Deloitte Digital’s carrot on a stick : Enough to get your lawyers to blog?
Deloitte, the largest professional services network in the world with over 200,000 professionals in over 150 countries, has entered the social media market with Deloitte Digital’s suite of digital services.
One of the ways that Deloitte Digital harnesses and showcases the knowledge and expertise of its own team is through blogging. But like with lawyers and law firms, getting its professionals to blog is a challenge.
How does Deloitte Digital tackle the issue? Blog competition.
From the carrot on a stick – to the explosive rise of gamification over the past few years – if history has taught us anything, it’s that incentivisation is key.
With this notion in mind, we’ve setup an internal blog competition for the Australian Deloitte Digital team. The person, voted by their Deloitte Digital peers, who has written the best blog post for our site will receive a ticket to attend the 2014 SXSW Interactive Festival (www.sxsw.com) which will be held in Austin, Texas in March.
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We’re hoping our internal competition will provide the incentivisation the team needs to get writing at which point we’ll be able to share all the great content we collect.
When I first heard of Deloitte’s ‘Blog to win a trip contest’ I thought it a little gimmicky. It would never work for lawyers.
But the more I think about a blog competition, the more I think it could work.
Lawyers and law firms love the daily ‘Top 10 in Law Blogs.’ I am regularly getting asked what it takes to get in the top 10. I receive thank you emails. And I see people Tweeting kudos to those on the Top 10. And there’s no trip awarded with the Top 10.
Maybe it doesn’t need to be a trip, though the cost of trip for a lawyer and their spouse is peanuts compared to the rewards that can be reaped from a good blog. Professional sports tickets. Broadway play tickets. A night out for dinner, maybe with a night’s hotel. All can be a big deal — especially when one gets to claim ownership of ‘Blog Champion’ of the month, quarter, or year.
We shared 4 years ago that the DC law firm, Regan Zambri Long & Bertram, holds blog contests where the losing team takes everyone out for beer. With the firm’s trial lawyers being a competitive lot, the contests solved the problem of getting regular posts.
Deloitte Digital’s on to something. I am going to be suggesting to law firms that that they take a page out of Deloitte’s play book and advise LexBlog account managers to do the same.
Gamification can work — even with lawyers and blogging.
PS to Deloitte Digital: Why not include the name of your author in your blog posts? Who do I cite? With whom do I establish a relationship of trust?