In today’s digital age, businesses have recognized the immense potential of social media in promoting their brands and connecting with their target audience. As a result, one effective strategy that has gained significant popularity is the use of social media ambassadors.
These individuals, often influential and well-connected within their respective industries, can play a crucial role in enhancing your brand’s online presence. They are loyal to your brand, and they further increase your exposure among new, relevant audiences.
As social media brand ambassadors tell their own authentic stories, they share the story of your brand at the same time.
Key Takeaways
- A social media ambassador is a long-term representative of your brand, who primarily promotes you on social media platforms.
- They don’t need to have a large social media following, provided their following trusts them highly and engages with them frequently.
- They are like one of your brand’s best friends, cheering it on on social media.
- Companies recruit both social media ambassadors and influencers to promote their brand on social media.
- However, there are a few key differences between the two.
What Is a Social Media Ambassador?
A social media ambassador is a long-term representative of your brand, who primarily promotes you on social media platforms. This person loves your brand and agrees to continually promote it. They become the face of your brand, and help build trust in your brand among their audience.
A social media brand ambassador has authority in your niche or among an audience that matches your target audience. Within their social posts, they genuinely and repeatedly share how they use your product in real life. They also tell and show their audience the benefits of using your products.
Social media ambassadors don’t need to have a large social media following, provided their following trusts them highly and engages with them frequently. They are like one of your brand’s best friends, cheering it on on social media.
A social brand ambassadors:
- Believe in your brand’s mission and vision.
- Love your products and services.
As a result, they feel compelled to spread the word about your company and products on social media.
Side note: You can have brand ambassadors who don’t promote your company on social media platforms. That means they won’t be called “social media ambassadors.” Also, note that social media ambassadors are not influencers or affiliates.
Social Media Ambassadors vs. Influencers
Companies recruit. both social media ambassadors and influencers to promote their brand on social media. However, there are a few key differences between the two.
While social media influencers only promote your brand for a short duration (via a one-off post or a single short campaign), brand ambassadors promote you repeatedly and establish a long-term relationship with you (usually for at least one year). While influencers may not have used your product before their marketing campaign, all social media ambassadors have already used and loved your product before they started to officially represent your brand on social media.
Another difference between these partnerships is that influencers’ posts often read like ads – they focus on selling the product to their followers. Conversely, ambassadors are more focused on authentically promoting your brand, based on how they’ve actually used your product and the value they’ve received from it.
Lastly, influencers promote a wide range of brands on social media. At times, they end up promoting two competing brands. On the other hand, brand ambassadors focus on promoting a single brand in the long term. And if they represent multiple brands, they definitely won’t promote competing brands simultaneously.
Types of Social Media Ambassadors
Social media brand ambassador partnerships can take various forms, especially since brands have unique needs and ambassadors have unique strengths. Here are the different types of social media brand ambassadors:
#1. The customer ambassador
If your loyal customers have a respectable social media audience with high engagement, and have already shared you on social, they can make great ambassadors.
You can search for posts you were tagged in, branded hashtags, and brand mentions to determine who’s talking about your brand from your customer base. Alternatively, you can check your customer data and offer the ambassadorship position to your best customers with social media presence. You should then reach out to them to inquire if they want to represent you officially.
#2. The employee ambassador
Encouraging your employees to be brand advocates gives your company a human face that can help you gain a competitive advantage. Employees know the ins and outs of your product and are therefore well-positioned to promote it. They may share glimpses into your brand culture on social media in addition to sharing about your products.
Even so, you may need to provide them with social media training. You’ll also need to brief them on how to promote your brand in ways that sound authentic, not salesy.
#3. The affiliate ambassador
This type of ambassadorship involves a creator agreeing to both feature a brand’s products and associate a trackable affiliate link with the social media content.
Your brand will give the affiliate ambassador a discount coupon for their followers. The coupon is unique to each ambassador and is often activated using a tracking link. Each time an ambassador’s follower uses that coupon to make a purchase, the ambassador will receive a commission on the sale.
#4. The student ambassador
A student brand ambassador is a full-time college student who serves as a representative of your brand. They use their social media account to connect with fellow students and promote your brand authentically to their peers. They may also promote your brand offline – through one-on-one interactions, guerrilla pop-ups on campus, and/or large-scale events – as an extension of their use of social media.
#5. The expert ambassador
Expert ambassadors have both a social media presence and established authority in their field. Their love for your brand and their authority make them trusted by their followers. Examples of expert ambassadors are athletes promoting athletic wear and dentists promoting electric toothbrushes.
How to Start a Social Media Ambassador Program
Now that you have a grasp of what social media ambassadorship entails and the types, you can start setting up a successful social media campaign using ambassadors.
