Turn engaged employees into your best brand ambassadors.

1. Sara Folkerts, Communications Manager
Sprint Nextel
Turn Engaged Employees
Into Your Best Brand
Ambassadors
IABC – Kansas City
June 20, 2013

2. 2
What we’ll talk about today
Building advocacy – starting from within
• Why social media training for employees is critical to your
PR and Social Media strategy
• Employee social media training best practices
• How to create a program that will meet your employee’s
needs AFTER training them
• What measurable objectives you can expect from your
employee ambassador program
Final questions and wrap-up

3. Why do this at all?
Why social media training for employees is
critical to your PR and Social Media strategy
3

4. Your brand is what your customers
(and employees) say it is
4

5. “To succeed with empowered customers, you must
empower your employees to solve customer problems.”
– Empowered, Bernoff and Schadler
It’s about empowerment

6. 6
Employee engagement
“Employee-owners exhibit such
enthusiasm for their organization that
they infect customers with similar
satisfaction, loyalty, and dedication.”
-The Ownership Quotient by Heskett, Sasser and Wheeler
Basics Honesty Transparency Trust Loyalty Advocacy

7. “People like me” are more trustworthy
7
2013 Edelman Trust Barometer

8. How to set up an employee
ambassador program
Employee social media training best practices
8

9. 1. You need a Social Media Policy
• More guardrails, fewer rules
• Encouraging, not discouraging
• Get the right people together –
Legal, HR
• Start with a supporting statement
for social media
• Tell employees what the policy is
about
• Why does it exist?
Photo courtesy theurbanmind.blogspot.com

10. Sprint embraces social media…
Sprint embraces social media as a significant part
of its corporate strategy and acknowledges and
encourages employee participation in a wide
variety of social media activities as they feel
comfortable. This policy applies to any social media
activities that contain postings about Sprint’s
business, products employees, customers,
partners, or competitors.

11. Specific to your company
• You might already
have a Code of
Conduct – remind
people of that!
• How should people
manage the
company’s time when
they are online?
11
Photo from Sprint Social Media Training for
Managers

12. Specific to your industry
• Publically traded
company
• Mergers and
acquisitions
• Intellectual property
• Copyright
• Private customer data
12
Photo courtesy Wikipedia
Commons

13. 2. You need Executive Buy-in
13
Photos courtesy Getty Images and the Catholic

14. 3. You need to listen first
14
• 65% of those surveyed were being asked specific
questions about PepsiCo products
• More than half wanted information they could share
across their social media platforms

15. 4. You need training that works for
everyone
15
Screen shot of Sprint Social Media Ninjas
training

16. Training should…
• Be fun!
• Be fast – or self-paced
• Be easy – you can do it from almost anywhere
• Solve an employee’s problem – Why should an employee take this
training?

17. Sprint Social Media Ninjas
•What the Ninja program IS:
• Support group for employees engaging with
customers online
• Community of people who care about
customers and are active in social media
• Real enablement for advocates
•What the Ninja program is NOT:
• Spokesperson training
• Certification
17

18. What makes a good ambassador?
• Engaged
• Specialized
expertise
• Personality
• Team player
• Permission to
participate
This is Chris
David (aka the
IT guy) in central
Florida
He keeps busy
with his family,
the outdoors and
his church
Ninjas news
makes it really
easy for David to
share awesome
Sprint stories
with everyone

19. 6. You need to stay connected AFTER
training

20. • Facebook group
• Online community

21. Sharing the approved stuff

23. Sharing the approved stuff

24. • 65 US employees from four locations
(Smaller groups in UK and Brazil)
• Training on…
> Key messages
> Social media
> How to become better ambassadors
(e.g., sharing coupons and friends)
• They engaged via blog posts, using products at family
gatherings, distributing coupons, sharing approved content
• Results: Increase in comfort and activity
• Engaged with average of 22 people per month (goal was 3)
7. You need measureable results

25. Sprint measures…
• The number of
employees who have
completed training
• Clicks and shares on
bit.ly links specific to
the Ninjas program
• Views on the content
we share
• Etc.
25
Ninjas by Organization
0%
2%
4%
6%
8%
10%
12%
14%
16%
18%
20%
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orporate
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arketing
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orporate
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overnm
entAffairs
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arketing
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um
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esources
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onsum
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arketing
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orporate
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etw
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perations
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ustom
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Population: 3,000 and growing!

26. The Black Belt Challenge
• Self-report and track
your Ninja activity
• Use existing recognition
tools and programs to
reward that behavior
• Make the rules clear
and make it easy to
participate!
• Self-paced programs
work for everyone

27. Ninjas are getting noticed
27

28. #1 most improved company – period
55
60
65
70
75
80
2008 2009 2010 2011
ACSI Results
ACSI Results
28

29. 29

30. Who else is doing this?
Examples from other companies
30

31. Other companies include
• Coca-Cola
• Dell
• Sodexo

32. Employee
comments
Employee
posts
Network
group pages
Links to
employee
blogs
Employee
stories

34. Short-term campaigns

35. Wrap up and Questions
Final thoughts and let’s discuss
35

36. 36
Lessons from Sprint Ninjas
• Lesson #1: Treat employees like trusted partners in
your business.
• Lesson #2: Listen to your employees as much as you
listen to customers.
• Lesson #3: Equipping employees as ambassadors
boosts commitment.
• Lesson #4: Have a social media policy and make sure
everyone knows what it says.

37. What will build trust in the future?
37
2013 Edelman Trust
Barometer

38. Copyright applies to this document – some rights reserved.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-non commercial-share alike 3.0 license
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0
Questions?
Sara Folkerts
Phone: 913.484.5410
Email: sara.folkerts@gmail.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/saramiller
Twitter: @saramiller
More questions?
I also have expertise in:
• Online community management
• Blogging and writing for the web
• Internal social media strategy development and
governance
• Social media policy and training
• Employee advocacy programs