With Great Brand Culture Comes Great Employee Advocacy

During a visit to the NASA space centre in 1962, U.S. President John F. Kennedy noticed a janitor carrying a broom. He interrupted his tour, walked over to the man and said, “Hi, I’m Jack Kennedy. What are you doing?” “Well, Mr. President,” the janitor responded, “I’m helping put a man on the moon.” 

To most people, this janitor was just cleaning the building. But in the more mythic, larger story unfolding around him, he was helping to make history.

That a janitor is so well-aligned with the mission and vision of NASA is the result of a great brand culture.

What is a brand culture?

The e-book Telling Your Brand Story from Zoho Academy states:

Your brand’s story is much more than your “company bio.” It’s everything from the colors on your website to your packaging materials to the way your employees answer the phone and banter with your customers on social media. It includes your origins, your goals, your inspiration, your challenges, your target audience and their experiences with your company. It’s even the stuff you don’t have control over, including how your prospects and customers perceive what you do and interpret what you say. In short, it’s the sum total of who you are, all you do, and everything people believe about you based on the signals you send.

When your brand story is consistent and has been owned by every stakeholder of your company, it creates a solid brand culture.

Zappos is a good example of a brand that is very proud of its culture. Even the interview and hiring process at Zappos are designed to learn about the candidate's compatibility to fit in Zappo's organizational culture (50% weightage).

If a candidate is hired by Zappos, they can expect to spend their first three to four weeks manning phones in their call center learning how to respond to customer needs. This, in a way, is an introduction to the soul of the business. Upon completion of their time in the call center, Zappos employees are offered $3,000 to leave the company. If you haven't become a Zappos insider, committed to the goals and the culture, the company really prefers that you leave. Take the money, though, and you can never come back.

What happens when your employees are aligned with your brand culture?

They tell your story to the world.

When your employees share your story widely, it gives your brand a word of mouth boost, which is better than any form of marketing. [A report from Pew Research Centre found that word of mouth was the top point of influence for buyers.]

Let's do some quick math. I'll try to calculate the organic reach of your social media post with some assumptions. Say your brand has 300K fans on facebook while you have 200 employees who are active on social media and can share positively about your brand from their profile.

When you post from your brand page, your organic reach is this:

300,000 X 6.4% (average organic reach of an FB post) = 19,200 impressions

When your employees post about you:

200 advocates X 338 friends each (avg. number of friends) X 33% of friends seeing the post = 22,308 impressions

Remember, the average organic reach of a Facebook post is declining every year, so the posts from your brand page are going to fetch you less and less views in coming years.

Employee advocacy will be your positive word-of-mouth marketing that helps create a favorable brand image with larger organic reach. It will also help you fetch the right talent when you have a job opening.

How to convert employees into brand advocates

Sending a memo asking employees to be your brand advocates is a bad idea. Asking someone to write positively about you in public will always prompt a "what's-in-it-for-me?" attitude from the employee. Instead, win over them and trust them to post naturally.

Some employees will already be posting more about your business than others or have a more engaged audience. Identify your top socially active employees and give them the opportunity to build their thought leadership further by including them in your social media strategy.

Here are few actionable tips:

1. Brand culture: Like how the janitor at NASA, your employees—no matter their department—should own your brand's vision. Cultivate this by re-iterating the vision and goal in meetings, emails to employees, your own social media posts, posters around the office, and through your actions. For example, start office yoga classes if your vision is related to health or fitness. Don't let your folks forget what you're working to achieve.
   
2. SWAG: Who doesn't like a cool swag? Give your employees a t-shirt, a coffee mug, or even a cool hat with your logo on it. If they love your swag, there are two advantages: one, they will advocate about it in their social media space, and two, when they wear the swag in public, it's free advertising for you. Plus, swag increases the bonding between companies and employees.
   
3. Celebrations: Celebrate days like Employee Appreciation Day, which falls on the first Friday of every March. Make your team members feel important and appreciated.
   
4. Indirect campaign: Start a social media campaign with a hashtag and send a mailer inviting employees to participate. For example, "Best Selfie with colleague wins a prize. Use hashtag #(YourBrandName)Fun." You could also have them host a Twitter chat around a topic in your industry or perhaps help them create a longer piece of content like a blog post or video that you can then promote on both the employee’s Twitter account and on your brand account.
   
