How to Launch a Social Ambassador Campaign

Curry Smith is affiliated with
NOLAbound, a unique program that immerses 25 professionals in New Orleans business to discuss the city’s entrepreneurial and social media influence. You can apply to be considered for a spot in the program at
www.benolabound.com/apply.

As long as brands want to improve and increase social media engagement and fellowship, they’ll need authentic, relevant, community-oriented content. One solution is to give consumers the chance to serve as brand representatives.

Social media ambassador campaigns can fit a wide range of industries and products. They succeed by targeting popular bloggers and ?super users? of networks like
Facebook,
LinkedIn,
Twitter and
YouTube. This type of partnership can be a successful strategy for all parties.

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  The brand wins if the selected ambassadors have strong voices to discuss the brand within relevant online communities.

  
  


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  The ambassadors win if the brand partnerships yield access to greater resources. Also, successful partnerships can help establish ambassadors as authorities in their fields.

  
  


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  The brand audience wins if content both online and offline becomes more relevant and exciting. The ambassador?s audience wins if the ambassador introduces audience members to something that excites, educates or entertains them.

  
  

But watch for challenges and pitfalls along the way. For instance, simply giving ambassadors an all-access-pass to your brand is inadvisable. The transparency and immediacy of social media means that any brand considering a social media ambassador campaign must first make some careful decisions about control, access and overall brand strategy before deploying a successful program.

We have identified what we think are the five most critical considerations before launching a brand ambassador program.

1. Populate the Candidate Pool

The first step in any ambassador program is to generate a pool of possible candidates. The process of finding, managing and maintaining the ?talent? has yet to be simplified on a large scale, though companies like
Business 2 Blogger have begun to develop solutions.

In most cases, brands will opt to find the ambassadors themselves, preferring to have total control. This process usually works like a web 2.0 version of the traditional talent search: researching people who might be good fits, compiling a list of favorites, approaching them, negotiating, and moving forward with the ?talent.?

However, brands can also open the curtains on the process by employing elements of crowdsourcing.

How to Launch a Social Ambassador Campaign