Social manifesto - How companies are using social media. Part 2 of 4

#2 Activate ambassadors

Some brands have a leg up in social media. Their fans already consider the brand a part of their personal identities.

Think sports fans wearing the team jersey. Google employees who just can’t stop blogging about how great their home base is. Proud graduates of well-known colleges proselytizing their campus experience.

For these lucky brands, the best course is simply to motivate their fans to take the brand into the social world by giving them the right tools, soap boxes or, heck, bling.

Pros:

• Builds relationships with your best customers
• Gets real people talking 1:1 

Cons:

• Scale is limited to your biggest fans and their personal networks
• More difficult to listen to the conversation about your brand because it is widely dispersed

Make sure you:

• Encourage fans to be transparent about any direct contact they have with you, samples they receive, etc.

An example: Victoria Secret PINK

Most of the top “fan” pages on Facebook are bands and celebrities – not your typical consumer brands.

But #8 is a brand you’ve probably seen a lot of if you spend any time around teenage girls: Victoria Secret Pink.

A quintessential passion brand, the girls wear it, talk about it, are fiercely loyal to it. So, it’s no surprise that over half a million of them have linked to it from their own Facebook pages and thousands are talking directly to it online.