Social Media B2B in action

I was recently interviewed by  Meryl K. Evans, (@merylkevans)  Senior editor at InternetViZ and the content maven behind the Connected Digest, B2B Social Media Digest, and Professional Services Journal to discuss how IBM has transformed into a Social Business.

We had an insightful discussion which resulted in a great article.  Let me share with you some highlights below,  but first let me remind you how it all started… This is taken from an original post written by Turbotodd, but it explains it so perfectly that I had to bring it here:

Remember the logo, that curvy red “e” that mimicked the “@” symbol, which came to represent what IBM meant by the idea of “e-business” back in the late 1990s?

Starting in 1997, the IBM e-business logo signaled IBM’s focus on helping organizations transform themselves using Internet technologies. It’s now helping them pursue similar transformations with “social business” adoption.

Well, imagine replacing it with a curvy “s” instead and calling it “social business” instead, and you’d have a pretty good symbol for describing IBM’s social transformation inside the company, as well as the market it’s helping to make for other companies and organizations around the globe to follow suit. For 15 years, IBM employees have used social software to foster collaboration among our dispersed 400,000 person team — long before Generation Y became fixated with social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

My interview with Meryl Evans,  Highlights:

In 1997, IBM actively recommended that its employees use the Internet — at a time when many companies were seeking to restrict their employees’ Internet access. In 2003, the company made a strategic decision to embrace the blogosphere and to encourage IBMers to participate. We continue to advocate IBMers’ responsible involvement today in this rapidly growing environment of relationship, learning and collaboration.

Today, almost 200,000 IBM employees have Facebook pages (nearly half of its global workforce), 25,000 have Twitter accounts and more than 17,000 maintain blogs.

Please share a memorable interaction that happened in social media.

DRB: Our IBM at 100 campaign drew these results:

The Centennial and Celebration of Service evoked a public expression of enthusiasm and pride by IBM employees. Celebration of Service participants worldwide uploaded over 1,500 photos on ibm100.com. Accordingly, IBM saw a dramatic shift in the tone of its online buzz, moving from a predominantly neutral topic of conversation to one in which one-in-four mentions are positive.

IBM’s worldwide presence dominated — with active social participation from IBMers across the globe. Key conversational themes reflected IBM’s Centennial programs, demonstrating that those engaged in social discussions worldwide understood and embraced them.

Another great outcome of social media interaction was that the social media strategy for Lotusphere 2011 was one of the seven
Twitter Marketing Campaigns to Learn From. The Lotusphere team created a
social media hub, a single landing page providing a live stream of blogs, Twitter comments, Flickr photos and videos from the conference, resulting in 41 million total impressions on Twitter.

Using LinkedIn‘s search capabilties, one of our employee gained access to potential customers previously difficult to contact through traditional channels such as telephone and email. He managed initially to identify the right contact (i.e., the CEO of SAIMA) through a LinkedIn search, and initiated contact through LinkedIn’s messaging service. The customer had not heard of our offering but was happy to arrange a call. The result: a signed contract.

The full article can be read here

#ibm