Employees acting as brand evangelist for your most important customers - your new hires

Good article on LiveMint.com about the value of enrolling your employees as brand evangelists for trialing new products and more importantly brand evangelists as part of your employee referral scheme.

http://www.livemint.com/2008/08/06231422/Employees-becoming-central-to.html?pg=2

“At Pinstorm, itself, one of the 26 parameters for performance assessment is how active the employee has been in publishing blogs and being a part of social communities,”
...This is great idea - I wonder how long it will be before other less technology focused companies consider this?


Referral scheme facts:
HDFC Standard Life's new referral scheme ‘Parichay’ (introduction) contributes 30% of recruits by creating internal brand ambassadors