Activating Your Trusted Experts As Influencers On Social Media
Louis Hansel

Activating Your Trusted Experts As Influencers On Social Media

Your technical experts are often some of the most time-poor members of your team. But their input on social media carries a lot of weight – and marketers recognise that. That’s why I’m often asked: how can I activate my subject matter experts on social media? 

 Customers love experts. They’re knowledgeable and, perhaps more crucially, they don’t sell. Their knowledge and expertise are priceless promotional assets – but their time is valuable too. So how do you get them in front of a wider audience, when they don’t want to be influencers, social media celebs or social sellers? 

 There’s no easy answer, but with the help of the Hubbub eBook, ‘Don’t be afraid to take centre stage’, here’s what I’d recommend. 

 Understand your expert’s mindset 

 Experts are proud of what they know. Their credibility and integrity are core to who they are. And they’d much rather be finding ways to add value to customer relationships than be used a marketing tool. You need to respect that they value collaborative relationships, learning and knowledge and let that inform the way you encourage them to speak and act online. 

 Have their LinkedIn profile tell a story 

 Your experts likely won’t have the time to update their profiles themselves, so you’ll need to help them do it. Optimising their LinkedIn profile page is all about crafting a story that showcases their depth of knowledge and experience. That means avoiding any marketing or sales-y language they wouldn’t otherwise use. 

 Help them build the right networking habits 

 Experts often know a lot of people – they just haven’t connected with them on LinkedIn yet. Helping them build the right networking habits is an important step to growing your experts’ social media influence. In practise, try getting them to connect with those they already know and when meeting customers, doing a bit of profile research before they meet. 

 Get them creating content 

 This might be a harder sell but start small and meet them where they are. It’s all about learning what they want to say and how they want to say it. The last thing you want to do is push them into a content creation process they aren’t confident or comfortable with. 

 Do they prefer writing or being in front of a camera? Would a podcast work better? It’s your role to find the best tactic to bring their insights to life, doing it in a way that aligns with their passions and purpose. 

 Connect them with other influencers 

 Highlighting the learning opportunities associated with influencer relationships is an important step to activating your experts. They love to learn and grow. And by introducing them to like-minded influencers, you demonstrate the value of building a content ecosystem in which they learn from others and help others learn – even if they aren’t in the same industry! 

 

Looking for a simple guide to get the ball rolling on your experts’ social media presence? Show them why they shouldn’t be afraid to take centre stage with Hubbub by Transmission

 Alternatively, if you’re looking for a partner to help activate your experts on social and get them scaling fast, Tribal Impact are always here to help

This is an important post, Sarah. Addressing the need to make experts active on terms they are comfortable with. A great motivator is to let them see the traction their sharing gets. Ideally, expanding their networks along the road

Lucy Thorpe

Communications professional - ex BBC, tech storyteller, social media, digital marketing, CRN marketer of the year nominee.

1y

The work to persuade technical experts to get social is as vital as ever because there is now no doubt that business experts are very much listened to and trusted. As technology gets more exciting it also gets more complex and the educational element becomes bigger. 😀

Ignacio Ovalle

Padre | El consultor de Employee Advocacy | Impulso la confianza y la reputación de las organizaciones a través de las personas y sus redes sociales | Escritor Fantasma en LinkedIn para C-Level | Miembro de Focco

1y

Interesting article Sarah. Indeed in my experience the technical experts are the most difficult to activate in an EA program mainly because they don't have time and because they don't like the lights. The guide that you share gives very good clues on how to accompany these professionals on their way and get them to regularly participate with their knowledge on social networks. Greetings from the south.

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