People who work daily with the company’s services and products have insights that can’t be found anywhere else. However, if a business owner were to come out and pitch the idea of having employees help with branding, a number of team members might feel uncomfortable or out of their depth.
Helping employees to feel more engaged with branding efforts requires tact, understanding and the right approach. That’s why we asked 15 members of Young Entrepreneur Council the following:
What is one way you can encourage employees to help with branding efforts, without coming across as demanding or intrusive?
Employee Branding Examples
Here’s what they had to say:
1. Create Committees
Each quarter we allocate committees to take on various new branding and marketing initiatives. These don’t take away from daily tasks but are projects that help build our brand. We give them a budget and allow them to individually set goals. At the end of the quarter we have a team day where these committees present their work. The team enjoys the structure and we get a lot of great projects done.
– Tony Scherba, Yeti
2. Make Them Proud
Our team is small, but we have been fortunate enough to be a part of some really amazing conferences around the world. Being able to travel and enjoy these experiences has made our team proud to be with us. With that comes their own desire to help our branding effort. They understand that the better we are doing, and the more our brand becomes known, the more opportunities we will have.
– Zach Binder, Bell + Ivy
3. Showcase Your Talent
Invite your employees to be a showcase for the talent your business offers. You can host a personal interview session with each individual that is then streamed on the corporate website and media. Employees will likely get excited to be recognized for their successes and will share this content with others. Prospects might identify with one of your employees and reach out to them directly.
– Jared Weitz, United Capital Source Inc.
4. Ask Them to Write Career Tips
I ask my employees, mainly software developers, to write career tips and we share those on LinkedIn, Medium and other media. It helps us propagate our brand among developers. The staff is enthusiastic about writing such type of content since it relates to their current job and it’s easy to write. It helps us attract more applicants for our job requirements.
– Piyush Jain, SIMpalm
5. Hold a Casual Meeting
You can set up a short, casual meeting with your team to discuss branding and see what new ideas you come up with. You don’t have to push them to become brand ambassadors. Rather, you want to get them excited thinking about the branding possibilities of the future. Encourage them to create their best ideas. You can even offer a prize to the person with the best idea.
– Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms
6. Workshop It (And Make It Fun)
Hold a workshop and make it fun. Keep it short and sweet (one to two hours) and stimulate imagination and discussion. For example, I ask employees to bring an object that represents their vision for the brand and an image that represents the personality of the brand. Employees describe their show-and-tell items. Then I’ll take all of the input and lay out brand attributes, benefits, values and essence.
– Robby Scott Berthume, Bull & Beard
7. Create Sustainable Incentives
People are more likely to change jobs than they were 20 years ago, owing to the growth of various industries and disruptors. If you want employees to participate in company branding, create extrinsic reasons for them to do so. Praise people who participate in company charity runs via email, track who joins on LinkedIn or other social media, and reward them with practical, stylish swag.
– Duran Inci, Optimum7
8. Invest in Company Swag
If you want your employees to help with branding efforts, invest in company swag. Every year we give our employees quality, branded apparel like T-shirts, sweaters, hats and so on. Our employees appreciate the free gifts and they’ll wear their company swag out and about, which is a great way to increase brand awareness.
– Thomas Griffin, OptinMonster
9. Ask for Feedback
When you ask for your team’s feedback on branding items they will start to enjoy getting more involved with the brand, and this is the best way to get them introduced with the idea of helping with the brand’s initiatives. Also, having a lot of social media images with team members is a good way to get them sharing, especially when they are tagged in the company photos.
– Nicole Munoz, Nicole Munoz Consulting, Inc.
10. Gamify the Experience
Create a game where employees share company posts and try to get the most engagement on their share. The employees that get the most engagement at the end of the quarter get a bonus in the form of an Amazon gift card. Gamification improves customer experiences, but it can also encourage your employees to get involved with the business.
– John Turner, SeedProd LLC
11. Get Them Involved in the Creative Process
Get the whole team involved in the brand-building efforts. What I mean by that is not just asking them to repost something from a corporate Facebook page but actually making them an integral part of the process. Recently, we’ve started filming a YouTube series with our people being the key figures in each episode. It’s engaging, it’s fun, everybody loves it, and it works great for our brand.
– Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS
12. Have Them Share Content They Found Helpful
We ask our employees to share our content on the same grounds that ask consumers to share our posts. As a general rule, if you found one of our posts helpful, we would like it if you could share what you found with your friends. We don’t monitor our employees on social media because we hire individuals who are predispositioned to want to share our posts because they found value.
– Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights
13. Ask Them to Update Their Professional Profiles
Most people already have public and professional social media profiles. You can ask them help you with your branding by including information about your company on LinkedIn and other places. You can help by creating a template or a format which they can follow that reflects your brand well.
– Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner
14. Create a Social Media Training Program
Branding is essential for social media as much as any other platform, and you can use this to create a social media branding program. It’ll teach your team how to apply branding strategies to your company’s social media accounts so they build experience and help with branding as a whole.
– Jared Atchison, WPForms
15. Create Graphics for Social Media They Can Use
You can make it easier for your employees to help brand your company by creating awesome graphics they can use. This removes additional effort needed for them to create posts on social media. By making fun and “cool” graphics, it’s possible to build a sense of pride and willingness to help with your business’s branding.
– Blair Williams, MemberPress
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This article first appeared in www.smallbiztrends.com
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