Comments on: 5 Strategies For Improving Employee Involvement in B2B Social Media

By: Kipp Bodnar

Kipp Bodnar — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:52:55 +0000

Great point Arik! Thanks for sharing with us.

By: Kipp Bodnar

Kipp Bodnar — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:52:17 +0000

Alex,

Good point internal feedback can be the life blood of getting employee participation, especially when a blog is just getting started.

By: Kipp Bodnar

Kipp Bodnar — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:50:54 +0000

Jeff,

Great points. I think empowering employees with data from the web is a key tactic to success. Thanks for sharing!

By: Kipp Bodnar

Kipp Bodnar — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:49:04 +0000

Good Thoughts! thanks for sharing them!

By: Anna Barcelos

Anna Barcelos — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 02:58:08 +0000

Great post Kip. So many marketers/companies focus on external efforts of social media they neglect the most important aspect – internal involvement. If companies implemented social media strategies with their employees in mind first and created internal champions, it would make external engagement that much easier. Consumers can tell from a company’s engagement efforts if it’s personal or not. They expect companies to engage as people. If you’re using the wrong people to engage or arent’ including the right employees, it’s pretty transparent on the outside and defeats the purpose. I’ve unfollowed some brands for that reason. Either there was no engagement or interaction seemed contrived. Of course, I am a bit biased because I’m a marketer, but I still shouldn’t feel this way. No one should.

By: Jeff H

Jeff H — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 21:22:52 +0000

Great article. Building on point number two if I may, would be to actually show them their contributions. Add them as a user on your Google Analytics account. Let them see for themselves how their efforts have directly correlated into increase page views, visitors from referring sites etc. If they are performing well enough and it makes sense for your business, I’d create an affiliate employee program. They could get X% of sales generated from the site(s) they are helping to optimize. This would also help when it comes to providing intrinsic motivation & creativity.

Cheers!

By: Alex Forbes

Alex Forbes — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:49:37 +0000

Kipp,

Thoughtful post. Encouraging customers to provide feedback is a great point, but also asking customers to get involved can go a long way to improve content for your blog. Additionally, getting feedback from sales or sales engineers (pre/post sales folks), etc., on how a particular blog post benefited a customer or prospect can further motivate other employees to contribute. At first you may have to proactively follow up with your teams to see what blogs were most useful, and soon these people will be emailing you about how a post helped them close a deal, shortened a technical support call, or improved a process for a client without having to contact the company.

Make sure you’re getting that internal feedback too.

Best,
Alex

By: Arik Hanson

Arik Hanson — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:35:59 +0000

You nailed it with points 4 and 5 above. It’s all about creating a culture that embraces the principles inherent in social, which is no easy feat within some B2B organizations.

You allude to it above, but I’d add highlighting quick and early wins. Have an employee who took a risk online? Make damn sure you hold them up as a shining example of how risk is rewarded. In conservative cultures, risk is oftentimes avoided. You need to encourage risk-taking by spotlighting those who embrace it.

@arikhanson

By: uberVU - social comments

uberVU - social comments — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:31:28 +0000

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