How to Create Brand Advocates

Brand advocates spread the word about your brand and are essential to building a good reputation online.

They express their feelings, demonstrate their experience, and recommend a product or service in an emotionally engaging way.

They also interact with and share the brand's content. See an extended definition of brand advocates and how they differ from loyal customers and social influencers in this article.

According to Nielsen's Trust in Advertising report, word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family hold the most influence among consumers. 84% of global respondents say that this source is the most trustworthy.

First, you need to find trends in the conversation around your brand. Trends are short-term spikes in conversation in response to a particular event, post, or topic. Social listening platforms give you access to detailed information on sentiment, number of mentions, engagement levels, and the source of the discussions.

Asos spotted a peak in conversation when a Twitter user posted an image of herself in an Asos dress along with a negative comment received on Tinder:

After the Tweet went viral, Asos asked Thea to use the photo on their product page. Sharing her post was also a great success among social media users and generated many discussions.

Starbucks made a clever use of trends when their coffee cup was spotted in a scene from Game of Thrones. The company started a popular thread on Twitter by posting a humorous response:

In addition to advertising one of their drinks, Starbucks used the opportunity to start a dialog with each of the social media users who commented on their thread by responding to almost every joke and question:

Interactions like these increase brand visibility and offer the audience a layer of positive personal experience outside of purchasing and using its products.

Social media listening platforms like Brandwatch, Mention, and YouScan have functions that let you find customers who could be your brand advocates.

These tools provide filters that allow you to search for posts that include personal opinions (rather than promotions) and positive sentiment. They are invaluable for identifying mentions that need a response. They also allow you to identify social media users with the largest audience and the highest engagement rates among those who make positive comments about your brand.

Here are some other tools that can help find positive feedback from customers on social media:

Trends24: Searches for the most popular topics and allows you to generate effective situational content. Statistics are collected several times a day and divided by major cities.

TweetReach: Shows how many shares Twitter posts receive as well as who shares them and who engages with them.

Traackr: Helps to find influencers for a certain topic and see what posts they share.

Starting a conversation and keeping it going are essential steps for cultivating a positive relationship with your customers and identifying potential brand advocates.

Create a space where you can grow your community and get feedback from your clients. Monitor and analyze customer opinions, participation, and engagement with social listening tools, community management, and surveys. This approach allows customers to feel like they are part of the company and encourages them to engage actively.

For example, you may collect opinions on the design of future products, ask for your audience for content ideas, or create content with the help of your customers.

To achieve this, you must understand the needs of your audience, identify their expectations, and learn how they behave online and why.

Brand advocates are motivated by a personal connection with the company. Brands can encourage brand advocacy by listening to what these people are saying on social media and starting a conversation at the right moment. As shown by the examples above, good responses have an individual approach, include humor, use rewards to provide excitement, and show appreciation.

Conversely, a poor response or failure to respond altogether can not only reduce the chance to use the full potential of brand advocates but turn them away and result in customer disappointment.

Social media consultant and entrepreneur Josh Hoffman describes his experience of communicating with a company online in a post on Medium titled "Building Brand Advocacy: Don't Do What Buffer Just Did":

After sharing his post on Twitter, he received two responses from the company:

The company's responses came from two different people, acknowledged Hoffman's effort, and contained thanks and praise. However, in his opinion, they didn't go beyond expectations. This shows how important it is to make your customers feel valued and encourage their involvement.

Monitor online conversation and mentions to find the right moment to make contact. Use a respectful, friendly tone of voice for this kind of communication. Here's an example of how to categorize mentions by type and size of following so you know how to react:

Clients like attention from brands that allows them to feel appreciated and able to open a dialog with the company.

Show customers how important their opinion is and reward it with something personal, creative, and unique. This helps clients feel connected with the brand on a practical and emotional level. Here's an example of how you can organize rewards by type:

A "present" can include things like event invitations, exclusive access to new features, discounts and special offers, merchandise, or other free products or services.

Monitor the social accounts of brand advocates and keep in touch. Leaving likes and tagging comments with brand mentions are good ways to remind your brand advocates that they're still an important part of the conversation. You can also use insights gleaned from their social media to create content that fits their interests in order to keep them engaged.