Despite how active and engaged Microsoft is with its customers in social media, there’s just no way it can reach them all. So it is turning to its customers and evangelists for help.
In his presentation at our BlogWell conference, Microsoft’s Nestor Portillo outlined how the company is creating a network of credible, independent influencers to help it reach a wider, more diverse audience.
A few of his key take-aways:
- Influencers help you scale. By giving resources and authority to influencers, Microsoft is able to connect with customers in markets and languages that it doesn’t have the ability to otherwise reach. This is the only way Microsoft is able to scale its program to engage with all necessary people.
- Participation rewards drive more participation. Microsoft recently introduced a program in which it rewards regular community participants with a “Microsoft Contributor” status. These talkers get a special badge and a private community where they can talk to one another. Since rolling this out, the company has seen a significant increase in participation from recipients of this status.
- Bring them home. Throughout all of their engagement and influencer programs, Portillo and his team work to bring them back to Microsoft’s owned properties, allowing them to control the end-to-end experience.
Watch Portillo’s presentation. Slides are available.