Question

How can companies cultivate online brand evangelists or ambassadors?

Answer 1

Companies should start looking for people who are already passionate about company's brand and are already speaking about it. These are the people who will advocate for their brand with sincerity which makes word-of-mouth an effective marketing tool.

Monitor social media channels for people who have a lot of good things to say about company's brand. Companies can also use one of a variety of listening dashboards—software or services that can monitor social media for mentions of their brand and alert company when they’re being discussed.

Develop a relationship with genuine fans. Thank them for their support and make sure they know company value their opinion. Engage them in conversation. Reply when they comment on your posts.

Bloggers often made good brand ambassadors. Bloggers can have large and devoted readership bases, and they’re trusted by their readers. Ask bloggers to try company's products. If they like what company have to offer, they may become powerful fans and advocates of brand.

There should be a compensation for these brand ambassadors but it should not come in the form of money. Samples of new products, tickets to events or even just acknowledgement on social media channels can do a lot to encourage most supporters to keep talking about brand on social media.

Google Alerts and Talkwalker are free services a business can use to find mentions of their brand online.

Reputology, Mention and Social Mention are paid brand monitoring tools that comb the web for mentions and track brand reputation.

The social media platforms which company uses like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have built in notifications that let company know when someone engages with them or uses company's social media handle in a post.

Hootsuite is also a great small business tool for pulling mentions of a brand into one spot from company's social media channels.