Employees Turned Influencers
A few weeks ago, I stumbled across an Instagram user with great content and a huge following. They were engaged with their followers and her posts were pretty consistent as far as look and feel. She talked about the trips she took and had beautiful pictures of her experiences. There were photos of her behind the scenes at big events, and she made sure she responded to any questions or comments on her page. I noticed she posted a lot about a certain magazine, and soon realized that this was their employer. At first glance, I thought this was just another influencer, but it was an employee turned influencer.
Recently, there have been a number of brands who have developed advocacy programs for their employees. They have their marketing agency or in-house marketing professional teach the employees in the program what the brand image of the company is and how they can start to portray that on their own accounts. Their target consumers are intrigued by seeing employees from their favorite places and feel a sense of entitlement to follow them. They are able to put a face to their favorite brands and feel more connected than ever.
Recruiting your own employees to create content that is on brand will help push marketing efforts that you already have running. Their friends and followers will repost or share their posts making your brand more relevant in the target market you are trying to reach. These posts will also be organic so people won’t actually look at it as a marketing effort. They will feel more confident in commenting and interacting more with these posts because they know a real person is behind the account.
You just have to be sure that this employee has a great image on social media. While they may be a great employee you never know what their image can be online. Everything on their page should be appropriate and not be too controversial because this could fall back on your company.
You are able to help your brand while helping your employee build their own image on social media. It could get to the point where some employees become faces for the company. This will help increase a company’s brand awareness on the internet.
This may seem like a lot to handle and control but it doesn’t hurt to start with one employee and see how it works. You may find out that this is not for your or company, but you could also find out this was one of the best things to happen.
