Best Way To Reward/Pay For Social Media Work?

eliquid

eliquid

Serpwoo.com
May 10, 2007
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I have someone on staff that is doing social media for us ( facebook, twitter, pinterest, instagram, youtube, etc ). This person is entry/mid level employee but very bright and willing to learn and do more.

Problem is, they pretty much follow a social media plan I am developing for them every 2 weeks. I lay out what they need to promote for that day of the week and general overall strategy, and then I let them decide the texts, pics, method of attack, etc. I have a template plan where every Monday is a certain brand of product, every Tuesday is another or a certain promotion method ( just pinterest only ), etc.

They get paid an hourly rate, but we are a very entrepreneurial company. What do you think is a fair way to reward/bonus them to get them to do more and keep at it?

They are putting in a lot of the grunt work, so I want to keep them happy. Here is some ideas I had and the cons of each:

1. Pay based on followers, pins, views, etc. - Cons: followers and pins, etc can be bought or prove to be faked.

2. Pay based on revenue generated. - Cons: somewhat doing this now but finding out it is not really working well for us. The social media channels end up looking just self promotional 100% of the time and also other affiliates are taking our work ( photos we make, people we engage with, etc ) and slapping their links on it, taking revenue away from the person doing the grunt work to begin with.​


That's all I could think of at the moment. Wondering if you guys had additional methods or thoughts on what is already mentioned above.
 


Bonuses.

If you'll pay them a bonus when a page gets X number of pins/follwers/likes etc, and you set that number high enough, you should be able to discourage any shortcuts, since they will be obvious.

In other words, set the goals to be longer term, maybe on a monthly basis, and you'll have a benchmark to use to deter any cheating on their part.
 
This isn't sales. Don't treat it as such. Rewards come with loyalty and in the form of an outing (maybe send them to a conference) and cash bonuses/shinny shit (ipads, iphones, something they like, etc). I'd avoid cash, these people don't think that way (if you have the right ones)

If you push for high productivity with a high cognitive skill like this, you will get high volume but little substance.

I'd rather have less followers, less tweets, less retweets, but more connection with actual customers. One time that you answer in a tweet the exact question of an ACTUAL consumer can easily be worth 20 tweets where you kiss some ass, but the people involved WILL NOT BUY and/or are not interested in buying in that moment.

Get them to understand what they are doing, what your end goal is, have THEM report their progress and how they spent their time and WHY, and you will be light years ahead of most brands who treat high cognitive tasks the same as lower cognitive tasks.
 
Some people are'nt always motivated by money. Dropping a random iPod or tv once a year can enable you to continue to underpay them. People love to get free shit. Obtainable goals and contests can be a great motivator. It's important to note different things motivate different people. It's your job to determine what makes your people tick. And then exploit that
 
All good info guys.

While talking to them and finding out their problems ( im new to the role, so I had to sit down and go over things with everyone already here ) this particular person was very upset to find out an affiliate of ours was piggybacking off their work AND making more % wise on direct revenue from a coupon code they use for our tracking. They kept mentioning how this affiliate earns more ( we looked at the data, they had a lot of it stored ) and how the amount they were paid was tiny in comparison and how they should just take a second job to earn more, etc....

I walked away with the feeling that maybe they were not motivated by money, but their compensation was indeed a concern.

I still want to hear what a lot of you guys think about this, but I think I am going to devise a situation where we send this person to 1-2 tradeshows for Social Media ( they are very eager to learn ) on our dime and then maybe do what dmnEPC said and drop in a random freebie once or twice a year all while modifying their pay/reward that they see on their check based on tiers of # of followers at first or revenue, whichever is greater in the end for them.
 
IceToEskimos said:
Bonuses.

If you'll pay them a bonus when a page gets X number of pins/follwers/likes etc, and you set that number high enough, you should be able to discourage any shortcuts, since they will be obvious.

In other words, set the goals to be longer term, maybe on a monthly basis, and you'll have a benchmark to use to deter any cheating on their part.
Click to expand...

Not enough. It's easy to get fake likes/tweets/pins. Just look in the BST and you'll find tons of services that do this.

I think the best way to figure out if they're doing a good job is by measuring multiple metrics at the same time: likes, traffic and engagement. If all these numbers are up at the same time, that means they're doing a good job at getting targeted fans, engaging them and fuelling them back to your site.

/0.02
 
avatar33 said:
Not enough. It's easy to get fake likes/tweets/pins. Just look in the BST and you'll find tons of services that do this.

