10 Brand Ambassador Activities

What can a Brand Ambassador do to help create visibility for the brand?

1. Write Blog Posts – Blog ROI is great because blog posts are content, indexed by search engines that can keep generating content far into the future.
2. Public Speaking – Any time you get up and give a good, informative presentation about the company you are being a great brand ambassador.
3. Twitter – A Brand Ambassador should both monitor twitter and participate on Twitter.  Just don’t spend all day doing it.
4. LinkedIn - A Brand Ambassador must have a professional profile posted on LinkedIn.
5. Word of Mouth – A good brand ambassador looks for opportunities to tell great stories and jump start word of mouth.
6. Social Bookmarks – A brand ambassador will take the time to use one or more social bookmarking sites to link to good articles in your corporate blog.
7. StumbleUpon – Brand Ambassadors that understand the importance of traffic will use stumbleupon to call attention to the company website, company blog and any positive news about the company.
8. Networking – A good brand ambassador gets the importance of having a strong network for them and for their company.  Brand Ambassadors build their network before they need it.
9. FaceBook – Brand Ambassadors look for opportunities to connect to people.  Facebook is one such opportunity.
10. Follow Up – Great Brand Ambassadors will follow up with people, either via email or phone, to keep the company fresh in the minds of their network.

Wrap these things up into one person, and you will get some good results.  Build a team of brand ambassadors and you will quickly own your space.  Brand Ambassadors can accomplish things that an advertising budget cannot.  Authentic conversations and authentic content.

Old Media Marketing

It is popular to talk about social media, brand ambassadors and Web 2.0. But does that mean the traditional marketing has stopped working?

No.  Actually it means that there are more ways to reach people and you have more options that all may be less effective than in the past when there were less options  with more people condensed into fewer communication channels.

Here are some traditional marketing techniques that still work.

1. Press Release – When it used to be really read by the press, it was appropriate to call it a press release.  Now I would call it a news broadcast.  I do not believe a press release will usually find any major writers but I do think that you are going to get some good exposure and good back links to your business blog or website.  If you focus on a niche or use the more expensive press release services you may still hit some great media outlets.
2. Email Marketing – Way more attention seems to be given to social media than email marketing.  However, email marketing will still generate a lot more money for you when done right.  It is an essential part of your marketing and if you bought the whole Email is Dead line, you jumped in the wrong bandwagon.  I make most of my money from email and Search Engine Optimization from blogs.
3. SEO – Search Engine Optimization is not the new hot thing, but if there is one area that is actually using social media well, it is the people that get how SEO and Social Media are linked together.  The key with SEO is that if you are in a tight target niche with little competition, you can probably pay for a one time project and reap the rewards for a long time.  Blogs make it easy.  If you are in an even slightly competitive market, you need someone that goes to war on your behalf every month to increase ranking and get more pages indexed.  Or you can just use Employee Ambassador and your staff just does some light writing and the whole thing is automatically targeted to keyword conquest.
4. Old Websites – Do you have one of those old websites sitting around that looks like late 90’s and does date back to then?  Don’t touch it without talking to a web professional!  The age of your website is valuable and the page urls should not be changed unless you have someone that can look at your search ranking first.  I updated one of these old sites after some research and got fantastic results within 3 days – I am talking #1 rankings where a lot of other people were fighting for it.  These old sites have great credibility in the eyes of search engines and can be ignited by a good search engine specialist.
5. Directories – Things like directories seem out of date, but getting listed in a good directory still gives you a valuable back-link and can generate a steady (if not big) stream of website or blog traffic.  Some of my favorite are technorati and blogcatalog – but the older directories are still effective if you get into them too.
6. Link Exchanges – These things have a bad name, and anything that automates the process I would stay away from.  However, doing an occasional link exchange with someone else in your industry will help – not hurt – your website.  If link exchanges  hurt websites, most blogs with blog rolls would be thrown out of Google long ago since they often link to one other.  This is one of those things that still works, you just have to be smart about it.
7. Word of Mouth – The oldest of the traditional marketing is the new hot marketing.  Finding ways to get people to talk about you are the best way of cutting through the noise.  But it may just not work for you – you really have to be differentiated.

Most things will still work with good execution and message.  Just be realistic about how people’s attention has scattered.  You need to scatter your message where your niche market is to make sure they can find you.  Especially when they are looking in Google, which is where Employee Ambassador comes in.

Word of Mouth and Blogs

Word of Mouth Marketing is one of those really hot areas that has been growing like wildfire.

The growth of Word of Mouth seems to be considering with the growth of social media.

The reason is simple.  Social media gives marketers a way to estimate the word of mouth that is taking place about a topic, product or brand.  Blogging is a big part of how word of mouth is measured.

This makes sense because not only does a blog give the author a voice, but comments on blogs give the author’s audience a way to respond to the author’s blog posts.

Sure, there are a lot of other social media marketing tools that you can use too.  However, blogging is your home base.  It is the core of your online persona and it is the place you like back to from the other social media tools.  And if you have built a good business blog with clear business goals, it is where people buy from you, request more information or download your free white paper.