efforts. Attend AMPlify: The Employee Advocacy Conference AMPlify is the world’s first and only event addressing the unique challenges associated with employee and other stakeholder advocacy. AMPlify brings together social media marketing professionals and Gaggle Managers from across a diverse group of enterprise organizations that are actively engaging stakeholders such as employees, partners and other constituents with social media and online marketing amplification.

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