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10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations

Categories: Community Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Measurement, Web StrategyPosted on December 18th, 2006

John Furrier, Robert Scoble, Jennifer Jones, and Jason Lopez myself and others from the PodTech crew visited Intel, one of our fantastic customers last week. While I’m not going to give away any secret plans or strategies, we all left knowing that only good things are going to come out of them. I’m noticing a trend among corporate conversations in the area ofSocial Media, this post below helps to summarize the current issues in the industry, and includes my Web Strategy recommendations.

The conversation has evolved…

2006 was about “What is social media” and “Why does it matter”. Business blogging, flogs, podcasting and second life were the hot topics.

2007 is about “How do I deploy social media”. Companies will start to integrate Social Media up and down and side to side in the organization, both externally as well as internally.

Social Media (Blogs, Forums, Wikis, Podcasts, Video blogs and other tools) are appearing in every industry. Below are my 10 strategic themes for 2007.

10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations:

1) Social Media is about people. Customers and Prospects and Partners are connecting, sharing and growing with each other, never forget this. Do it authentically, openly, and knowing the world is watching. Prospects trust consumers more than you, now they are talking to each other using Social Media tools.

2) Communities are the goal, conversations are the verb. Social Media can be used to reach and connect with customers, you can participate in communities. An obvious output of this community are the digital and real life conversations that will manifest. You can read, join, and even measure those conversations, this is your currency.

3) Let go to gain more. The participants of these tools are in charge, typically customers are using these tools long before corporate types do. Thereby, you must participate to be in charge. The more a corporation controls the less effective this will be.

4) Measurement will be important. It will be important to measure the interaction between people. Such terms such as Engagement, Participation, and Attention are rising. Qualitative responses that happen are what is important, not page views or downloads. Teach executives that Web Marketing has left the corporate .com site and has now spread globally and to small islands of conversations. I’ll be on the forefront of this industry need, stay with me, I’ll be your resource.

5) Organize internally. As much focus on internal communication about community should empower a fast, coordinated response. Some employees will be more passionate about one area over others, reward them, and support them.

6) Risk of the unknown. Human conversations are great, you never know where they will turn. For companies that are very logical, planned and methodical there is some elements of the unknown. One thing is for sure, the more you get involved with a conversation in the start, the less risk you’ll have over time.

7) Social Media goes deep in the organization. This tool will change how executives communicate to employees and the public. Support teams will start to engage customers using social media, Middle Management will integrate these tools into program plans, and the rank and file will often be first generation adopters, it’s often bottom up and distributed. Social media is already beginning to be a line item in the 2007 budget.

8) Social Media goes wide in the organization. It’s not just about Marketing or PR, the Internet, Extranet and the Intranet will be impacted. You can reduce support costs, build better products with engineering in near-real time. Decrease the sales cycle through education, and even reduce recruiting costs and attract the top talent. This web by nature is global, there are more Chinese internet users than all of North America, and for some time, Japanese is a more common language in blogs than English.

9) Social Media spans time. Savvy companies are learning how to use these tools across all phases of the customer life cycle. Awareness, engagement, education, pitch, negotiation, deployment, support, product research, customer feedback, market and competitive intelligence, and then repeat. This public conversation will be archived through as long as the internet is accessible. Google is the memory.

10) Social Media is not magic nor voodoo. Use these tools to open and reach out, use these great web tools to reach and connect to customers, everyone can contribute. Learn the tools, experiment internally. This is Web Strategy.

Who am I? I deployed a Community Marketing program using Social Media tools at Hitachi Data Systems, my former employer. I’m now a consultant, available for hire at Podtech, I help our clients understand and deploy Social Media to connect with customers.

Update: You can use Technorati to see all the blogs linking to this post, I changed the URL of my post seconds after the initial publication, since then, my trackbacks don’t seem to be working as usual in the comments section.

If you found this post helpful, also see Corporate Podcasting Strategies for 2007.

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 18th, 2006 at 7:09 am and is filed under Community Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Measurement, Web Strategy. 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.

41 Responses to “10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations”

  1. Thought everyone would be interested in the latest iteration of Social Media’s coming out party.

    You (we) are Time’s Person of the Year.
    http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/12/16/time.you.tm/index.html



    2. Posted by George Dearing on December 18th, 2006 at 12:35 pm

  2. Another interesting post.

    Can you define how “podcasts” are “social media” - seems like that they are a tool or tactic. For instance video on YouTube or photos on Flickr are the currency “shared” by which you may have a social interaction, the video or photos in and of themselves do not themselves constitute “social”.

    On measurement, Engagement, Participation, and Attention - you previously wrote “here’s what I want to know: What are people doing, what did they think, and what was the end result? Engagement can be used across all of those questions to help tell the story.”

