Motivation and Social Media

Whatever our motivators are, they require we have rewards strategies to feed them. A motivator unfed produces a very unhappy person. In our Reward Strategy packs for the 9 motivators we have a small number of suggestions for feeding a motivator via Social Media. Recently one of our Practitioners asked me, How does that work then?

The Searcher for example wants to make a difference, so the suggestion is that what would be
rewarding from a social media perspective is actively receiving or seeking out Recommendations on a site like Linkedin. Why? Because the Searcher wants to know they have made a difference – what better way than somebody giving a recommendation to all that person’s contacts on Linkedin? Good? No, brilliant, but with one caveat: the Recommendations, to be effective, have to be quality
recommendations – they really do have to explain what the person has achieved, as opposed to simply being a generic lump of praise, ‘Joe’s marvellous’. Now that won’t float the Searcher boat.

But before we give up on generic recommendations, let’s remember that ‘Joe’s marvellous’ will work for one of the other motivators: it will work for the Star, who wants recognition, which may or may not be linked to making a difference. Thus, Recommendations on Linkedin can work for the Star, and quantity here is important, or for the Searcher, where quality is more the issue. Alternatively,
which social media programs are higher status, higher value? Perhaps Linkedin confers more prestige than Facebook, and more work-related promotion. 

What about the other seven motivators? What social media activities might work for them? Well, the Expert – the desire for learning and mastery – is pretty self-evident, isn’t it? Give them a blog to do – let them demonstrate what they know and prove their guru status! Alternatively, or complementarily, let them play with one media and become the expert in its own particular discipline.

The Friend is surely going to be happy on Facebook (or might have been on Friends Reunited once upon a time). On the other hand, the Creator loves the new and the latest ‘breaking’ technology; in terms of Social Media that makes Twitter a little passé, so perhaps we should direct them to Google+. And the Director – who wants more control? A paid Linkedin account where they can slice the data and create profiles and do a whole lot more: they’d love that.

Which leaves the Defender, the Spirit and the Builder. The Defender wants security and the key thing that supplies that is communication, communication, communication – messages reinforced and repeated many times. Where better than Twitter – using or receiving should provide endless satisfaction if used judiciously. 

As for the Builder, then using social media to commoditise products and services – heaven! Amazon
seems like an ideal place to learn how to do it, or EBay even.  

Finally, the Spirit – the most difficult of all to classify or define. Spirits want choice, so for them it’s the smorgasbord approach: playing with all the social media as the spirit takes them. Let them set-up on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Google+ – do not restrict their enthusiasm!