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What a great question! Changing behaviors and attitudes is the hardest thing to do. I have put together a framework on how to encourage employee participation. Thought you might find it helpful: http://blogs.cisco.com/socialmedia/what-to-do-if-youre-drowning-in-the-sea-of-social-media/.

Additional suggestions are to:

1. Find the people in your (sales) org that are already doing social on their own (these people can help you build a case, test approaches and assess what’s working/not working).

2. Anticipate and address their concerns, build a business case and show value (what’s in it for them and how social media can help do their job more efficiently, reach into audiences that may not have been covered before, uncover new opportunities, learn about their customers in a different way, show the possibilites of expanding offline relationships online, etc).

3. Make social relevant to them. For example, if you have a listening practice, you may want to share the results from your readouts with sales. Do so in a way that can help them take action — make the content relevant. Or, if you’re using social media for registration, route the registration list to the appropriate people in sales (if possible) so they can follow up as needed.

4. Offer a path so they can grow their participation over time.
4.A. Start small. For example, initially you may just want to send them relevant blogs and encourage them to share them with their customers. While they may not be writing blogs for you at this time, they’re using social media deliverables to communicate with their customers. This is a good first step — they’re getting exposure to social content and are incorporating social content in their conversations.
4.B. Know who they are. Not every tool or platform will work for everyone. But by exposing them to a variety of different participation options from one-time simple tasks to repeat tasks and longer, more elaborate forms of social communications, they can learn what they’re comfortable with. For example, they may not be interested in tweeting but they may be interested in posting their presentations on SlideShare or participating in LinkedIn groups. You can help them discover their interests based on the time and effort they’re able to commit.

5. Show them how to do it, provide training, guidelines and guidance. We have a robust training program and many of our participants come from sales. We’re seeing an increasing number of participants from outside of our marketing organization.

6. Be patient and keep an open mind. Listen to their feedback and make adjustments to make it easier on them.

These are just a few ideas. Keep in mind not everyone will want to engage in social and that’s ok. Make participation voluntary and share your successes and use cases widely.

Hope these help!

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I especially like point #3. We tend to think of this as the customer journey within an integrated marketing framework. As you said, the possibilities are endless, and making it easy for the buyer is what’s most important.

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Thank you for sharing the great article.

I strongly believe in the power of the company employees. The only challenge is to get their participation, especially the Sales colleagues whose top priority is to ensure they attain thier sales target. What approach would you recommend to use in order to encourage them to participate in the social media platform?
Thank you

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