Activating employees to be brand storytellers.Michael Brito, Head of Social Marketingmbrito@w2ogroup.com@Britopian

Humans trust humans; and they spend a lot of time online talking about stuff

EMPLOYEES(EXECS, SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS, AMBASSADORS)

92% of people say that

peer recommendations are their most credible

source of brand information

of people find "people like yourself & employees of a company” credible and

trust worthy when seeking information about a product or a

brand

67% of business pros &

ITDMS participate and engage with colleagues and peers within social

media

65%

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Innovative companies are activating their employees to be brand storytellers

Smart brands are using these insights and turning employees into advocates through programs and empowering them to share and tell stories that deepen brand affinity, influence their peers and activate sales.

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Why? Because there are new business requirements that brands must consider to stay relevant

TODAY’S

NEW ENVIRONME

NT REQUIREMENTS

INTERNAL EXTERNAL

MANAGE MORE EFFICIENT AND EFFECTIVE INFORMATION MANAGEMENT PROCESSES

Harness the massive amount of available content and data to rethink and re-equip business operations.

ENGAGE IN A MULTI-STAKEHOLDER CONVERSATION

Use new mediums to communicate with a wider, multi-faced set of stakeholders

INNOVATE AT FASTER SPEEDS

Focus business efforts on innovation rather than continued improvement in order to stay relevant

HUMANIZE YOUR BRAND In a world where marketing is driven by data and content, brands must learn to communicate with emotion

EMPOWER EMPLOYEES Equip employees with the right content at the right time in order to increase brand impact

EMBRACE THE RISE OF THE INDIVIDUAL

Whether you are a B2B or B2C company it’s important to remember “people buy from people.” It’s vital to sync the internal with the external

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Employee advocacy is critical for sales, marketing and overall business objectives

DRIVEBRAND AWARENESS

CHANGEBRAND PERCEPTION

SOLVECUSTOMER

SUPPORT ISSUES

EDUCATEEXISTING CUSTOMERS

PROVIDEINSIGHTS FOR

INNOVATION

INFLUENCEPEERSTO BUY

FILLTHE SALES PIPELINE

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There must be a two-way value proposition when building employee programs

What’s in it for yourBRAND?Content creation

Reach new audiences w/trusted, branded content

Trusted source for insights and feedback

Promote / Defend Brand

What’s in it for your EMPLOYEES?

Employee engagement

Internal “rock star” recognition

Access to exclusive content

Platform for sharing thoughts with the wider audience

Thought leadership

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Employee advocacy falls into two broader programmatic categories

BRAND AMPLIFICATION (SHARE-DRIVEN)This program involves sharing “branded” messages and content with employees so that they can “re-share” the content within their personal social media channels. Content can be customized and/or changed by participating advocates and usually managed by a central marketing organization.

BRAND JOURNALISM (CONTENT-DRIVEN)This program involves mobilizing employees to tell stories (usually long form) that are published on a corporate site/blog, the LinkedIn blogging network or a media site. It can also involves employees sharing and amplifying other employee stories/content.

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Best Buy employee brand amplification program

The Tech Heroes program was designed for all employees with phase focusing solely on corporate employees.

The WCG team assists in creating “employee campaigns” aligned to various marketing campaigns that live within the Best Buy intranet for external sharing.

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Coca Cola employee-influencer brand journalism program

The Coca Cola Journey site launched in 2013 with a focus

on telling stories related to business, innovation, music,

sustainability and other topics.

Contributors to the site include employees, customers and

influencers and it’s powered by the Contently platform.

Conversations from Coca cola Journey are aggregated using the #CokeJourney hashtag.

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Blended employee and customer programs can deliver maximum results within B2B communities

Internal Internal Proactive employee advocacy community that shares and engages with external audiences

Internal ExternalEnabled employees communicate meaningful messages externally with customers and partners resulting in trustworthy relationships.

Healthy and proactive communities create their own conversations resulting in advocacy.

Internal External

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Strategic Approach

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Strategic approach for planning and deploying employee advocacy programs

PLAN IDENTIFY

AMPLIFY AMPLIFY

PLAN IDENTIFY

AMPLIFY ACTIVATE

Plan and define programmatic elements of the program i.e. goals & objectives, selection criteria, stakeholder collaboration, technology selection.

