A brand of a company is more than just a logo or your companies name. Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room, the perception that clients or customers have of your business and the voice that defines your organization as a whole to recognize the value of potential here; however, requires different branding strategies encapsulating each element.
The rules around branding are evolving more rapidly than ever, thanks to a changing consumer environment. The rise of Millennials, social media and thought leadership are pushing brands to think differently and engage with their audiences in new ways.
In a world where 64% of customers pursue relationships with brands based on shared values, companies need to identify branding strategies that are designed to make people stop and pay attention. In simple terms, if you want to succeed, then you need to learn how to create a brand that becomes your customer’s best friend. This article is 1 of the 3 splits which will tell you how efficiently you can make your company a brand. In the earlier article, we saw what is important to set up a brand, but in this article, you will know the necessary steps to take for forming your brand.
Step 1: Educate Employees & Provide Guidelines
If you want to achieve a strong and consistent brand identity, then you need to make sure that your employee advocates are all on the same page. Asking your staff to create content can be an overwhelming concept at first, as it means they need to combine writing skills with a deep understanding of your brand persona, and the messages you want to send.
If you’re hoping to use your employees in your branding strategies as a way of diversifying the content you publish online, it might be helpful to host training sessions, study groups, and workshops where you can educate them on how to use your brand voice successfully on different social media channels and blogs.
For instance, one of the most commendable features of the Starbucks employee advocacy strategy is the fact that they call their staff “partners” and deliver comprehensive social media guidelines for them to follow when they’re creating content. Talk to your staff about why you’re including them as part of your brand strategy and give them the tools they need to achieve the consistency your customers crave.
Step 2: Share the Right Resources & Tools
Employee advocates have the power to develop emotional, insightful content for your brand – perfect for establishing long-standing relationships with your customers. While offering educational guidance is a great way to get started when you’re enhancing your branding strategies, you may also need to offer practical resources and tools that can help workers to create and distribute emotive content easily.
For instance, if you want your advocates to share your content, but you know they might have problems writing it themselves, then you could always use few tools like ‘Zoho’ to share the curated content on the connected platform for your staff.
That way, your employees can simply share relevant content from a list of available creations, rather than having to write something themselves. Just remember that if you’re asking your employees to share thoughts about a recent product or service, you should help them to customize their messages with their own voice,
so it doesn’t sound like an obvious advertisement. For instance, L’Oréal has an employee onboarding process that includes “discovery courses” for new products, that allow staff to get a better understanding of the products and services that they’re talking about. This helps each message to sound more natural.
Step 3: Motivate & Reward Your Advocates
Finally, while many of your staff will be happy to talk about your company and take part in social media branding efforts on your behalf, some will want to know what’s in it for them. Brand ambassadors, just like any other employee, want to be recognized for the hard work they do for your company—the good news is that rewarding your advocates doesn’t have to mean giving them a huge bump in their paycheck. Shout-outs from managers in a team newsletter or small celebrations can be enough to convince your people that an advocacy strategy is worth their time.
You might even consider driving some healthy competition among members of your brand advocacy group by posting a monthly leaderboard that showcases who gets the most shares and comments on social media. A good way to start adding advocacy to your branding strategies is to work with people who love social media first, as these people can help to motivate other employees.
For instance, General Electric used an advocacy pilot that began with 500 employees already engaged on social media to create an army of social sharers. A Better Brand Starts with Engaged Employees. Branding strategies are all about building an identity for your company, and who better to show off the unique aspects of your business,
then the people who spend every day working within it? If you can inspire your staff to advocate on behalf of your business, then you can create a brand that’s consistent, emotional, purposeful, and more believable too! All you need to make do is make sure that your team has the right resources on hand.
This article is only for the work process optimization, another article will be realized in the marketing methods you need to take to form yourself as a brand.
