1. Influencer Programs: How to Engage Smart People Outside Your Organization

    Friday, 23 Apr 2010 7 Comments Posted by:

    One of the most powerful concepts from the popular book, Wikinomics is the notion that there are more smart people outside your organization than inside it, no matter how enormous the organization is.

    Sean O’Driscoll, Ant’s Eye View CEO and Ant Advocate knows this firsthand from his work as General Manager of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional program. Listen to his thoughts below.

    As Sean mentions, key to encouraging passionate advocates, people who are answering hundreds of questions about your organization, or sharing information about your company with others, is first to figure out what makes those individuals tick. Do these advocates want access to product and service development teams? Do they want to be recognized and rewarded? Or are they simply satisfied with free stuff?

    At Microsoft, MVPs weren’t necessarily all that interested in speaking with the C-level executive suite but rather in helping others better use products they’ve come to be passionate about, and passionate about improving. As such, what Sean and his team did was to give MVPs direct access to the people within product development teams. When these advocates began to see their suggestions and feedback directly embodied in product and service innovations, they increased their engagement levels.

    Under Sean’s leadership, the program grew to more than 4000 MVPs in 90+ countries and resulted in 500 product reviews and over one million answers. To ask Sean more questions about how to engage users in an Influencer Program, you can find him at LiNC2010 on May 11 and 12. Or feel free to ask a question below.

    Special thanks to Paul Gilliham of Lithium for the interview.

    • http://humanvoice.wordpress.com tomob

      Nice post – I wish more companies (who want ppl to be engaged with them) would spend the time and $$ (yes, this might actually cost money) understanding the issues, motivations and drivers of their advocates BEFORE engaging with them or designing programs with them.

      How can you know what someone will value otherwise?

      Tom O'Brien
      MotiveQuest LLC
      @tomob

    • karimacatherine

      Hello Joann,

      This interview and the subsequent post are extremely relevant to any company/brand that wish to not only buid up engagement but nurture a community.

      Mr O'Driscoll had a vision and a sense a purpose when he drove the MVP program and that's what it takes, companies need leader and need to give them the space to act.

      Very nice piece,

      Karima-Catherine

    • sean odriscoll

      Seems I should have something wiser to say than Thank you! But I think just saying that is part of the point of the post:) So Thanks for your generous comment – I had a lot of smart and committed people working with me at the time at Microsoft and today here at Ant's Eye View:)

      Sean

    • Colleen Carrington

      Hi Sean,

      You and your team do a great job of identifying what *truly* motivates customers, then providing the tools to increase their engagement. Great work on increasing psychic income, brand affinity, WOM, and ROI. Can't wait to hear more about it. Thanks for the informative post Joann.

      Colleen

    • canoer

      One site I work with gives leaders in the community some site recognition and small gift cards annually. These leaders generally don't like reputation management schemes, since they want to be seen as helping newbies, not competing with others for providing the most or best responses.

      But newbies like having some way of identifying people in the community who appear to know what they are talking about.

      Trying to implement a reputation system has been more about not ticking the leaders off instead of learning what makes them tick!

    • Anonymous

      One site I work with gives leaders in the community some site recognition and small gift cards annually. These leaders generally don’t like reputation management schemes, since they want to be seen as helping newbies, not competing with others for providing the most or best responses.

      But newbies like having some way of identifying people in the community who appear to know what they are talking about.

      Trying to implement a reputation system has been more about not ticking the leaders off instead of learning what makes them tick!

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