5. Surprises: Surprise and delight your employees by sending them gifts on their birthdays or anniversaries. They might spread the word. Worth a shot!
   

Once you organically convert your employees into brand advocates, they will begin posting positive things they experience in the workplace—whether morning yoga, team lunch, employee appreciation gifts, or an employee awards function. As they start sharing their experiences with the world, your brand will get the right kind of exposure—and hopefully increased traffic via genuine word-of-mouth marketing.

• Topic Participants

• Vinit Tibrewal

  

• Sticky Posts

• 10 simple e-commerce marketing tips to boost sales

  Congratulations! You've finally set up that e-commerce store you've been thinking about for a long time. Hopefully it wasn't too difficult. Even if it was, the effort will be totally worth it when you start seeing some orders come through. Now that the store is live, let's take a look at some marketing tips you can apply for sales growth. 1. Avoid cart abandonment If you've ever shopped online, you might have added a product to the cart but then decided not to purchase it. This is known as cart abandonment.

• Marketing in a post COVID-19 world!

  Consumers across countries are increasingly spending more time on a wide variety of digital activities, right from online grocery shopping, to video conferencing, to tele-medicine. There is a good chance that you performed one or more of the following activities during this lockdown, thanks to COVID 19: Cooked a meal Made a TikTok Video Signed up for a remote learning session Consulted a doctor online (or ordered medicines online) Shopped for groceries online A study by Hunter, a food and beverage

• Inbound Marketing 101: The Foundational Blocks of Inbound Marketing Strategy

  According to a behaviour survey, 68% of the buyers use sources such as blogs to evaluate the product even before considering it. Before buying a product, we do a lot of research to learn more about the product through communities, blogs, social media,

• How Zylker doubled their webinar registrations!

  Webinars are good educational resources to gather qualified leads for your product. But what if your visitors are dropping off from your webinar landing page without signing up? What more could you do to convert visitors into registrants? This is the

• The ideology behind why features tell, but benefits sell

  Do you think there's any truth to this? Do features only tell, and benefits sell?  Well, let's see why we should focus on benefits rather than features as the great marketing wizards, David Ogilvy and Steve Jobs proved to be the best examples leveraging

• Recent Topics

• Custom Modules Now available for Standard and Professional Editions with Expanded Limits across all editions

  #CRM25Q1 Hello Everyone, We are here with an exciting update to Custom Modules in Zoho CRM. Custom modules will now be available to Standard and Professional Edition users, with expanded support across all editions. The standard modules offered in Zoho

• Assistance with Custom Attendance Report in Zoho People

  Hi, I created a custom report in Zoho People 5.0 to track employee attendance according to our specific needs, as the existing reports do not include all the required details. However, I’ve noticed that the report doesn’t update continuously or on a daily

• Zoho analyticsでのタブを跨いだ集計

  Zoho analyticsまたはCRMレポートなどを用いて、 見込み客タブと商談タブで共通するユニークキー(リード管理番号)を軸に、「共通選択リスト」で設定した項目別の集計を行うことは可能でしょうか？ ・要望 ①リード管理番号をキーに、見込み客テーブルと商談テーブルを結合したRAWデータを作成したい ②具体的には下記表のように「共通選択リスト」項目(サービス)別のマーケ数値を一表にしたい 　※リード＝見込み客タブ　商談・成約＝商談タブ 　　　　　リード数　商談数　成約数 サービスA　　　10　　　5　　　2

• Key Highlights of 2024: Recalling a Year of Progress and Advancements!

  As we step into 2025, we’re excited to share the progress and developments we’ve made to simplify and streamline your travel and expense management in the past year. Let’s take a look back at some of the key updates and enhancements that have helped us

• How to refresh the page by widget in related list?

