On May 27, we hosted a webinar with Social Media Today on how to power employees to tell the brand’s story online. Natanya Anderson, Director of Social Media and Digital Marketing at Whole Foods, Denise Holt, CEO and Co-Founder at Social Intel, and Nicole Alvino, Co-Founder and SVP of Strategy at SocialChorus all shared best practices for transforming employees into brand advocates.
Natanya shared how Whole Foods Market is empowering their team members to voluntarily tell the brand’s story online. Whole Foods’ team members are already talking with customers in stores daily, sharing their favorite products, the way that they like to use them, and the reasons that they love the brand. Whole Foods wanted to make it easy for their team members to do the same things in digital channels that they were already doing in stores everyday, which is why they decided to empower team members to voluntary share the brand’s story using the social channels that they are already on.
How can you get started with employee Advocate Marketing? Check out these steps for success that Natanya shared during the webinar:
1. Align goals to business objectives. It’s important to understand the end goal before getting started with anything. For Whole Foods, success is defined by the success of their team members and their team members feeling facilitated in telling their story on digital channels. The point in powering team members to become advocates was to help them do what they were already doing and make it easier. They want to be able to measure engagement and awareness as well to prove business value, however ultimately if their team members are successful the program can be defined as a success.
2. Start with a social media policy. Whole Foods, like many other large brands, already had a social media policy in place. However, they had to review their current strategy to make sure there wasn’t any thing missing that could be helpful for their team members.
3. Get leadership buy-in. Team members are going to be doing this in addition to the work that they already do, it’s important to have leadership understand the importance and purpose and help promote and communicate the value of these initiatives in store.
4. Create a content and engagement plan. It’s important to align advocate marketing content calendar with existing marketing content calendar so that team members can help promote and amplify these initiatives.
5. Identify most social team members (& champions). Obviously some team members may be more comfortable on social or more passionate about customer care than others. It’s critical to identify these individuals and encourage them to lead the charge. Identifying social employees is an ongoing process.
For more information about how to launch and to hear from Natanya herself, be sure to view the webinar recording.
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