In our previous post, Creating Online Evangelists, we continued our series with a discussion on how to find and create brand evangelists to help spread the word. In this post, we take a look at various evangelistic styles, and how to recruit the right style for your brand.
Evangelistic Styles
Once you’ve found evangelist candidates, you’ll want to begin to establish relationships with them. Before doing so, it’s helpful to realize that there are various styles of evangelists.
- Intellectual
Intellectual evangelists enjoy using rationality, ideas and evidence to persuade. They are typically analytical, logical, and inquisitive. They will most likely engage with your community by debating ideas and presenting rational evidence. They typically are more concerned with what people think than with what they feel. An intellectual evangelist is a good fit for communities or community members who like to engage on a rational level. If your organization’s appeal is primarily visceral, this type of evangelist may not be a good fit.Support the intellectual evangelist with lots of facts, figures, and other empirical evidence. They are likely to respond well to objective manifestations of their success, such as awards, badges, and admission to special clubs and hierarchies. - Testimonial
This type of evangelist has been there and done that and is best used as a representative for products and services that change lives. They’ve used your products or services to solve a problem or improve their lives in some way. They have the war stories to establish credibility. But their experience doesn’t have to be dramatic, based in life-changing events and conflicts. In fact, ordinary stories may connect with a larger range of people. Testimonial evangelists are generally good communicators as well as good listeners. They have a talent for connecting their experiences with your community’s. A testimonial evangelist can be an asset to almost any organization, but particularly one whose business purpose is emotionally affecting.Support the testimonial evangelist with lots of case studies and personal stories from those you serve. They may respond well to objective manifestations of their success, but are likely to be more driven by the number and quality of their relationships. - Interpersonal
The interpersonal evangelist thrives on creating relationships with community members and influencing them via these relationships. They generally have a very conversational online style and are compassionate and sensitive. They are obviously friendship-oriented and have an ability to focus on individuals in the community and their needs. An interpersonal evangelist, like the testimonial evangelist, can be an asset to almost any organization. Organizations where interpersonal bonds in the community are especially strong can best leverage this type of evangelist.Support the testimonial evangelist with online tools that enable them to easily create and maintain personal relationships. They may respond well to objective manifestations of their success, but, like the testimonial evangelist, are likely to be more driven by the number and quality of their relationships and a personal relationship with your organization’s staff and leadership. - Invitational
Invitational evangelists specialize in attracting new members to the community. This type of evangelist is a gatherer, identifying potential community members and bringing them into the fold. They are also extremely open, hospitable, and persuasive, and live for meeting new people. They are extremely committed and welcome opportunities to invite prospects to experience the community. The invitational evangelist fits best in an organization that has lots of online and offline events or other gatherings that the evangelist can help attract prospects to.Support the inherently social invitational evangelist by providing opportunities for them to work their magic. They are likely to respond to some objective measurements, such as number of prospects converted, but mostly to a sense of belonging to your organization and making a difference.
No matter the evangelism style your organization prefers, it’s important to distinguish between an evangelist and a fanatic.
Famous online personality and former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki said, “Fanatics forcefully push their agenda whereas an Evangelist always puts the customer first.” For customer in this quote we would substitute community. You don’t really want fanatics. While their energy and devotion are not in question, they may lack a variety of other characteristics that would make them a good evangelist, notably subtlety. And their passion may actually get in the way of their effectiveness: think the overly-zealous salesperson who won’t take no for an answer.
Defining Evangelistic Styles is the 74th in a series of excerpts from our book, Be a Person: the Social Operating Manual for Enterprises (itself part of a series for different audiences). We’re just past page 226. At this rate it’ll be a long time before we get through all 430 pages, but luckily, if you’re impatient, the book is available in paper form at bit.ly/OrderBeAPerson and you can save $5 using Coupon Code 62YTRFCV
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Next up: Supporting Online Evangelists
