Wouldn’t you love a brand advocacy army – retweeting your content, singing your praises on their blogs and raving about your products and services to their social media connections? Well, developing advocacy around your brand isn’t going to happen overnight, and it’s not something that can be mass produced. It takes time and effort – and it all starts with building real relationships on an individual basis. Social media has presented brands with an unprecedented opportunity to seek out and respond to customers, solve problems and develop a true and human connection with their community – in real time.
Brand advocacy requires real relationship building, and it doesn’t stop there – brands need to continue nurturing their relationships with their consumers and community to maintain long-lasting, two-way relationships with their brand advocates.
Create Winning Customer Experiences
People are constantly sharing their experiences with your brand on social media – so you need to be listening in order to be aware and ready to chime in with help. Chances are you’ve seen frustrated tweets or facebook updates in your network, complaining about a brand’s service or product – the companies that respond to these complaints with helpful information are regarded highly throughout social media. By listening for these conversations and helping in real-time – you will turn a negative situation into a winning customer experience, and develop strong, lifelong relationships with your customers – some will even become active advocates for your organization throughout the social space and beyond.
American Airlines not only informs and responds to customer questions on Twitter, but does so in a sincere and human approach.
Invite Your Brand Advocates To Share Their Stories
Encourage your community to share written or video stories expressing your brand is helping to make their lives better or easier. Brand advocate stories help you build credibility and generate referral leads because they are real, genuine stories, coming from a source who’s not on your payroll
Buick wants consumers to change the way people think about luxury and about Buick. To do so, Buick encouraged its advocates to share stories about why they love their Buicks. In just a couple weeks, Buick advocates wrote over 1,600 love letters and 16% of advocates have shared them on Facebook.
Show Your Appreciation
Never take your community and advocates for granted – let them know you appreciate their support. Thank them individually for sharing your content and expressing their support for your brand.
Zappos is well-known for their remarkable customer service online and offline. They respond to customer issues and general mentions of their brand in real time, in a warm and caring tone – as a result, they frequently receive incredible positive and supportive feedback on their social media channels – Zappos responds to every message with sincere gratitude.
Are you a brand advocate? What have companies done to get you excited about their brand? Have you seen any innovative examples of brand’s successfully nurturing brand advocacy? Tell us your story in the comments!