    Ok, here’s where the measurement conversation seems to circle around for me.

    What are people doing? This would seem to include rather than excludes page views and downloads as part of the analysis. Above you say “Qualitative responses that happen are what is important, not page views or downloads.”

    However as an example with podcasts - an RSS download without knowing if it was ever listened to is as good as a publisher sending a magazine to a subscriber and not knowing if it was ever read. So here the download would be a quantatively important number because against that number you would define the depth of engagement.

    What did they think? Qualatative market research type analysis could be applied here although we’ll need to be sensitive to gaming of results (ala Digg) and weigh them properly.
    What was the end result? Well I guess here is the kicker for me, because traditionally there is a desired outcome. Easy to guage success or failure - ie widget sold, program watched. I think while other results are being analyzed - ie comparative value of the pr/attention gained there needs to be some connection to the business. For instance did Mentos and Coke reduce their ad/pr spend? Did sales go up? Was it just serendipity and happy with the attention that was paid to them?



    3. Posted by RD on December 19th, 2006 at 3:48 am

  3. [...] RD challenges some of the ideas I presented yesterday in 10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations, cool, I love this discussion.  This is a healthy conversation to have and I embrace it. RD writes: I am not sure that “podcasts” are “social media” - seems like that they are a tool or tactic. For instance video on YouTube or photos on Flickr are the currency “shared” by which you may have a social interaction, the video or photos in and of themselves do not themselves constitute “social”. 1) Podcasts are in the realm of social media as have the traits of ‘amateurization’ (if there is such a thing) .’Normal’ people that were not able to have an audio voice before now are in the center of entire communities as they can share their knowledge now. [...]



    4. Posted by Web Strategy by Jeremiah » Are Podcasts Social Media? and More on Measuring Social Media on December 19th, 2006 at 6:35 am

  4. RD,

    Excellent questions and challenges. I’ve responded to you here:

    http://tinyurl.com/y2vq26



    5. Posted by jeremiah_owyang on December 19th, 2006 at 6:37 am

  5. [...] We can go back to my first point on 10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 that Social Media is about people. [...]



    6. Posted by Web Strategy by Jeremiah » Media isn’t Social, People are on December 20th, 2006 at 11:31 am

  6. [...] Web Strategy by Jeremiah » 10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations Jeremiah provides some very good insight into where he sees the social media market moving, and shares his “10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations” (tags: socialmedia corporate_blogging) [...]



    7. Posted by Ketcheson.net :: links for 2006-12-21 on December 21st, 2006 at 1:26 am

  7. [...] 10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations 10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations: 1) Social Media is about people. 2) Communities are the goal, conversations are the verb. 3) Let go to gain more. 4) Measurement will be important. 5) Organize internally. 6) Risk of (tags: blogging socialmedia community business social-media corporate-blogs business-blogs) Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]



    8. Posted by EXCELER8ion - Online recruitment marketing, social media optimization, and interactive advertising on December 22nd, 2006 at 10:54 am

  8. [...] If you want a great summary of what I do and my thought on life, or just want to hear my voice, please listen in.  Brian called me after I wrote this post on 10 Social Media themes for corporations, and thought it worthy for his podcast. Thanks Brian, you’re doing great in collecting the knowledge from the Social Media community. [...]



    9. Posted by Web Strategy by Jeremiah » Jeremiah on “Edgeworks” Podcast hosted by Brian Oberkirch on December 22nd, 2006 at 7:43 pm

  9. [...] The second is a blog entry by Jeremiah Owyang (formerly with HDS and now with Podtech.net): 10 Social Media Strategies for Fortune 1000 Corporations [...]



    10. Posted by Three quick reads to kick off 2007 on December 31st, 2006 at 11:53 am

  10. [...] e) najhitrejšo rast bomo beležili pri razvoju družbenih medijev (na to temo si lahko preberete zanimivih 10 strategij za družbene medije, ki jih je za korporacije pripravil Jeremiah Owyang [...]



    11. Posted by Adej in a lajf » Blog Arhiv » Splet v letu 2007 on January 1st, 2007 at 4:52 am

  11. [...] I wrote this post on the 10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations you should know in 2007.  For Corporate marketers, I suspect you’re getting traction from management and you need to figure out how to incorporate Social Media into your 4 quarter plan. [...]



    12. Posted by Web Strategy by Jeremiah » Happy New Year! Social Media in 2007 on January 3rd, 2007 at 11:20 am

  12. [...] Learn more Here’s an excellent book: that over 100 contributed to (including I) on Blogging and Podcasting, if you’re interested in picking it up, it has insight from many industry experts, all which are more intelligent than I. If you found this post helpful, also read 10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations. [...]