I think the best way to figure out if they're doing a good job is by measuring multiple metrics at the same time: likes, traffic and engagement. If all these numbers are up at the same time, that means they're doing a good job at getting targeted fans, engaging them and fuelling them back to your site.

/0.02
Click to expand...

This is for sure a concern and something I thought about as well re: the fake likes, etc.

however, I have to remind myself that not everyone is like me and you, or others on this forum, and know that you can buy likes and tweets.

I was concerned with this, but thinking about what ICE said did make sense in the long run regarding this. If I set the bar high and give it a monthly goal, I can watch for spikes that would indicate fake accounts in the # of followers we have unless I see some kind of promotion going on. Giving them a month also allows them more time to get real visitors instead of feeling under the gun in a week and trying to purchase them ( if they even realize they can ).

There will not be any perfect right answer really, but I think measuring the amount of traffic coming to our site from Twitter is a good metric. I mean, what use are these social media channels if the followers never interact with my brand? I don't like measuring by revenue generated as its already hard enough with whitehat social as it is and then the channels just get filled with promotions only.

However, if I track the traffic and the traffic only ( not just revenue gen. or followers on the channel ) then I can see the engagement ( yes I know this can be bought too ) and get them on the site which is the ultimate goal for me right now. Yes I know revenue is a goal too, but right now the goal is to build the brand and get people coming to see us.

I like this, thanks Avatar33
 
Also, set it up so you have one 'team leader' who is in charge of monitoring the others. It cuts back on your need to be on top of them. Pay him extra too for it, and give him power over the others.
 
I've been giving them monthly bonuses based on %traffic from social.

Ex. Dec. Traffic > 20% social = Bonus (cash, gifts, keeps her job, ect...)

Result: She has started pimping out her family to generate real traffic. Ha (It's working)
 
Most HR departments set goals that are unbelievable and then offer something they know that people want but the company couldn't reasonably offer them (e.g Friday off if you hit X target).

It's an extremely dirty practice but it's also extremely effective and used by the majority of the top companies in one way or another.

Honestly every person responds differently to incentives/rewards, some people want money, others 'gifts', others respond better to being given more responsibility/mentoring.

I don't really understand why you're allowing an affiliate to piggyback off their work though, surely that could just be done internally as well for less? Sounds like the guy is pissed that he is doing all the work and isn't making himself OR the company any money (and thus not being respected).
 
I think Salary + Bonuses is the best way to go. Make them Quarterly to get more time in to measure results. Maybe its $2k or a new macBook or whatever.
Its not about "WIN AN IPAD BY DOING THIS THING" its about engagement with the users, and that takes time.
Social Media can also be a powerful tool for finding out bugs and quirks with sites and apps that your devs may have missed.
Also, having your social media person be a hot chick (even if they arent) can be really helpful. Users are engaging with Hilary, instead of BLAHBLAH.com.

for example

gianna_michaels_likes_it_big_6.jpg


i love talking to you guys about BLAHBLAH.com!!

(gianna michaels may be my favorite porn skank.)
 
BTW, I'm reading a book called, Ruthless Management of People and Profits. Perfectly relevant to this thread. It is chuck full of awesomeness (even though I don't particularly like the author)
 
My company does Social Media Management for a lot of different clients and they try to put these kind of incentives into contracts but we refuse.

From my experience of working with ~30 different client in a range of industries, Social Media provides a decent ROI for just a few industries: Entertainment, Food & Beverage, Social Causes/Nonprofits, Products, and independent agents.

There are a few outside of those, but for most businesses it's difficult to measure the ROI. We pay our assistant 12/hr to manage our social media accounts and she does a great job but people don't give a shit about small marketing companies. The main reason we keep up with it is to help close social media clients.

Our employee does a great job posting frequently and capturing interesting stuff but we get very few actions. When she manages one of our clients that has a popular restaurant in town, she could post a picture of a turd and get 100+ likes.

In the 2+ years we have been in business, we have closed 3 deals directly from LinkedIN and 2 from Twitter and Facebook. We can't track how many deals social media helped push someone to refer us.

TLDR: Very difficult to base performance off likes & retweets unless you are in a social media friendly industry
 
Since this is your social media person, I would listen to them and find the thing they really like... Is it a band, or a type of phone, or a beach destination.

Then get it for them. Tickets to the concert and a gift card to a restaurant near the place. A weekend getaway for 2 to their favorite destination.

If you give them something they really want but most likely will not get for themselves, they will be truly appreciative and a better employee. If you give them cash you will never see the same ROI.
 
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