
Who Are These People (And Where Do I Find Them?)
Your ideal brand ambassador is someone with enough clout to reach a large audience who also happens to be continually impressed with your offerings. Some qualities to look for:- Well-spoken and vocal (possibly with a blog)
- Close to your target demographic
- Able to paint your brand in the best possible light
- Active on social media and in user forums

Social Mentions shows me that The Augsburg College Enrollment Center has shared our Scholarship on Facebook.
Checking Klout scores (a number showing how much influence a user has) can help you whittle the field, too. The average user has a score of about 40. Users with a score of 63 and up are in the top 5%.
My personal Klout score for all to see
As you’re finding your people, create a spreadsheet to keep track with different columns.Name | Email Address | Twitter Handle | Relationship | Klout Score |
Emma Siemasko | @emmafayes | Me! (I’m just an example) | 53 | |
Perry Louise | @theperryband | Grasshopper customer, Tweeted Grasshopper blog post | 59 |
OK, I’ve Got Them! Now … What Do I Do With Them?
Once you have a team of happy campers, it’s time to mobilize them. Send a message to your ambassadors– it doesn’t matter if it’s on Twitter, LinkedIn, or through another network, but sending an email is best (check their website for the address). Start by thanking them for their loyalty and letting them know how much you appreciate their consistent feedback. Then, deliver the ask. This is an example of an email I’d send to a Grasshopper customer: Hi Perry, Thanks so much for sharing our content on Twitter. I love knowing that our customers are looped in to what we’re putting out. I hope you’re finding our resources helpful and I’d love to know what else you’d like to see. I was wondering if you’d be willing to write a short testimonial of your experience at Grasshopper for our website. I’d need 2-3 sentences on how Grasshopper has helped you and your business. You can send it back in a reply to this email. If I can help you and your business in any way, please let me know! Emma Content Marketing Specialist Grasshopper It’s important to identify your goals before you reach out to your brand ambassadors. What do you want them to do? Are you looking for them to link to your site, write a review on Yelp, follow your social media posts, or refer you to the world at large? In my example email, I wanted Perry to provide me with a couple sentences to use for our website so we could have more social testimonials online. These tidbits of social proof make it easy to convince prospective customers to join us. They wind up looking like this:
What Do They Get Out of the Deal?
This is a delicate balancing act. You want to make it clear that you’re offering incentives, but you don’t want it to sound like you’re paying for allegiance. For instance, a tech design company could reward their ambassadors with a discounted rate, or a restaurant could offer deals on future meals. Remember, these people already like you and are already talking about you, so give them (literally) something to talk about. And don’t count out the appeal of personal recognition. Feature your top ambassadors of the month prominently on your website. Tell their stories. Don’t just tell them that their time and efforts matter — tell the world! Really, it’s not even about the incentives. After all, they’ve been “promoting” you for free all this time. You’re rewarding them because you want to, not because they’ve demanded it. At Grasshopper, we have “Refer an Entrepreneur Program.” It allows our customers to give all of their friends a deal on our services.