    13. Posted by Web Strategy by Jeremiah » Corporate Podcasting Strategies for 2007 on January 18th, 2007 at 7:23 am

  13. [...] 10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations [...]



    14. Posted by Web Strategy by Jeremiah » Why Online Video is good for your Corporate Executives and How to Use on January 20th, 2007 at 9:35 am

  14. [...] Jeremiah had a cracker jack post this week on 10 social media strategies for Fortune 1000 companies, so I scheduled some time with him this morning for a podcast walking through these ideas.  In our conversation, we talk about the importance of listening, letting go of trying to control messaging, shortening the feedback loop from the community to the people who make your products and services, the importance of personal voices within companies, blogging as a personal branding tool, and much more. [...]



    15. Posted by Edgework: Jeremiah Owyang at Like It Matters on January 23rd, 2007 at 12:06 pm

  15. [...] 5) Community Marketing and Social Media Marketing eMarketer’s research indicates that this is the fastest growing area of growth for Web Advertising and Marketing is in the Social Media space. In my experience, the awareness rate is around 30% and deployment 10-20% for most corporations. Some of the tools listed below are not new, while some become critical in how prospects find information about products. For a high level overview please read 10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations. A) eCommerce/Rating Sites For most consumer products and a majority of enterprise products, there’s a variety of websites that rate products both by expert (sometimes called analyst) or peer review. The most popular site that has done this in the text industry is Cnet.com which deploys both editorial reviews, video demos, and user ratings and opinions. Content can be both positive and negative about your company as well as your competitors. Ratings and voting has evolved with popular news voting sites like Digg. [...]



    16. Posted by Web Strategy by Jeremiah » The Many Forms of Web Marketing for the 2007 Web Strategist on February 5th, 2007 at 6:52 pm

  16. What I like about the buzz around social media is that big business has recognized it as legit as long as they understand it’s hard to measure the benefits on the income statement. But, the most successful companies actually can “digg” into their financial statements and attribute results to their social media strategies. As you point out, re-writing job descriptions for thought leaders is the way to go. When you think about it, social media is really a very simple element of a marketing strategy. It just requires good execution. Now, that sounds like big business-speak, doesn’t it?



    17. Posted by Bernie Borges on February 11th, 2007 at 7:40 pm

  17. [...] Social Media Strategy For Fortune 500 [...]



    18. Posted by The Search Marketing Evolution on February 14th, 2007 at 8:31 pm

  18. [...] 10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations I hope it’s about “How Do I Deploy Social Media” in 2007. (tags: social+media social+computing community fortune+1000 Business business+strategy social+media+strategy)       [...]



    19. Posted by links for 2006-12-19 at WOW Feed :: Tracking New Media and Technology on April 2nd, 2007 at 9:24 pm

  19. [...] Marketers and Advertisers will need to start gearing the war machines not to carpet bomb with ads, direct mail, and other intrusive methods, and start to use the tools that these groups and communities are also using. Related Topics: 10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations [...]



    20. Posted by Web Strategy by Jeremiah » Term: Affinity Group on April 5th, 2007 at 6:12 am

  20. [...] 10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations [...]



    21. Posted by Web Strategy by Jeremiah » Web Strategies of the 2008 Presidential Candidates on April 5th, 2007 at 9:12 am

  21. [...] For many large corporations being able to manage the many additional voices due to social media in an industry is a daunting task. Many companies are just starting to appoint Community Managers or assign budget and resources for the marketing organizations. Listening to the blogosphere, podcasts, and now video requires time, figuring out how to respond to them is yet another challenge. Being somewhat internally coordinate as many employees communicate is an even larger task. [...]



    22. Posted by Web Strategy by Jeremiah » Strategies for organizing your Corporate Social Media Program on April 23rd, 2007 at 10:26 am

  22. [...] Things you can do: Embrace the changes that are coming, work with the organic teams, start and internal dialogue consider deploying the Air Traffic Tower Read about Social Media Strategies for Corporations in 2007, or watch the video and see slides. [...]



    23. Posted by Web Strategy by Jeremiah » Edgeworks Concept: How Social Media impacts Company Communications (Expanding upon Brian Oberkirch’s theory) on May 16th, 2007 at 10:32 am

  23. [...] Advanced Topics Social Media Strategies for Corporations in 2007 I wrote this in the earlier part of the year, most of my predictions have been accurate. [...]



    24. Posted by Web Strategy by Jeremiah » Social Media Strategies For June 2007 on June 8th, 2007 at 12:12 pm

  24. Hello! Good Site! Thanks you! jwwmoibvfhnj



    25. Posted by btrqlnjzmq on June 18th, 2007 at 5:55 am

  25. [...] 10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations [...]



