Walter Adamson

IBM's social business journey - are Partners on the same train?

@tiffanywinman wrote a good post at the IBM Software Blog to celebrate Social Media Day. It's full of impressive statistics which show how far IBM has come as a social business and the impressive number of employees who are part of this transformation. All the more need for Partners to get up to speed and to leverage and take advantage of that massive IBM investment. I see Partners being the ones dragging the chain.

I had a minor twitch when I read that IBM has been using social software for 15 years. I think that a lot of firms have been using traditional collaborative tools, but they have not transformed into social businesses - so in that sense IBM is devaluing it's own achievements in social business by claiming to have been doing it for so long.

That's a pity because they are one of the most social media savvy organisations on the planet, at the same level of social business development as Microsoft, and the very astute EMC, and the highly invested Cisco. Even though Microsoft has topped IBM in a couple of polls of social business (Microsoft tops social media savvy companies - survey), these businesses are all clustered up in the high achievers.

Social business is about reinventing customer relationships, and this also means with Partners and the channel. I consistently see that the channel is the tortoise in this race to social business, and that they fail to really and fundamentally pick up on the assets which the vendors are providing them through the social business transformation. Microsoft is focusing on partner enablement through social business as a competitive edge, and also to help move their channel partners to better understand the customer buying process.

IBM is also directing many initiatves towards Partners, to help them grow their social media skills, social media marketing skills, and social business transformation. The IBM post outlines many of these, and there's been great work done by @sandy_carter - see IBM's social media skills initiative for partners.

There are so many reasons why channel partners should connect with vendors and current customers in social media, yet, as I said, on the whole they seem slow to take advantage. I think that the push to cloud is going to accelerate the pressure on the channel to change, and especially when offers like Microsoft's Office365 start to gain critical mass. It's not a matter of if, but when.

To do that, to transform, they need a good strategy. And to develop a good social business strategy Partners need time (and resources). But luckily they have great examples in their vendors, and the smart partners will work that for everything that it is worth - and the vendors will pleased to help, it's their future at stake as well!

What's the partner maturity level in social business that you see? - please comment below.

Walter @adamson
http://xeesm.com/walter

Related post: Office365 and Partners - crisis = danger plus opportunity

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How with just 3 Asks EMC encourages staff to embrace Facebook for business

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:

1. Check that something doesn't already exist which would suit your purpose;
2. Share the URL, and the admin details (i.e. let Corp Social Media know);
3. 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?

http://xeesm.com/walter

Follow Jamie Pappas in her social web to keep up with EMC and social media.

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EMC, its Communities, and social media

EMC is among the corporate leaders in social media, recently listed as the 16th most "social media savvy" corporation in the US (Microsoft came in at #1). They rose to fame initially through the personal visibility of Dan Schwabel "Personal Branding Expert, Bestselling Author, Speaker, Consultant, Columnist, Publisher and Blogger" who says on his site:

EMC had no idea what I had been doing outside of work, and I didn’t feel that they needed to because I considered it a hobby. EMC public relations had caught wind of the article after receiving a Google Alert notice and sent it directly to a Vice President who was starting a team to manage EMC’s social media program. I received an email the next morning from the VP, and we met. I then met with the head of Public Relations and was ready to interview with him, and I even brought a press kit. I created the first ever social media position at EMC, and at a Fortune 500 company, without ever applying. Instead of pledging to the company like a fraternity, they were coming after me for my talent, thus I was able to make money doing what I loved. I knew at this time that I was onto something big!

In fact Schwabel resigned from EMC in January 2010 to pursue his own fame. Len Devanna is Director of Social Strategy at EMC and recently listed a range of the company's communities. The EMC communities are all under the umbrella of the EMC Community Network which has nearly 100,000 members, and include:

• Developers Network;
• EMC Labs;
• Connect Community, for user groups; and,
• EMC Partner Community.

Nothing unusual for an IT firm to have these communities, but @EMCcorp is very active and also these are only one part of a wider EMC social media strategy (see Len's 2-Year Retro, and below). 

See the EMC YouTube channel and also for example one of their active and very public technologists Stuart Miniman @stu and Polly Pearson, VP Employment Brand and Strategy Engagement on Slideshare.

You'll find a good list of EMCers at Listorious.

What Can Social Media Be For EMC?

In 2008, Jamie Pappas, Manager, Social Media Strategy @ EMC, wrote:

• Platform for collaboration, communication, and culture
• Employee collaboration on a global scale
• Improved productivity and communication between Geo’s and BU’s
• Influencer of purchasing decisions in all markets
• User generated content is most trusted source of information for purchasing
• Think support forums, discussion forums, recommendations, ratings
• Early warning system for negative and positive opportunities
• Who’s saying what about EMC and how do we join the conversation? 
• Barrier to entry from competitive threats
• Converts customers to loyal recommenders of EMC products
• Demonstration of EMC brand in action
• EMC Thought Leadership demonstrated
• EMC bloggers

Benefits realized:

• Stronger connections and awareness of expertise among employees
• Virtualization of employee skills and knowledge
• Empower employees to contribute and innovate
• Knowledge retention and re-use – A corporate memory
• Ability to dynamically create and sustain productive, virtual teams
• Increased employee satisfaction
• Reduced employee support costs – employees support each other
• Coordinated planning and execution against strategic initiatives

Have you experience of EMC's social media efforts and do you think that they are achieving the above benefits?

Have you experienced EMC's competitor's social media efforts and how do they compare?

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