Jive Offers Assignments And Rewards For Brand Advocates In Its Social Communities

Jive is making it easier for users of its external communities to engage brand advocates and experts.

This week, the Palo Alto, California-based provider of social collaboration software for businesses released several features for its Jive-X external communities so that advocates or experts can get assignments and then acquire points as rewards. The points can be redeemed for community badges, or, if the company behind that community offers it, for real-world benefits like gift cards.

Previously, director of products for external communities Deepti Patibandla told me, Jive-X communities could only support experts or advocates by allowing a specific group to be created. Such a group might live in the community section of a website for a movie theater chain, for example, and could invite fans who know everything about Star War’s Princess Leia.

Now, those same fans can be given tasks, such as writing posts on their Facebook accounts about the upcoming Star Wars movie, and be given points when they do.

Assignments for brand advocates in Jive-X.

New tools specifically encouraging employees and enthusiasts to pitch a brand, a company theme or a product are becoming more standard fare in social platforms. Just this week, for instance, social platform Hootsuite added dashboard tools and a mobile app designed to support content sharing about company news by employees.

But for general social platforms like Hootsuite or Jive, there’s a thin distinction between an employee advocate and a non-employee brand advocate. As Hootsuite does for its employee advocates, for instance, Jive also makes it easier for community managers to curate content for sharing by brand advocates.

Patibandla noted that other social communities like Lithium also encourage advocates, but she said that the assignment/reward orientation in Jive-X is a differentiator.

About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.