5 Strategies to Turn your Followers into Brand Ambassadors
5 Strategies to Turn your Followers into Brand Ambassadors
Everybody knows the importance of social media by now. Every year, we are witnessing a gradual increase in the budget allocated to social media activities. According to the 2015 State of Social Marketing Report by Simply Measured, social media budgets are currently 9.9% of digital marketing budgets on an average but this portion is likely to grow to 22.5% by 2020. But is everybody getting their money’s worth? Suppose you have a million fans. But what’s it worth if nobody is buying?
It is easy to build up a fan base but the harder part is to extract value from it. Many organizations spend fortunes to build their fan base. A big following does give you a hint of respectability as most people superficially judge you on the basis of the number of FB fans or Twitter followers. But after that point most of them do not know what to do with it. A good fan base is a great asset to have but very few marketers have a clear idea about utilizing the same. So, let us take a look at a few ideas to turn your fans into your brand ambassadors so that they act as an extra marketing arm for you.
Identify the Influencers
While most of the social followers are usually average, everyday people, some of your followers will surely turn out to be reasonably important ones. Someone may be a good blogger in your niche or somebody might be an expert with a good fan following of their own. You can easily find out people with such qualities among your fans. Conversely, you can make it easier by simply asking your fans to respond to your query. For instance you can ask people with more than 5000 Twitter followers or more than 60 Klout score to get in touch with you. Such fans can be highly valuable to you as they have the ability to influence other people with their endorsement of your offerings.
Keep Them Occupied
You need to keep your fans busy. Otherwise they will gradually get bored, stop engaging with you and you will be out of sight soon. As we know already, Facebook has gradually decreased organic reach of the posts. People who engage regularly with you are more likely to see your posts. So, do not just keep promoting your products. Organize contests and activities, ask for their opinions and share interesting news relevant your field that they can share with other people.
Interact Directly
If you interact directly with people, they will feel important. You can do it in several ways. You can just tag people as you talk to them. You can also make the use of personal messages to make it discreet and make them feel even more special. Of course you cannot do it with everyone. So, you can try this strategy with the more important fans. Some of the aforementioned influencers should be good ones to begin with.
Reward Appropriately
Reward your loyal fans if you have the budget for it. Contests are a great way to do so. Even otherwise you can always find the ways to do so. For instance you can ask people to share your posts and then pick a lucky winner among the sharers. The fans that eventually get the rewards will surely have good things to say about your brands among their own circle of friends and family. The rewards do not have to be expensive. Some of them will be very happy even if you mention and feature them in one of your posts.
Provide Exclusive Experiences
You can offer something exclusive for the fans in order to win their approval and endorsement. For example a lot of major content sites provide useful and free eBooks to the people who follow them. If you follow them on social media or subscribe to their mailers, you get access to such gifts. This is simply a clever way to win more fans. Also, if the freebie is really good, you will surely get a lot of positive word of mouth. Similarly, Walmart offers all-expense paid trips to their office to mommy bloggers (mothers who blog) and allows them to test new products. The reason is obvious and it still works wonders for Walmart as a brand!