How to Build a Brand Ambassador Network on Instagram

Can you believe Instagram turned 10 in 2020? Boasting 1 billion users, it’s surely not a platform that you have ignored as a marketer or business owner.

However, I see many brands fall short with their Instagram marketing strategy. I don’t want you to be one of those brands so I’ve created this post on how you can boost the effectiveness of your Instagram presence with brand ambassadors to grow more traffic, brand awareness and sales.

Why Does My Brand Need Brand Ambassadors?

Sixty-percent of Instagram users log on daily. That means that your target consumers are interested in what their peers and people they follow post about. Don’t you want some of those daily posts to be about your brand? Brand ambassadors can be influencers or happy consumers. They have the ability to create authentic posts about your brand. After all, consumers are ad blind and they don’t want to hear about your brand from your brand itself. Consumers want to learn about new products and/or services from their peers. Brand ambassadors are considered to be peers.

Where to Find Brand Ambassadors?

There are many ways to identify people who are the perfect fit for your brand ambassador program on Instagram. As I mentioned, brand ambassadors can be influencers or happy consumers. Influencers have a lot of followers on Instagram while happy customers may not have huge a social following, but they can still get your brand in front of hundreds of their friends and family.

Here are a few ways you can go about identifying brand ambassadors to post on Instagram.

• Identify and activate influencers using a tool like GroupHigh or BuzzSumo
• Consult with your client services team to identify happy consumers and email them and ask them to post on Instagram and tag your brand
• Send out an email to your consumers asking them to share their experience with your brand on Instagram

How to Get Ambassadors to Post

Turning someone into a brand ambassador often requires some creativity and a little incentivization. Based on successful brand ambassador programs on Instagram, there are few things we can learn from other brands on how to get consumers to post on Instagram about their experience with your brand.

• Offer free product for posts
• Offer different tiers of gift cards for how many likes an ambassador gets on their post
• Monetarily incentivize ambassadors to post
• Set up a commission structure for the sales that come in from their Instagram posts
• Organizing and Scaling Your Brand Ambassador Program

The goal is to get as many brand ambassadors as you can to post. This takes a lot of organization. You can create a Google Sheet to track who is in your program and the links and reach of their posts. You can also keep a running list of all your brand ambassadors in an email marketing tool like MailChimp so you can regularly communicate with them.

However, organizing, scaling, and incentivizing your ambassadors can be a tedious process. Especially when your days are filled with other marketing initiatives. That’s why tools like CrewFire which organizes and allows your to incentivize your ambassadors to post are like a dream come true for marketers.

Creative Ways to Maximize Your Earned Media from Ambassadors

Your brand ambassadors are going to create some amazing earned media for you on Instagram. The images and words they used can be great assets for more than just sales. Here are a few ways that you can reuse your earned Instagram media:

• Use the images on all of your social channels
• Utilize their images and quotes from their posts on your homepage
• Create a category on your website for potential consumers to see all of your earned Instagram content
• Use their images in your marketing materials

How to Track the Results from Your Brand Ambassador Program

To ensure that your brand ambassador program on Instagram is reaching its fullest potential, you’re going to want to track your earned media. Create a spreadsheet, consult your earned media, and utilize Google Analytics to record how your program is performing.

To be able to track your ambassadors on an individual level, ask them to put your link in their bio on the day that they post about you. Even if they won’t put your link in their bio, you can still track the results of your brand ambassador program on Instagram.

These are the most sensible metrics to track:

• Impressions (number of followers the ambassador has)
• The number of likes their posts get
• The number of Instagram comments an ambassador gets on their posts
• The number of posts the ambassador posts about your brand
• Traffic their posts brought to your website (if they put your link in their bio)
• Sales (if they put your link in their bio)

Key Takeaways

Brand ambassadors are a cost effective and authentic way to earn media for your brand and create brand awareness on Instagram. Consumers want to hear about brands from their peers and not from your brand, so these third-party recommendations are very powerful.
Don’t forget to incentivize your ambassadors to post and remember that a little goes a long way. Usually, your happy consumers just need a little nudge to post about your brand.

Have you worked with ambassadors on Instagram? If so, feel free to reach out on social with your tips and insights!

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The post How to Build a Brand Ambassador Network on Instagram appeared first on Social Media Week.