Your employees can be your best brand ambassadors.  What does that mean?  It means you can mobilize an army of employees dedicated to communicating your company’s key messages and building your brand reputation online.  First, it is essential to establish a positive two-way dialogue with employees so they feel involved in the process of promoting the company.  They need to know management is listening to them and that they are important to the company’s success.  The key is trust – companies can’t control what employees say but if you have good relations with employees you can trust they will represent the company well.  Zappos, Intel, Comcast, IBM, Diamond Technologies and a host of other companies have done it.  So can you.

Here are 7 steps to making your employees brand ambassadors that my colleague Amy Dean and I discussed today in a session entitled “Inside Out Public Relations.”  You can view our entire audio/visual presentation at FreeWebinarWednesdays, or view the slideshow at the end of this post.  This is what we believe you need to do to enhance your external communications:

1. Establish two-way dialogue with employees. Ask employees about their perceptions of the company’s strengths and weaknesses and the words they use to talk about the company.
2. Survey employees on social networking habits and interests. What social networks are your employees using and would they be willing to create branded accounts to serve as the company’s ambassadors.
3. Cherry pick a pilot group. Use the survey to identify enthusiastic employees and train them.  Integrate the social networking inside out program with traditional marketing campaigns.
4. Craft information networking guidelines and incentives. Strike a balance between freewheeling and overbearing in advising employees what they can and cannot say.  Incorporate responsibilities and goals into job descriptions and provide incentives and rewards just as you would for their other responsibilities.
5. Work Your “Wingmen.” Start first with senior executives, the lead pilots, and ask your brand ambassadors, or wingmen, to comment on their posts and RT their tweets.  With senior executives setting an example, employees can create their own branded content within company guidelines.
6. Identify keywords to coalesce around. Establish the company’s keywords in priority order, with senior executives and employees using them as “smoke signals” to communicate with customers, partners and industry peers.
7. Establish metrics. Every company will have its own measurement systems, but it will be important to know if relationships are extending beyond social networks and improving business. Is the company moving up with search engine rankings?  Are employees motivated and is customer service improving?

Engaging your employees as part of your Inside Out Public Relations won’t happen overnight.  But who could better represent your company to the outside world than your employees, singing the praises of the company and what it stands for.