A Program for the Participants | Eric Nielsen of VMware — EP013
Today we are talking with Eric Nielsen, Senior Director of Social Media and Communities for VMware. Eric and his team run the VMware vExpert program, one of the most successful advocacy programs in the enterprise technology area. John created and managed the program with Eric, and the vExperts make up a community that John and Kat are both still engaged with.
Eric reinforces throughout our conversation how the program is first built for its participants — to help make them successful. We also discuss creating programs and process, scaling the program to be global, demonstrating value to the rest of the organization, and how to keep innovation going as the program matures.
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Key Takeaways:
[1:42] John and Eric worked together on building the vExpert program.
[2:12] In building this advocacy program, they looked at the Microsoft MVP Program and took ideas on how it could benefit and support VMware’s community and advocates. They also sorted out the size of the group, and how formal the program should be in the corporate space.
[4:46] It’s important to make a program rather than a set of activities that can come and go with the leader on leaving.
[6:02] Eric speaks on the involvement between vExpert and VMware and the organic growth of the program.
[8:04] They worked on the idea that vExpert is for the advocates, and that the program is there to ensure their success, not to tout VMware products.
[10:41] VMware has many enterprise products, and it’s important to internally evangelize constantly the importance of the advocates. They have set up systematic approaches to show reports for deal attribution and revenue tracking.
[13:45] Eric gives an example of the brand sentiment and response rate to output — and how sometimes more may not be better.
[16:05] We hear how they are scaling VMware in order to maintain an intimate and personal feel with a strong and exponentially growing program.
[19:33] VMware has vExperts all around the world. They have also opened up the program to give access to the vExperts to their ecosystem partners.
[24:22] Eric talks about community as a service (CaaS) and how it creates a model by which to build community from different branded participant streams. Syndication engines allow for cross-pollination.
[32:08] Advocates and influencer marketing act as more of future-looking trend for purchase cycles than direct digital marketing for a sale.
[33:49] How do you innovate? Continuing to hire the best of the best in the next generation is very important. That also helps bridge the gap between new-school and old-school marketers.
[34:45] Regrets? Eric would have jumped on Twitter and Snapchat earlier and not ignored the cutting edge technology. Also, gracefully letting go of a program not working is an important lesson!
[37:21] Eric is proudest of managing and enabling the community to create great things.
About our guest, Eric Nielsen
Eric Nielsen is the Senior Director, Social Media and Community at VMware. At VMware, Eric’s team is been responsible for community, blogging, social media, and advocacy programs. Prior to VMware, Eric was a Director, Enginering Systems Management for Sun Microsystems. Earlier in his career at Sun, Eric created BigAdmin, one of the web’s early technical communities. Eric lives with his family in Palo Alto, CA.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Eric Nielsen on Twitter: @ericnipro
Kat on Twitter: @dailykat
vBrownBag — a community of IT pros dedicated to learning
Yellow Bricks — a blog from VMware staffer Duncan Epping
Virtually Ghetto — a blog from VMware staffer William Lam
The Influence Marketing Podcast is a podcast from the Influence Marketing Council, an industry council for B2B brands who innovate in influencer, advocacy, and community marketing. Hosts John Mark Troyer and Kathleen Nelson Troyer are co-founders of the IMC. For more information, go to influencemarketingcouncil.com.
