This is a three part series. Access part 1 or subscribe to our RSS Feed to receive part 3 straight away. 

In part one of our series we defined what a brand ambassador is: someone who has had a genuine employment experience, or life experience in relation to an employee, that they share naturally and with confidence. They bridge the gap between referral or word of mouth marketing and recruitment. Your brand ambassadors are becoming a critical part of your recruitment and overall company marketing strategy.

How Employees Become Brand Ambassadors and Evangelists

So how do we turn this goodwill into evangelism and why would we want to? Brand evangelism is, simply stated, testimonials and stories that share aspects of your brand with an audience for the purpose of convincing them to your point of view.

What is it about the “evangelism” of personal testimonies that makes them so powerful in convincing us to engage with a brand? They are compelling and born out of real experience, but their real power comes down to just one word, “certainty”.

Why is it so Powerful?

Research shows that the more confident a person is in their belief about something, the more convinced they become of the truth of their position. This confidence is, in effect, contagious. Since their recommendations are generally seen as being born out of genuine experience, it is “organic” leaving little doubt that they genuinely believe what they say.

As you can see from the graphic above, employment branding which includes brand ambassadors is the most strategic part of social recruiting as it incorporates a much largest, more organized and broader recruiting strategy that frankly, goes well beyond a simple job tweet or Twitter Job Card for recruiting.

This type of marketing can best be used by applying four “levers” that help to build certainty.

• Consensus By grouping your ambassador stories, or encounters, you build the impression that a group of people share similar feelings about your brand.

• Repetition While blankly repeating your message is a little transparent, by sharing similar messages in different formats. (ie, peppering your recruitment platform with written, visual and video stories that share similar ideas) you can bring the message home repeatedly.

• Ease By making it easy for  your candidates to accept what is being said as true, and getting them to agree with even simple positives, you can begin to build a level of certainty in their minds around the positive aspects of your brand.

• Defense People with a stated conviction, when asked to defend their position, even against weak arguments, become more convinced than ever of their position. By presenting stories that share challenges -showing that no company is perfect- that were handled well, can build even stronger certainty.

Who are the Best Brand Evangelists?

You may be tempted to assume that your employees are the answer. After all, you already pay them to be there, they have experiences and they are easy to access. But, by digging a little deeper, we find out that there is a hierarchy of trust that will make your brand evangelism efforts more effective.

This is a three part series. Access part 1 or subscribe to our RSS Feed to receive part 3 straight away.