Webinar: Scale and Trust: Making the Case for a Formalized Social Advocate Program

Want to learn about Formalized Social Advocacy Programs? An embedded recording is below.

What are some of the most advanced social media programs by companies? We see formalized Advocacy Programs like Fiskers Fiskateers, Intel Insiders, Microsoft MVPs, Walmart Moms (and Dads), and beyond (see this quora thread) as the most advanced. Why? In order to gain scale and trust, companies must give up significant control and management to allow these advocates a platform to speak. Furthermore, we found in our research that these advocacy programs often put the advocates front and center, often before the brand.

Altimeter has been tracking these programs for research for over 2 years, and have conducted a handful of workshops for clients, but for the most part, haven’t shared our findings in public. Because this topic is so niche (our survey data yielded less than 20% of companies were investing in these programs) we held off on publishing till the market matured. Interestingly, we found companies that were ripe for these programs either had already an engaged set of brand loyalists, or was a brand under scrutiny, or those that were ready for uncomfortable conversations with critics performed best.

We do not recommend this program for companies in their formative years, as these programs impact all customer relationships spanning product teams, sales, marketing, corp comm, media and executives. Companies that have become ‘social organizations’ throughout are able to properly invest, sustain, and use advocate feedback to actually change products and services.

Also, please welcome Christine Tran, Senior Researcher at Altimeter who was a driving force in this webinar. The webinar recording is embedded above.

Related Resources

• See difference between Influencer Relations (often short term) vs Advocacy Programs (long term)
• Michael Brito breaks down the 4 pillars of an advocacy program
• See some blueprints from Sean O’Driscoll who we interviewed for this topic
• Jive Community on Using Advocates as a Secret Weapon
• Got more to add? Leave a link below in the comments.