Jeremiah Owyang

nice effort here.

Really like SUN’s presentation. But I’d contend your argument that social media is not for everyone. I firmly believe it is for everyone within a corporation. That doesn’t mean everyone is currently using it. But from blogging to wikis to internal and external social networks, I find it hard to think of anyone within an organization who can’t benefit from engaging in social media on one level or another.

Even more now than ever before (particularly here at IBM with a very geographically dispersed workforce) collaboration is a mandatory part of work. And increasingly, this collaboration is happening within social media contexts. So I think it’s very much for everyone.

If these companies think they can reach the CIOs, IT Asset Managers or OEM/ODMs via Second Life, YouTube, and blogs, they are seriously mistaken, the real contacts, the ones with real dollars, are too busy to play on the internet all day long.

A better strategy would be to make up a list of the top 2,000 key contacts, and visit them personally, buying lunch and Long Islands, analyzing the situation, offering first-time customer discounts, recording it all in seriously good CRM database, and being there when the sales call actually does come thru, and then having a great follow-up team, that’s social.

Instead you get the hard sales pitches on first greet; sales getting it’s commission cutting, yet seriously disconnected from the company as a whole, promising things that are impossible for the professional services team to deliver. And now all the faddish internetish busy-work, looks like a whole bunch of activity, but you aren’t going anywhere.

Hi Jeremiah,

It’s funny, in my work we don’t look at a dedicated ‘social media strategy’ but that social media is only one tool within the suite that makes up an overarching ‘interactive’ or ‘digital strategy’.

Admittedly there are many tools within the social media landscape, but fundamentally the objectives of social media are still only a component of a larger picture of integrated and multi-channel marketing for my clients.

It is still too easy (myself included) to get caught up in the tools and trends, and forget that two-way conversation and interaction was possible long before the Internet, even if it was a *lot* slower.

I think the critical thing is engagement and building loyalty over time. I know, Marketing 101, but its true.

I am interested to know if these abovementioned companies have lots of other disparate strategies for the other MarComms channels in the same way that there is particular attention to social media as an entity?

In reference to Adams comment concerning social media benefits everyone in some capacity in an organization, I agree. Where I disagree is that its for everyone inside each organization… If you are going to have individuals engaging in social media inside your corporation then it is going to take 1.investment 2. time away from other work and 3.an increased IT stain. I have no qualms with every company having social media but to be perfectly honest everyone in accounting doesn’t need to be hitting the social media spectrum. I do agree there needs to be and will be a significant integration of social media in every field but sometimes bean counters need to bean count.

Great post, Jeremiah. It was fun to check out how some of the big enterprise companies are jumping in and putting social media tools to good use. Looking through their prezos was useful.

I really like the “Cisco” one. BTW, nice sharing of brands PPT's, Really informative!

Hi,
thanks for sharing. But what I miss currently is the focusing of Social Media for the supplier relationship management. I am looking for any approach.