  Hello, ZOHO.CRM.UI.Popup.closeReload method does the thing I need. But in my case, I'm not using popup. I have a widget in related list and I want to refresh the page when I'm done with it. I searched for it but I wasn't able to find it. Is there an any

• Organization Variables - Restrict Access

  Currently, there is no way to restrict the access to organization variables. This leads to a problem when storing API related values that should be kept secret as anyone with access to create and edit email templates, workflow rules, or inventory templates

• your phone line in the uk doesnt work i need help now

  i need to speak with customer service urgently

• Top Menu Disappeared from Blog Page

  Hi, Our top menu disappeared at Blog Posts page. However, it's still visible any other page on the website. I attached two screenshots, so it can be understood clearly. How can we bring back top menu? Thanks, K.

• Customise 404 page in Zoho Sites 2.0

  Is it possible to customise the 404 page in Zoho Sites 2? You use to create a new 404 page and that became the default 404 page, but this does not seem to work anymore? Any pointers/suggestions/support appreciated :)

• [Important announcement] Zoho Writer will mandate DKIM configuration for automation users

  Hi all, Effective Dec. 31, 2024, configuring DKIM for From addresses will be mandatory to send emails via Zoho Writer. DKIM configuration allows recipient email servers to identify your emails as valid and not spam. Emails sent from domains without DKIM

• Create workflow rules based on notes

  Last modified on 17/04/2023: Creating Workflow rules based on notes is now available for all Zoho CRM users in all DCs. Note that it was an early access feature available only upon request. As of April 13, 2023, it is rolled out for al Zoho CRM accounts.

• Workflow sync between zoho books and zoho inventory

  Hello, While the custom fields, validation rules and even custom buttons are sync'd between zoho books and zoho inventory, the workflow rules do not. Not sure if this is an intentional purpose of zoho team for some good reason or if it's in the development

• HOW TO USE ZOHO

  IDK

• Item sales account via api

  Hey everyone, I’m making an invoice using the create invoice endpoint on the api. Is it possible to set a sales account in the line_items attributes?

• Zoho Please change your ways

  I started using Your new Zoho bookings in earnest 3 days ago. What a mistake.  Once again, everything is backwards and upside down.  I had to spend 5 hours testing how the thing works in order for me to understand how to acutally use it.  When i started using google calendar years ago.  it took seconds to figure out how it works. Why is that. bc they put everything in places where it makes sense.  Today, I needed to add an appointment as well as a time off.  Stupid me i added the time off first,

• Make a ticket visible in the Community

  Hi there, It is possible to have a conversation with a customer via a ticket and eventually the proposed solution isn't possible yet. Therefore you want to add it as an idea in the Community, available and open to everyone that is in the community, so

• When converting a lead to an account, the custom mandatory fields in the account are not treated by zoho as mandatory

  In my Account module I have a number of custom fields that I have set as mandatory. When I enter a new customer as a new account they work, I can't save the record without populating them. However when I convert a lead, my CRM users are able to save the

• How to Enforce Mandatory Fields (Category/Sub-category) Before Closing a Ticket?

  Hi, I'm currently using Zoho Desk and encountering an issue where agents are able to close tickets without filling out mandatory fields, specifically Category and Sub-category. I’ve already set them both as a mandatory field, but it can still be bypassed

• Zoho email folders gone

  Hi, All my email folders are gone, i cant found any email, except sent. Also before folder rulesas was changed and i didnt fixed them, could you please check it?

• Pause/Resume Subscrtiption API

  I don't see the option to Pause/Resume a subscription using the API, is it in the pipeline?

• Update Department on Ticket (with applied Blueprint)

  Hello, Is it possible to update the Department of a ticket which is dictated by a blueprint, e.g. I would like to change departments at different states in the Blueprint. I do not see this is an option in workflow rules or blueprint transition actions,

• ERROR_CODE :554, ERROR_CODE :rejected due to spam

  Please verify bounce message: This message was created automatically by mail delivery software. A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. xxx@thalesesec.com Error, ERROR_CODE :554, ERROR_CODE

• Can't verify domain with AWS Route53

  I have a domain successfully transferred to AWS Route53 from NameCheap. When I try to CNAME or TXT Records as suggested, they are added in AWS console however zohomail does not verify them. For the TXT record zohomail says the value is wrong, whereas

• Sent emails not going and showing "Processing"