The checklist below outlines a seven-step plan to help you start a social media ambassador plan for your business:
Starting a Social Media Ambassador Program
You can use the following tools to monitor your social media ambassador program:
- Google Analytics: Utilize this tool to track referral traffic and user behavior on your website, allowing you to pinpoint the effectiveness of ambassadors in driving your target audience to your digital storefront.
- Social media analytics: Platforms like Instagram provide in-built analytics that can help you monitor the performance of individual posts and overall engagement with your content. However, you can also use separate social media tools to get deeper analyses.
- Surveys and questionnaires: Deploy these tools to gather direct feedback from your audience. Mid-campaign surveys can help you gauge early reception and make necessary adjustments, while end-campaign surveys assess the overall success and areas for improvement.
- Engagement rate calculators: These specialized tools can automate the process of calculating engagement rates, saving time and providing consistent measurements for comparison.
- CRM tools: If you use Customer Relationship Management software, integrate campaign tracking into the system. This allows tracking interactions with discount codes and attributing sales to specific campaign activities.
Remember, monitoring aims not just to report successes and failures but to inform data-driven decisions for future campaigns. By keeping a finger on the pulse of your campaign through diligent tracking and analysis, you can continue to refine your approach and cultivate brand ambassador relationships that yield the best results for your brand.
What to Look for in Your Next Social Media Ambassador
Here are the main factors to look for in your next ambassador:
#1. Capacity to Produce Engaging Content
A solid ambassador needs to captivate and retain their audience’s attention. They know how to build rapport with their followers because they:
- Are familiar with your products and excited about your brand.
- Have a drop of creativity.
- Possess strong communication skills.
- Have social media experience.
#2. Passion for the Brand
A successful social media ambassador should:
- Have a genuine interest in the brand they represent.
- Convey that passion to their audience.
- Be able to connect with their followers on a personal level.
- Make your audience genuinely feel part of your brand community.
#3. Honesty
Last but not least, your social media ambassadors should be honest.
They can learn how to create engaging content by trial and error. They can perfect their relationship with your audience and grow with your brand. However, if they have fake followers, you are partnering with the wrong people.
Why You Should Leverage Social Media Ambassadors
I’ve explained what a social media ambassador is and how to leverage them, but no doubt you’re wondering why you should use them. Yes, they promote your brand, but is that all they do?
Well, the answer is no. They also do the following:
#1. They help expand your reach to new, relevant audiences
Social media brand ambassadors are well-positioned to reach new, relevant audiences and tap into new markets. Even if they don’t have a large social media following, brand ambassadors greatly expand your market share, since they have authority with an audience that’s also your brand’s target market.
#2. Their word-of-mouth can spread quickly across social media
Since brand ambassadors already have a strong online reach – and may have professional relationships within the industry – seeking their help to create brand awareness can be highly beneficial. This is true even if their follower count is relatively small.
For example, suppose you have 10 social media brand ambassadors with 2,000 followers on Instagram apiece. With their help, you can easily and effectively reach 20,000 followers through their promotions.
#3. Their followers trust what they say about your brand
Potential customers highly trust recommendations that come with personal experiences, far more than they trust ads and messages from your brand. Since brand ambassadors have used a product before promoting it, their opinion of it is highly trusted by their audiences. This makes their followers more likely to buy your products.
#4. Their advocacy is reliable and lasts for a long time
Most brand ambassadors promote a brand because they love your product so much. As such, their messaging usually comes across as more authentic and genuine. Plus, you can rely on ambassadors to promote your brand for a long time – you’ll get many authentic posts, and lots of user-generated content, out of a single relationship.
Ambassador advocacy is also reliable thanks to the trust factor. It warms interested leads and makes them more likely to purchase from you.
#5. They can be one of the most cost-effective ways to promote a brand
Social media ambassadors are willing to promote your brand in return for a free product or a commission (similar to an affiliate marketing commission). Some are even willing to do so for free. This means utilizing ambassadors in your social media strategy is more cost-effective than using influencer marketing or paid social media ads.
#6. Tracking ROI is easy if you give ambassadors links
When you set up your program correctly, you’ll easily be able to measure the ROI that your ambassadors achieve.
Most social media brand ambassadors will be willing to link to your website in their content or their bio. When recruited, they can easily provide direct referrals and backlinks to your company.
By giving ambassadors unique, trackable links to your website, you can easily determine how effective your social media ambassadors are at promoting your brand and generating sales.
Recommended Articles
- 10 Top In-Demand Digital Marketing Skills You Should Know in 2024: Expert Insights
- Best SEO Forcasting Tools And Templates
- Why Does Brand Recognition Help Businesses|Top Benefits & Strategies
- How Paywalls Are Shaping the Future of Online Business Models
- What Is Relationship Marketing? All You Need To Know
References
