Accidental Foot Soldiers Boost your Brand

// December 15th, 2009 // Blogging, Online Community

Allied World War I soldiers
Image by Dunechaser via Flickr

You can call them brand ambassadors, evangelists, endorsers – the title is not as important as what these people can actually do for your brand. Big business has long used the celebrity endorsement to get people to think “I want to be like Ms Hollywood Celeb, so if she uses it, I’m using it too”. The Foot Soldier is someone outside your company, that uses their influence to spread your brand message.

As social media continues to become a key part of the marketing and PR bag of tricks, many companies have come to appreciate (and use) the more grassroots approach to celebrity endorsement, or as I like to call them, the foot soldier. These soldiers are everyday people who are already doing all the legwork and talking about your brand. Foot soldiers have established their personal brand and use their chosen platform to influence others. Nowadays, these soldiers are as good as rockstars – they spread a brand message to their thousands of followers on Twitter or add their personal recommendation to your product via their well read blog. The Foot Soldiers who walk amongst us are our respected friends (for the most part), therefore we trust and respect what they endorse.

How to spot Accidental Foot Soldiers for your brand?

  • They talk about your brand and recommend you to others…all this without a million dollar contract
  • Their influence lies not only in the number of followers, friends or RSS subscribers they have, but in how they engage with these people
  • They rock their niche, and your product is part of this niche
  • They rock their niche by one or many ways such as blogging, tweeting, vlogging…and people respond to what they have to say
  • Their readers, followers, friends, stalkers(!) are the same people that YOU want to talk to

    • Sure someone may write or tweet about your product or service because they love it. But if you want this to be an ongoing gig that evolves and actually gets you more clients, fans or subscribers to your list, you really have to look at making the Accidental Foot Soldier a purposeful part of your team – a true Foot Soldier. Depending on the length of engagement of your Foot Soldier with promoting/endorsing your brand, you need to compensate them accordingly. Sometimes free product will do but remember, you get what you pay for. More and more companies are creating Ambassador (Foot Soldier) jobs that are paid “regular” jobs.

    Some duties of the grassroots Foot Soldier include:

  • road testing a company’s products regularly and providing reviews online
  • Coordinating a blogger outreach for your company, whereby a network of bloggers carry out a campaign together for a product launch for example
  • Online Community Management, monitoring your brand’s places on the interweb and providing recommendations (community management is really a job in itself)

    • Of most importance is that your Foot Soldier is armed with all the necessary tools to promote your brand. If you are serious about enlisting someone as a face for your company, you want to make sure they are consistent with your brand culture. Remember, they are adding value to your brand’s message, so make sure they have the ability to do this properly. A proper Foot Soldier is a solid investment in your brand.

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    One Response to “Accidental Foot Soldiers Boost your Brand”

    1. Blia says:
      December 21, 2009 at 7:35 pm

      Thanks for sharing. I think far too often, mom product reviewers are taken for granted for the work that they do. I will thumb this up. Following from MBC Stumble club.

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