  Hello Team, Could you please assist with sent emails showing "processing" and not actually going through? Many thanks and regards, Cycology

• LinkedIn verification link and otp not receiving

  For the last 2 to 3 weeks I'm trying to verify my LinkedIn account to access my company's LinkedIn page, Linkedin is sending verification links and codes to this email address but I have not received any codes or links. Please help me here. Looking forward

• Admin Control for Default Email Templates in Zoho Desk

  Hi Zoho Desk Team, We would like to request a feature enhancement related to default email templates. Currently, agents can select and set their own default email templates when replying to tickets. However, we believe this setting should be managed centrally

• Unlocking New Horizons: A Year in Review

  As we bid farewell to 2024, let's celebrate and revisit the key highlights of the year. From adding a new edition to cross-platform enhancements, here’s a roundup of all the feature updates designed to simplify accounting, optimize financial management,

• Zoho desk desktop application

  does zoho desk has a destop applicaion?

• send file to ftp or another external service

  i'v created a zoho creator application for take a picture and rename it by phone. Now i need to send Each renamed pictures to my ftp or to specific folder on google drive...then, delete it from creator. (every picture recived it will processed by another program and stored on my Erp) HOW CAN I DO ??

• Error 403: Forbidden When Updating Email Signature via API

  Hi Zoho Desk team, First, congratulations again on the excellent Zoho API. But, I’m encountering an issue while attempting to update an email signature via the API. Whenever I make a request to update the signature, the response returns an HTTP 403 Forbidden

• Has anyone built a ticket export that allows Help Center users to export the tickets shown in the My Area list they are looking at?

  Hi, We are moving to Zoho Desk soon. Our current support system displays an option in our help center allowing customers to export their Open, Closed, or all tickets based on which list they are looking at. We need to offer the same in Zoho Desk help

• Mass pdfs into OCR field

  I am working on a Creator app that my org will use internally. Is there any way to mass upload pfs through a form with an OCR file upload field? Is Creator capable of this, or would I need to use Catalyst?

• How to upload a file to form file upload field from deluge script.

  Hi guys, I need to store API response into Form File upload field . I'm not getting any errors but PDF file is not assigned to file upload field. You can check possibilities using below details: Method: POST URL: https://v2.convertapi.com/convert/web/to/pdf?Secret=<<SecretKey>>&Token=<<APIKey>>&Url=https://www.google.com You need to generate secretKey and APIKey by Login to https://www.convertapi.com/a/su Response: { "ConversionCost": 4, "Files": { "FileName": "www_google_com.pdf", "FileSize": 68342,

• Export view via deluge.

  Hi, Is it possible to export a view (as a spreadsheet) via deluge? I would like to be able to export a view as a spreadsheet when a user clicks a button. Thanks     

• Subform Time field showing as null in script.

  Good Afternoon everyone. I am trying to take the information from my subform and populate it into a multiline field in the CRM. The code below works with no errors. The problem is, it shows that the Open and Close (Time fields) are null. But they are

• Zoho Payroll's Year in Review 2024

  As we roll into 2025, we'd like to pay tribute to all the milestones we hit in 2024! From releasing out new features that streamlined your workflows to updates that made payroll management smoother, we’ve had a prolific year—all while keeping you, our

• Is there a way to sort report on record template by a specific field like date field

  Hi, Is it possible to sort the report on the record template by the date field and not the default Added Time. Please check the example bellow: The records are sorting by the added time I wand to change that by the date field,

• Shared subfolders

  Am I right in thinking that there is no Zoho email application that allows me to create a shared inbox and then add additional folders/subfolders under that inbox? If so, this is really quite incredible and probably a deal breaker for us to start using

• Update Multi select field values to another form table as individual record

  Hi, I am new to coding and do basics within deluge. I need help with the deluge script to meet the following requirement. Form Student Attendance The fields are : Attendance Date Course (Lookup to Course Form) Class (Lookup to Class Form) Students (Multi

• Shared Mailbox - Mark as read for all users

  Hi all, Maybe someone can help me out. At the moment we have a shared mailbox without streams. When a users reads an mail or marks it as read other users will not see this. How can we resolve this? We now archive the mails when read and followed up. However

• Next Page