Cultivating Brand Advocates Through Social Media: Involving the Customer

Customers truly enjoy engaging with brands that include them in their operations. Generally, companies subject even their most loyal customers to sitting on the sidelines, as mere spectators. Why waste these valuable brand advocates that you've likely spent years building relationships with?

Social media is a tool that can make customer involvement much easier.

Free the Children, a charity group whose goal is to eradicate child poverty, demonstrates this perfectly. They've partnered with various sponsors who have agreed to contribute $1 for every "like" they get on Facebook. This allowed supporters to be a part of the giving process, with a simple but meaningful gesture that they could feel good about.

Several brands have also created "name this product" contests on Facebook, as well as YouTube-based contests to make advertisements.

These sorts of engaging campaigns can create lifelong brand loyalty with winners and fun memories for other participants. Once you make a customer feel like a part of your organization, she feels sincerely good about supporting your brand.

How to Build Brand Loyalty with Facebook and other Social Media

To truly create a strong emotional connection with your customers, you have to give them good experiences that make them feel special. After all, a brand is is simply a sum of every positive and negative experience a customer has with your business.

For many high prestige brands, stroking a customer's ego is never a bad thing. Tiffany & Co., the legendary jeweler, allows loyal customers access to a back vault stocked with highly exclusive merchandise not available to the general public.

These sorts of loyalty programs can extend to Facebook with the "closed group" feature where membership is by invitation only. Here, you can pamper your most die-hard fans with special deals and early access to new products. Obviously, the feeling of being part of an exclusive group, can make the 2% of customers who drive 80% of sales, feel very special.

This is excellent for companies who are selling a revolutionary new technology that only a small segment has bought into. Reward these first supporters and they will reward you.

Although the closed nature detracts from direct online sharing, word-of-mouth in the real world will be strong, as your proud brand advocates boast about their membership in this group.