Ongoing List of Social Media Strategies from Enterprise Corporations

Categories: Industry Index, Social Media, Web StrategyPosted on July 7th, 2008

Ongoing List of Social Media Strategies
A social media strategy is a long term plan utilizing all of the resources at hand using two way social tools. In the early days of 2005-2007, developing sophisticated strategies were limited to just a handful of tools such as blogs, forums, and online video. Now with so many resources being available from Twitter, Upcoming, Facebook, Widgets, and more, the opportunities –and level of coordination will vary. This post will be an ongoing list of enterprise size companies (over 1000 employees) that share their social media strategies, plans, online –hopefully in slideshare, as it’s easier to communicate.

I expect contention
What’s interesting is how the language of corporate folks describing these tools is often very different than the language purists use. I expect some contention from this, and this will make for healthy discussion below. I too understand the need to meet business needs, but at the same the needs of customers, do leave your opinions below, or on the blogs or slideshares.

Why would a brand publish their social media strategy?
Well, for a few reasons. These programs are designed to reach customers, partners, and colleagues in an open and transparent way, why not share with them in public? Secondly, by showing these companies are sophisticated in their approach, they demonstrate thought leadership. Lastly, by opening up for a public dialog, there’s so much to learn, gain, and grow from the larger community.

Requirements for this list
If you want to share (this could potentially be useful for Forrester reports) please leave a comment. Your blog post, slideshare, video or podcast should explain what your enterprise company is doing in the social media realm, thinking both long term, and considering the many resources and tools available to you.

Sun Microsystems: Social Media is for Everyone
Lou Ordorica and Linsa Skyrocki
June 2008

Access the slideshare directly, use full screen mode

| View | Upload your own

While I enjoy the holsitic view of the multi-departmental opportunities, it’s important to note that social media is not for everyone, as if you look at our technographic data, you’ll find inactive in nearly every demographic cut. I’m pretty sure they are suggesting that it’s for each department, so if that’s the case, then the statement is correct.

Cisco: Building a Community with Social Media and Web 2.0
LaSandra Brill, Manager, SP Web and Social Media
July 2008
Access the slideshare directly, use full screen mode

| View | Upload your own

I reviewed and provided feedback to LaSandra to this prior version, I enjoyed her lessons learned.

Social Media at IBM – Beyond Blogging

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: e20 e2)

IBM’s Adam Christensen shares this slide deck of IBM’s approach on social media. I’ll be meeting with him to discuss it in early Oct 2008.

Intel: Intel Forming “The Insiders” Social Media Advisory Team
Ken Kaplan, Broadcast and New Media Manager, Global Communications Group at Intel Corporation
June 2008

In this blog post, Intel calls for a board of advisors to reach and assist to them for their social media efforts. If you’re not aware, Intel is already doing a lot in this space, much with success. I give them a tremendous amount of credit for taking risks, quickly learning, and then making iterative changes.

EMC: Applying Personal Social Media Techniques to Corporate EMC
Dan Schwabel, Social Media Specialist at EMC Corporation
June 2008
In this post, Dan Schwabel shares the many different tools that are used at EMC and how they related to the overall change in personal and corporate branding. He examines events, CEO activity, and the many different social technologies used in their approach.

SAS: Online communities for SAS users and SAS professionals
Alison Bolen, sascom magazine’s Editor-in-Chief
July 2008
In this post, Alison lists out the many ways that customers can communicate with each other.

Your Company
Leave a comment below with URL and description.

Related Posts:

See this list of full time Social Media Strategists and Online Community Managers at enterprise companies

Applying a Social Computing strategy to your entire product lifecycle

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 7th, 2008 at 5:50 pm and is filed under Industry Index, Social Media, 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.

Comments

Adam

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.

Charles Adler

Great post. Hope it continues to get built up over time, as I think this is going to be some interesting territory to watch. Culturally there's a great divide between how consumers interact naturally, and how an enterprise organization would act.
As you point out, there's likely to be a lot of contention as brands/corporations attempt to play in this space, and essentially, feel their way through the dark of engaging with customers one on one. Should be an interesting dynamic to watch.

Christopher Coulter

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.

Emil Sarnogoev

Look at Obama's online campaign. Social media programs should be done professionally otherwise it's wasted time and probably bad-looking for a bad attempt.

I'm yet to see a big brand performing a successful social media plan otherwise it's a big amount of man-hours thrown into the trash can.

Paul Grant

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?

jeremiah_owyang

Chris Coulter

Good point, but:

We already have overwhelming evidence IT decision makers are online in CIO communities and IT Toolbox.

The well resources marketer will use all the resources and mediums at hand...sales teams to long island included.

Also, we have to remember that CIOs rely on the 'on the ground' technical teams to make recommendations up to management, the decision is not solely on the check signer alone.

Ben Fisch

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.

LaSandra Brill

Thanks again for your input on the Cisco deck. I look forward to having you present to our team later this month to take our Social Media initiatives to the next level.

carhughes

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.

Bill McEvoy

The internet was born of a need for communication between disparate networks and it quickly blossomed into a communication means for people. The newer more refined rapid development platforms and open source effort has enabled individuals and corporations to leverage this as a new marketing strategy. It’s the next evolutionary step, applications that link people in profound and necessary ways. People are social creatures and move together rather than apart. Amazing commentary; Thanks!