Over a really pleasant discussion with Jamie Pappas today I learnt a lot about social media and EMC Corp - one of the corporate leaders and believers in the business benefits of social media.
We covered a lot, and one little snippet that jumped out at me was EMC's very positive attitude towards Facebook. I mean even today if you search on Linkedin I'm sure that you'll find a whole bunch of discussions around not only "why would B2B use social media" but also "Tell me why Facebook would work for business and in particular B2B". If you google those themes you'll be overwhelmed by the results, and I would suggest underwhelmed by the same old last decade hackneyed opinions of the naysayers.
EMC, like Cisco and Intel and Microsoft, are a light-year ahead of the Facebook-for-business-naysayers. In fact Huffington Post's Fortune 100 Companies' Social Media Savvy (STATS) says that 82 of the Fortune 100 tweet on a weekly basis, posting an average of 27 tweets a week. So big business is well out there in social media (including Facebook).
EMC keep a list of all "their" Facebook pages (about 35), meaning their corporate pages, and those set up by staff, and by others. It's not 100% complete, because they have to discover any "non-EMC" pages, and it's not always clear who the administrators of those pages are. It's also not 100% complete because of their open attitude towards their staff starting a page, with a voluntary code of practice.
The 3 Asks
Jamie said that EMC really only have 3 Asks of their staff if they wish to set up a Facebook page:
- Check that something doesn't already exist which would suit your purpose;
- Share the URL, and the admin details (i.e. let Corp Social Media know);
- Keep it active, or close it down.
I was impressed with all these, as it isn't about hard and fast rules, and what you can't do, but about what you can do to exercise your personal responsibility, and what EMC simply asks of you in return.
But I was really most impressed with the last Ask because in that very simple request EMC is getting to the heart of social media and the reason to be there. You need to be alive, communicating, conversing, and maintaining the presence - it's not a one-off exercise. That latter point is also why EMC don't recommend that staff set up a Facebook page for a product spec nor a single event. For that type of "campaign" purpose they can use one of the many socialised Event options within EMC's existing presences e.g. Events in a corporate FB page.
There's also a bit of brand protection, since a dead page can be a turn off to customers, and that's to be avoided.
Keep it Active
So what's it mean - "keep it active"? Again no rules but the EMC suggestion is:
- 3 to 5 relevant posts a week, excluding raw links to articles, press releases etc
- active monitoring
- responding
- administering - remove anything that shouldn't be there, don't let anything escalate without warning.
If you're not able to tend to these tasks, then it's recommended that you consider shutting it down.
Is that really it?
OK, I hear you ask, is that really it for a company of EMC's size (43,000 employees), reputation, brand value, and shareholder obligations? Anyone can just launch on Facebook?
Well no, of course there is a milieu - an environment or setting. Key is leadership, from all levels about the wealth-generating power of social business, there is desire to have employees engaged and participating in all things "company" and social media is one fabric for this, and there is a desire to be open with customers, despite in some ways still being a conservative company within.
And there is social media training, and a Social Media Club, and a Social Media Advisory Council. And of course there is a social media Policy, which I place last as a necessary but totally insufficient part of embracing social media yet which often dominates management's attention elsewhere.
In fact Jamie has a Slideshare presentation on the whole approach "Facebook 101 for EMC Corp" which I encourage you to read.
Risks
Are there any downsides to such a liberal open-minded approach. Sure, there is some cleaning up to do from time to time, some duplication, some fails, and some lessons. The lessons are what the Social Media Advisory Council think about, and make any continuous improvements.
While some firms regard the possibility of negative comments as "risks", EMC sees them as opportunities to engage and to learn. As Jamie says, customers will often not tell you something face to face but will put it out in the social media and expect that it will be discovered. It's an opportunity to be proactive.
Business benefits outweigh the risks
Overall, in EMC's judgement, the business benefits of tapping into to enthusiasm of employees wishing to communicate outweighs the risks of the lightweight "approvals" process for staff wanting to set up on Facebook.
- What do you think of EMC's approach?
- Would it work in your firm?
- Would it work in firms you advise, and why or why not?
Follow Jamie Pappas in her social web to keep up with EMC and social media.
