brand ambassadors Archives -

Brand Ambassadors vs. Influencers – What’s the Difference?

We hear a lot about influencers in today’s digital marketing environment, especially related to such channels as Instagram and YouTube. Influencers leveraging these sites include well-known names (in certain circles) like MrBeast, Jake Paul and others who not only have massive followers but are making a massive amount of money from those who want to leverage those followers.

While most small businesses aren’t likely to either build or gain access to these top influencers, they do have the opportunity to leverage another powerful group– brand ambassadors.

Continue reading “Brand Ambassadors vs. Influencers – What’s the Difference?”

Best Practice Advice for Handling Crisis Communications

We seem to live in an increasingly contentious world these days. Unfortunately, it’s also a world where news travels fast; bad news travels especially fast. The speed of communication in the 21st century is fueled by “citizen journalists” and crowdsourcing. Everyone and anybody can have a platform these days. And just about everyone these days is armed with smartphones that offer the ability to capture, record, and share whatever may be going on around them. Sometimes that can create positive exposure for companies and their senior leaders and spokespeople.

Sometimes that exposure, unfortunately, is negative and viral.

Continue reading “Best Practice Advice for Handling Crisis Communications”

5 Branding Missteps You Should Avoid

Branding is an area we explore regularly with clients – conducting brand audits, developing brand positioning, etc. Some of the most common errors we see are: Continue reading “5 Branding Missteps You Should Avoid”

Should Rank-and-File Employees Be Speaking on Behalf of Brands?

The question of whether front-line, everyday employees should be speaking on behalf of a company and its brand has been in the minds of business owners and executives for years. On the one hand, harnessing the full weight of a company’s workforce can put a lot of bodies into the marketing effort. At the same time, companies often fear the potential negative, counter-productive impact of “rogue” or un-coached employees. Think of the employee complaining about her job on her Facebook page, or the insider who gives friends and neighbors the “real story” about his company at a backyard BBQ. Continue reading “Should Rank-and-File Employees Be Speaking on Behalf of Brands?”

An Often Overlooked Audience You Shouldn’t Ignore!

I had an opportunity recently to speak to a group of human resource (HR) professionals in my community about a topic I’ve always been passionate about–employee communication. My undergraduate degree was in Psychology and Social Work. My dream as a child was to become a psychologist and, from seventh grade on, that was the path I thought I would take. However, during my senior year of college, I had my first internship and realized that I was not cut out to be a counselor. So, I pursued another path. I was working for a local governmental agency at the time, and I took an interest in HR management. The concept of employee motivation was very interesting to me and clearly aligned with the psychological principles I had learned about in school. So, I toyed with the idea of potentially creating or serving in a role that might be called a “corporate psychologist.”

Then, as fate would have it, Continue reading “An Often Overlooked Audience You Shouldn’t Ignore!”

Don’t Overlook the Value of Internal Communication!

One of the frequently, and unfortunately, overlooked audiences for many organizations is employees. They are the “first line of defense” for ensuring that your key messages are accurately and energetically conveyed to external audiences. Yet, many organizations fail to effectively enlist employees in these efforts. Continue reading “Don’t Overlook the Value of Internal Communication!”

Special Challenges for Service-Oriented Brands: It’s All About the People!

Much of my work over the years has been with “service brands”–brands that are not tied to a particular product, but to the delivery of some type of service, like health care, legal services, educational services, energy services, engineering services, consulting services, etc.

Developing and maintaining a strong brand for a service organization is, in my opinion, significantly more challenging than developing and maintaining a strong brand for a product. Why? Because a service is less tangible, more ephemeral–and often involves multiple “touchpoints” that really determine the “brand experience.”

What makes a strong brand? Continue reading “Special Challenges for Service-Oriented Brands: It’s All About the People!”

For Service Organizations, Employees Rule!

I have been working on the development of a training session on developing employees as brand ambassadors for a service organization and, as I’ve been conducting my research and gathering examples, I’m struck as always by the critical role that employees play in either strengthening or damaging the brand, and the woefully inadequate attention that most organizations pay to helping them be successful in that role. The organization I’m working with is a refreshing exception–they recognize the importance of establishing strategy at the top of the organizations, preparing managers to serve as coaches and role models for service excellence and setting the stage for effective employee engagement through communication.

The steps in the process seem fairly straightforward and linear: Continue reading “For Service Organizations, Employees Rule!”