Identify and train employees based on specific job roles and/or varying levels of participation.

Activate employees with strategic calls to action; and enable them to participate quickly and easy through smart technology deployment.

Amplify employee-generated conversations to other participants; and also through various PESO (paid, earned, shared, owned) activations.

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Define the guiding principles starting with the employee experience

Delivering an amazing employee experience should be the focal point of all programs and activations. Making that experience memorable; and more importantly, convenient for employees to share content is critical.

The content itself must not only focus on brand storytelling but also be relevant to the brand, product or business priority. It should resonate with what employees care about and align with their passions.

In order to determine success of employee programs, there must be a measurement framework establishing what KPIs and what determine success. Hint. It’s not just about about relationships.

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Collaborate, plan and document an operational plan

Goals & Objectives: What does the brand want to achieve? What business/marketing outcomes are expected?

Program Logistics: Who owns the program and what dependencies are needed to ensure success?

Selection Criteria: How are employees selected to participate? What’s the plan to scale participation? Where do they participate – owned channels, branded channels?

Training: Is there training prepared for employees at different proficiency levels? What’s the plan to scale globally?

Technology: What technology platform will be used to scale the program i.e. language translation, rewards/badging, mobile integration, ease of use functionality.

Marketing: What’s the name for the program (internally & externally)? Will it be branded externally?

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Find and recruit socially active employees and executives and build custom training for each group

CONTENTCREATORS

CONTENTCREATORS

CONTENTCREATORS

CONTENTCREATORS

CONVERSATIONALIST

LISTENERSLow

Participation

HighParticipation Create training curriculum with a focus on thought

leadership, long-form content, blogging, videos, podcasting and webinars.

Create training curriculum with a focus on best practices of community engagement and providing value-add content.

Create training curriculum with a focus on how to use tools to listen to brand and industry related conversations.

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Activate employees with strategic “calls to action”

Ensure that employee content aligns (either directly or indirectly) with the broader brand story, industry topic discussion, event or initiative.

Build editorial calendar so that content can be planned in advance and aligned with other initiatives in market. Content should be anchored in one or more of the following core values – utility, education, entertainment, access, emotion, exclusivity, information and promotions.

Enable participation through smart technology deployments (make it EASY for employees to participate). Mobile integration is critical for adoption and growth.

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Amplify employee-generated storyteling through converged media integration

SponsorshipsDisplay Advertising / SearchPaid Social Media Content Syndication

PublicityInfluencer MarketingBlogger Engagement Media Relations

Corporate WebsitesBlogs / NewsroomsMobile Experience

Webinars / Whitepapers

Social Media EngagementSocial “Creative” ContentUser Generated ContentCommunity Management

 

PAIDMEDIA

EARNEDMEDIA

SHAREDMEDIA

OWNEDMEDIA

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An example customer journey Customer Behavior Content Type Employee Interaction

AWARENESS

CONSIDERATION

SALES

LOYALTY

Google Search (unbranded, industry term)

Industry related technology discussion (i.e. data center, networking, servers)

Technology discussion within the blog post comments between customer and blog post author. Follow each other on Twitter and continue the discussion there

Frequent sharing, retweeting and commenting within various social networks. Subscribes to brand’s blog feed

Branded white papers, blog posts and other forms of thought leadership

Continued dialogue with employee about the benefits with of using brand’s technology solutions

Seeks validation from other, 3rd party, sources before making purchase (i.e. asks colleagues, Google search for customer testimonials, etc.)

Industry White papers & Research Reports. Customer related “guest” blog posts and/or customer testimonials.

Brand’s thought leaders and subject matter experts continue to share content that adds value to the technology conversation; passes along conversation to sales

Retweets and shares branded content; contributes to brand’s community and industry blog

Branded white papers, blog posts and other forms of thought leadership to include support related material

Employees Retweet and share content from customers; engage openly and in public about the brand’s technology solution

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Let us help you activate your employees.Michael Brito, Head of Social Marketingmbrito@w2ogroup.com