Employee lead Podcasting at IBM yields Benefits

Categories: Community Marketing, Podcasts, Social MediaPosted on September 5th, 2006

Eric Mattson emailed me this weekend regarding a survey I filled out for his research. I left the thought that “Seblog accounts would be standard issue at many corporations within five years time”, maybe it’s happening faster than first predicted.

This weekend while driving back to the Bay Area, I heard via Podtech how IBM to publish podcasts of nearly any topic. A forward thinking initiative as it’s realized that folks will self-publish anyways, so why not harness under the company name?

IBM has some unique podcasts such as Shortcuts reports cnet, “…which is all about giving individuals answers to their questions about how to use personal technology” or the employee produced Battle of the Bands which features employee performers like Seven Ender and Lisa Swain.

We know IBM for their corporate blogging program, recently I ran across Tony Pearson’s blog, a Marketing Brand Manager at IBM’s Storage group. I find this unique, as there are few blogs in the Data Storage industry written by folks with a “Marketing” title, everyone has a voice.

Corporate Benefits:

Though leadership: Folks will publish information that they are domain experts at.
Knowledge Sharing: Employees are sharing tips, tricks, and other helpful information using a variety of mediums.
SEO Domination: Search Engine Marketing power for topics they discuss.
Brand Lift: Even non-technology podcasts and blogs help to show the ‘human’ side of a mass company
It’s fun, encourages collaboration, and inexpensive.

You can read IBM’s podcasting and blogging guidelines here. I expect this to advance to video in the near future. As this evolves, maybe IBM could open another line of business for employee lead bands and create a music label or “TV” station!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 5th, 2006 at 1:40 am and is filed under Community Marketing, Podcasts, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Hi Jeremiah ! Thanks a lot for the plug and for commenting further on this. Yes, certainly that video blogging that you have mentioned above is already happening inside IBM and I suspect that very soon it will be having an external exposure as well. We shall see.

I really enjoyed the corporate benefits you have put together as well since I feel that those are some of the main benefits that people would be working on regarding all this Enterprise 2.0 effort. It is a new way of spreading around knowledge and collaborating with one another and certainly the points you bring up together will make it all worth while. It is already having a huge impact in several corporations, IBM included.

Posted by Luis Suarez on September 5th, 2006 at 5:54 am

I’ve had a call with some teams in IBM a few months ago regarding Enterprise 2.0. Yup, I’m fully aware of how IBM is advancing forward.

Thanks for writing back so quickly, I was amused by the YouTube Videos created by IBM, “how to sell mainframes” I shared this with some colleagues:

http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=360comedy

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on September 5th, 2006 at 6:36 am

[...] Jeremiah Owyang via his blog web-strategist has a nice post about Podcasting at IBM. The corporate podcasting push is really an arm of the IBM blogging program. What I found most interesting about the post is where Owyang talks about the benefits of blogging for the corporation: Corporate Benefits: [...]

Posted by Personal Benefits to Corporate Blogging » IBM Eye on September 5th, 2006 at 7:01 am

Thanks, Jeremiah, for replying back ! I am really glad you have been getting some more exposure as to what is happening in this particular space within the IBM enterprise. Good stuff!

About the videos I must say that they have been a huge hit in IBM’s internal blogosphere being commented by a few folks. And although I was initially surprised myself for seeing them there I think it is also another great idea that IBM is exploring the full capabilities that offerings like YouTube have got to offer. Besides they are quite funny, too !

Posted by Luis Suarez on September 5th, 2006 at 7:46 am

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Jeremiah Owyang has noted that IBM Corp (NYSE:IBM) is embracing podcasting and explains the benefits of doing so. There are a handful of posts each day from various blogs that hype the benefits of corporate podcasting, but many of them……

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