Social Media B2B

You can have the can have the coolest looking blog that is built on the best content management system, but unless it has quality content and information that answers business questions, people likely won’t ever find it or read it. When talking with companies this is one of the core issues they have when it comes to social media. They have no problem with the easy part, which is hiring an agency, freelancer or using existing internal development resources to do design and programming work. The challenge for most B2B companies when it comes to social media is motivating employees to get educated and become an active part of the social media strategy of the organization.

Understanding What Drives Employees

Recently I began reading Drive, the new book from Daniel Pink, which is all about what really motivates people. In reading the early chapters of the book, I began to think about how the lessons Pink outlines, impact companies working to motivate employees to participate in social media. Pink discusses why often “carrots and sticks” (extra compensation and punishment) don’t work. These lessons I think apply even more when framing them around social media:

From Drive:
Carrots and Sticks: The Seven Deadly Flaws
1. They can extinguish intrinsic motivation.
2. The can diminish performance.
3. They can crush creativity
4. The can crowd out good behavior.
5. They can encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behavior.
6. They can become addictive.
7. They can foster short-term thinking.

While, you can read Drive to get a full explanation of the list above, it is clear without doing so, that each of the results on the list are bad and bad for business. Now you may be asking your self, if I can’t bribe or punish employees in participating in social media, then how do I do it?

5 Strategies For Engaging Employees In Social Media

So if you take carrots and sticks out of the b2b social media playbook, then what tool do you use to motivate employees? Passion. The strategies that follow are ideas for bringing out the passion as a source of motivation for employees. One key component of all successful motivation strategies is the ability to create creative situations in which employees feel rewarded. We use carrots and sticks, because they are easy, building the right environment for motivation is harder.

1. Understand That Not All Of Your Employees Are Right For Social Media – Regardless of the size of your organization, it is likely that employees have different levels of passion about their roles in the company. This is fine, but your job, as the person looking to get employees engaged in an organization’s social media strategy, starts by selecting employees with the most passion for what they do. Don’t try to get everyone on the social media bus, but start with the people most engaged in the work they do.

2. Encourage Customers To Provide Positive Feedback – Think back to when you were a kid. Iif your mom told you to do something, it wasn’t cool. However, if a friend or adult outside the family told you to do something, you often listened. This same concept applies to motivating employees for B2B social media. Once you have identified employees to represent your company online have them do a couple of simple things like writing a blog post or asking a question on Facebook. Once they have done this, reach out so some of their key customer contacts and encourage them to leave comments and suggestions on ideas for future posts. This feedback and respect will demonstrate the value of the time the employee spent and encourage them to contribute more.

3. Tell Employees How Their Contribution Benefited The Company – While Pink talk about the negative aspects of bonuses in motivating employees, something that is often more valuable is clear praise from a manager or executive explaining how what they did resulted in a positive outcome for the business.

4. Give Them The Opportunity To Explore An Interest Via Social Media – Many people have pet projects. These are things that really interest them, but are secondary in their job responsibilities. For example, Someone in your research and development department may be working on project that is of particular interest to them. To get them engaged in social media, it may be best to give them some additional time or resources to work on their pet project, if they agree to document the process on an internal wiki or share breakthrough results on a company forum.

5. Make Social Media Involvement An Honor Within the Business – Recognition means a lot to people, mainly because people are rarely recognized for the great work they do. By making social media a privilege, instead of a requirement, you are able to reward employees that participate, while building and environment where others will want to get involved and be recognized. This could be in the form of something as simple as a corporate social media council or other forms of internal recognition.

Creating an environment for employees to thrive in social media is not easy, but it is important for the long-term success of a social media strategy.

What other suggestions do you have? What has worked for your business?

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