I was recently blessed with a new business to work with. Interpret 
is a leading entertainment, media and technology measurement and market research firm with headquarters located in Santa M0nica, CA. 🙂
In assisting with Interpret’s social media presence, I’m taking my usual steps. However, one of the obvious reasons for even spending effort on Social Loyalty is profits. Yes, there will be plenty of exposure and branding, engagement, etc. -but at the end of the day, we want to see some awesome leads generated -that turn into additional business and real $$$ for the company.
Well, Interpret has 90+ employees. The company hasn’t had to focus on their social media, but as more and more business is being conducted online -it is important to keep up with their online efforts. And if the company Social Media presence is the Lead-Generation tool that it’s supposed to become -then how can the company share that presence fairly amongst all it’s sales staff? Should one control the social media accounts and all passwords to the company blog –dividing leads as they see fit? I’ve worked on sales teams like this before, it’s not cool. 😦
What happens when the BIG lead comes in through social media? You know, the one that can make headlines, lead to early retirements, etc. Who on your sales team gets that lead in this method? If you’re on the sales team this doesn’t seem very fair does it? It doesn’t really make you want to share any of your company’s website amongst your peers. What if you’re new at the company? I wouldn’t want to share in this method either. I have worked hard for my social network -they are my capital R-E-A-L friends that I have worked hard to develop R-E-A-L relationships with throughout my entire life. If I’m going to expose them to my company product in an effort that they or any of their friends seeing my ad become clients, and bring my company $$$ -I want to make sure I’m given credit for that and properly compensated.
Does any of that sound familiar in your situation? Even prior to social media this seems to have always been an issue. What’s the answer? Well, I think it’s obvious that Gamification is the answer.
As mentioned in my previous post, Gamification could give Netflix the boost it needs so that their competition never catches up. Currently, a lot of Netflix’s competition has a chance. As also mentioned in my last post, the BigDoor “Mini-Bar” is a free Gamification tool that you can install on your company’s website -and would rest across the bottom of each of your company’s website pages.
The mini-bar allows anyone to easily login with Facebook. Through points or badges, you can reward your sales staff for checking-into or sharing any of the company pages or blog articles. You would have to be careful when designing the gamification, but could easily accomplish this in a manner that doesn’t turn the staff off by playing. I would highly recommend your company devs and social media gurus to read “Drive” by Daniel Pink and several others before designing any rewards.
Now, before your brain starts to wander and think if this is worth it for YOUR company (you don’t want to add points or badges/games), keep in mind, that NOW your company has the ability to properly reward the originating sharer with their rightly deserved commission for finding the social lead. And you don’t have to be so focused on the game aspect. Through a BigDoor gamified platform, now, your social media manager would have the ability to go to John Doe and say “John, I’ve notified the senior management that the company blog post you shared has received over 1000 views –just from your link, great job! ” (“And we’re taking you to lunch!”) 😉
Through a gamified platform like the BigDoor mini-bar, which has affiliate tracking -all of a sudden, the company knows exactly who in their staff shared what -and who responded to it from where. So, if the big client responds to an ad shared on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, eMail, or whatever method the member of the sales team originally posted from –no matter how many people later RT or continue to share that across the internets -the ad will always be tied to the originating affiliate link poster’s profile -giving that specific sales team member credit for the lead. It was through that persons social network that the lead came from -so there should be NO argument from anyone else as to who gets the credit or commission.
Gamification will take away blame, confusion, and anger over the treatment of your company’s web leads. Instead of anger that another sales team member received a strong web lead as a “gift” from their manager, or because they were ranking in seniority or other reasons -they will be happy that their sales team member earned extra pay from their additional social media efforts. Gamification will then also incentivize the rest of your sales team members to start working on their own social networks to promote with. No more arguments -just a bunch of focused team members! 😉
And what is the end result? Now you have all of your employees -however many it may be –all with their own megaphones and engaging with their social spheres/ target market -on behalf of their company –sweeeet! It’s a win-win-win situation -if that employee ever leaves they’ll always regard this company as the reason they started working on their own social graphs (which always belong to them) -and because of that will surely have nothing but good things to say about the co. even after departure. 🙂
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