10 ways to Recognize and Reward your Brand Advocates

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10 ways toReward and Recognize your Brand
Advocates

• Sanjay Shetty
• www.communitiesrus.in
• http//blogs.communitiesrus.in/communityconnect

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RECOGNITION

• Five Ideas to Recognize Your Brand Advocates

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1. Promote Them

• Feature interviews with brand advocates on your
  website and in your offline media
• Feature brand advocates in your newsletter
• Talk about your brand advocates on your social
  channels

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2. Give them something to display

• Give them a plaque or Certificate
• Give them a Badge to display on their website and
  blogs

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3. Preferred treatment

• Shower them with love
• For e.g. at your conferences/events, make sure
  you provide them
• Discounted offerings
• Separate seating for them right up front,
• Maybe a separate dedicated Wi-Fi connection
• A special lounge.

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4. Enable Engagement with them

• On your website and social networks
• Introduce a brand advocate of the month
• Let them play the lead role for a day
• via their blog post or
• virtual presentation
• Online Skype QA
• Focus on helping them make new connections

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5. Speaker/Contributor Bureau

• Setup a speaker registry of your top brand
  advocates

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REWARDS

• Five ideas to reward your brand advocates

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6. Publications and Books

• Establish tie-ups with publishers and authors who
  can provide discounted offerings or free books
  for your advocates to review.
• Almost all publishers have a review program
• Publish the reviews on your and the brand
  advocates social networks

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7. Shareable Giveaways

• Let your brand advocates give away your next
  product, eBook or whitepaper to others in their
  communities or via their blogs etc.
• Other giveaways could be complimentary coupons
  for training by partners, which they can further
  giveaway to others, thereby helping promote
  themselves and the partners.

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8. Custom T-shirts / Letterheads / Envelopes

• T-shirts/Jackets which prominently state their
  expertise or contributions.
• These need to be cool, just slapping your logo on
  to a t-shirt is useless.
• Something as simple as providing printed
  envelopes or business cards with their name. This
  is uber cool if executed well.

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9. Share, contribute or co-author content

• Invite them to share, contribute or co-author
  content with you
• Feature their articles on your blog/community
  sites.
• Try and get content syndicated even in regular
  print channels if possible.
• Include links to their samples, and presentations
  within your articles, documentation and product

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10. Invite them to the inner circle

• Provide them access to
• Top Executives
• Product teams
• Special events
• And include them in your product planning process

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What not to do?

• Cash Rewards
• Hiding the rules of engagement

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Bonus Idea - Segmentation

• Encourage and recognize different skills,
  expertise and contributions. Could be in terms of
  recognizing different kinds of people
• Some contribute articles, some provide their time
  guiding and supporting others, some are great at
  reviewing content etc.
• Segmentation of brand advocates can also be based
  on the products they specialize in.
• The kind of activities people do. E.g. people who
  blog, podcast, webcast, speak at events,
  contribute on forums, or their presence in
  traditional media.

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Want more ideas, strategies and answers?Join
the brand advocacy community on LinkedIn

• http//bit.ly/BrandAdvocacyCommunity

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Did you find the presentation useful?

• Please Tweet http//bit.ly/BrandAdvocate-Reward-R
  ecognition

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www.communitiesrus.in

• Blog http//blogs.communitiesrus.in/communityconn
  ect