    26. Posted by 小叮当 » Blog Archive » 网络营销的不同形式 on August 7th, 2007 at 5:24 am

  26. [...] media strategies at PodTech.net. Recommend Reading for your Social Media Strategy Thinking Bigger 10 Social Media Strategies for 2007 Social Media Strategies [...]



    27. Posted by Web Strategy by Jeremiah » Welcome Marketing Profs Community! Resources for you on August 9th, 2007 at 8:47 am

  27. [...] 10 Social Media Strategies for 2007 [...]



    28. Posted by Social Media Strategy « on August 15th, 2007 at 9:57 am

  28. [...] character of the writer into words. As Jeremiah Owyang puts it in his first point, it’s about PEOPLE. It’s a good way to present how different a business is among the many competitors. Why [...]



    29. Posted by Corporate blogging | The BizWalk on October 25th, 2007 at 4:56 am

  29. [...] critical in how prospects find information about products. For a high level overview please read 10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations. A) eCommerce/Rating Sites For most consumer products and a majority of enterprise products, [...]



    30. Posted by A Complete List of the Many Forms of Web Marketing for 2008 on January 1st, 2008 at 1:16 am

  30. [...] “10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations”, December 12, 2006 http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2006/12/18/10-social-media-strategies-for-the-corporations/ [...]



    31. Posted by Marketing Changes: CMOs, Evangelist, Social Media Programs, Website Strategy Positioning at Emergence Media on February 13th, 2008 at 1:58 am

  31. [...] 10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations [...]



    32. Posted by Things Worth Talking About: Social Networking, Social Media Marketing, Web Design & Development » Blog Archive » LinkList 1.0 on March 2nd, 2008 at 9:41 am

  32. [...] 10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations 一文。 A) 电子商务/点评网站 [...]



    33. Posted by 翻译：网络营销的不同形式 | 新 营 销 观 察 on March 3rd, 2008 at 3:46 am

  33. [...] Business Owners should learn from IFCU’s mistakes and take steps to add a social media strategy into their PR or Marketing [...]



    34. Posted by Small Businesses: Pay Attention to Social Media! You Don’t Have a Choice. | Kyle Lacy, Social Media - Indianapolis on October 31st, 2008 at 3:36 am

  34. [...] 10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations  - Jeremiah Owyang [...]



    35. Posted by Fundamentals of Social Media Marketing Strategy | Online Marketing Blog on December 4th, 2008 at 5:35 am

  35. [...] 10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations  - Jeremiah Owyang [...]



    36. Posted by Fundamentals of Social Media Marketing Strategy | Spicular Technologies on December 4th, 2008 at 6:50 am

  36. [...] Remember this post? Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang shared 10 social media strategies for the Fortune 1000 corporations: [...]



    37. Posted by You don’t need to be an ‘expert’ to succeed at corporate social media » Enterprise Social Media: Conversations Matter on December 5th, 2008 at 9:55 am

  37. [...] it’s clear to me what to do if you want to write a successful blog. Don’t bother with detailed analysis of social media as evolution of the internet like Owyang, or provide thoughtful tips on dealing with the interactive space like Armano. You [...]



    38. Posted by How To Write A Successful Blog on December 16th, 2008 at 2:05 pm

  38. [...] 10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations  - Jeremiah Owyang [...]



    39. Posted by Fundamentals of Social Media Marketing Strategy | Der rheinformat Blog on January 19th, 2009 at 7:52 am

  39. Hi:

    I just finished transcribing all the interviews for The Social Media Bible, http://www.TheSocialMediaBible.com . I became part of the team virtually; I am a virtual transcriptionist. I only mention this as a testament to the power of social media, or as I like to call this combo, Social Media ².

    I urge all to go to and listen to these nearly 50 interviews with the top SVP’s and founders of the major social media companies world wide, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc. They are 30+/- minute podcasts about how each social media technology is being used for business.

    Joanne Zimakas
    East Longmeadow, MA 01028



    40. Posted by Joanne Zimakas on February 6th, 2009 at 10:56 am

  40. Social media is a powerful tool and equally effective for smaller businesses as it is for larger ones. Unlike traditional SEO, Social media can be effective even in the short term. It can be used quite effectively to initiate and measure conversation with customers which would have taken much longer to achieve using traditional search engine optimisation methods.



    41. Posted by Web design uk on March 21st, 2009 at 6:05 pm

  41. [...] service organizations that haven’t begun planning or implementing their social media strategies should definitely get started.  There are companies out there that have already allocated people [...]



    42. Posted by Aspect Contact Center: Unplugged Blog » Blog Archive » Social Media Shaping a New Contact Center Paradigm on April 8th, 2009 at 7:57 am

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