Is Your Team on Your Side?

Of course your team wants to support and grow your company — but chances are good that they could be doing more to promote the brand, without much effort.

This conversation arose on the plane from Tampa to Atlanta, in a conversation about the pluses and minuses of a distributed workforce. We have team members in several different cities, while Taylor Trusty of Blackstone has his team not just in one city, but all in one set of offices. He pointed out that simply having a team living in one town increases visibility for a company.

I wasn’t so sure. If you have a huge team, maybe, but for smaller companies, it seems as though it would depend how public your team members’ lives are. “Some of our people have visibility in our target market,” I pointed out, thinking of the people who do public speaking and networking and so forth, “but others really don’t. Gideon’s high scores in bouldering competitions probably don’t do anything much for our company.”

“But what if you put him in a company T shirt?” Taylor said. He went on to describe how another design company made and gave out cool company T shirts, which their staff naturally wore out and about. Eventually, someone is going to ask where that spiffy shirt came from.

How can your team support your online (and offline) marketing easily? Here are some suggestions:

• Share your company blog posts in their social media.
• Link to your company website in their social media profiles.
• Retweet your company’s tweets now and then.
• Keep a QR code for your landing page on the counter or desktop.
• Use other signage that directs people to relevant sales pages.
• Ask, “Have you visited our website?” as they check people out.
• Say, “Remember, you can buy your refills online at our website” when selling a new product.
• Direct questions to your FAQ page or a relevant blog post.

Brainstorm ways your team can make a habit of connecting people with your website or your brand with minimal effort. You might be surprised how many opportunities there are.

Hmmm… I wonder what kind of T shirt would be most visible when Gideon is using his spidey skills?