IBM is a Social Business!

A social business is one that leverages social techniques as tools for organizational productivity and culture change, for engaging with diverse constituencies of clients and experts, and for spurring revenue growth and innovation for our global workforce. IBM is leading social business on all fronts – technology, policy and practice.

 Let me give you some examples of how IBM is living its vision!
First,as a company, IBM takes social networking seriously — to develop products and services, to enable sellers to find and stay connected with clients, to train the next generation of leaders, and to build awareness of Smarter Planet among clients, influencers and other communities.

Second, IBM has embedded Social into its culture. Its employees are brand ambassadors

* 1 million daily page views of internal wikis, internal information storing websites

* 70,000 employees profiles in SocialBlue, IBM’s initial social networking initiative before the adoption of Connections

* 15,000,000 downloads of employee-generated videos/podcasts

 Third, we created the Social Computing Guidelines first as Blogging Guidelines in 2005, and as Social in 2008! 

Fourth, we have changed our processes to be more engaging:

*IBM has conducted 50 Jams over the past 10 years. For example, IBM’s ValuesJam was used to develop IBM Values in 2003, IBM’s InnovationJam 2006 identified business opportunities that preceded Smarter Planet agenda. IBM Legal conducted LawJam in 2007 in support of global functional transformation.

*Human Resources utilizes social media for tech-enabled recruiting, employee education, sales training and leadership development. For example, IBM relies on social media for leadership development from an employee’s first day on the job. IBM’s Succeeding@IBM makes new hires part of a social group for 6-12 months so they can get up to speed more quickly with other new hires, they network and acclimate more quickly

Global Collaboration and Development processes leverage social!

* Generation Open — Built around social business tools, processes and management systems, GenO creates instant communities of global teams to collaborate on projects and products.

* Today, more than 130 communities of IBM professionals around the globe are collaborating virtually. This has reduced the time it would have taken to complete projects by 30%, increased re-use of “software assets” by 50%, and cut component costs by 33%.

Crowdsourcing is prevalent:* We have many other examples, such as IBM’s TAP program (Technology Adoption Program), a company-wide “open beta” where products are developed through crowdsourcing, and we’ve created some of IBM’s best-selling software products.

Gaming is used in many different innovative ways.  From INNOV8, that I started a few years ago, to City One, and onboarding game, Social Gaming enables us to educate faster and funner!

IBM is a great example of Social Business.  How about your company?!!  You will hear about some other social businesses as we move through the week!!

Today, we hosted a new Virtual Event on a set of announcements we were making.

Check it out here:  

This is our Second Annunal Event — our first one won a MarComm Platinum Award! YEA!

Insights and lessons learned:

1. Hybrid works best. We ran the virtual event with 30+ in person events around the world — Vietnam, Texas, Nordics, London, and the list goes on. The group watched the event today and “played” with the features but then personally got to network with others.
2. Engagement matters most. Last year, the time spent in our event was 84 minutes per attendee — pretty good, but this year, we will be double that. Why? We focused on content, responsiveness, subject matter expertise live, etc. Last year, we found this engagement resulted in big wins for us.
3. Word of mouth. This year, we had more client and bp references and speakers. It is always better having others speak on your behalf! The feedback and sat is off the chat on these great references!
4. It takes a Village. To pull off a virtual events, takes all the things that a ‘live” event takes: communications, drive to, organization, messaging, great content, planning, and the list goes on. Many of my clients think that virutal events are just easier. I beg to differ. The best are as well planned out as a big live show. (And of course, I think my IBM team is the best of the best!)
5. Content is king. Great content makes all the difference. Have meaty speakers, and great new things to talk about! It’s what its all about!

Tell me what you think we could do even better!!!

IBM Super Women’s Group invites you to a special reception at IBM’s Social Business Forum and Lotusphere 2011

Join myself and Kristen Lauria, Vice President, Marketing and Channels
The event is: Tuesday, February 1, at 6:15 pm – 8:00 pm
Great networking, drinks, and appetizers
Location:Americas Seminar, Dolphin Hotel

Are you coming? Let us know!!! Sandy
#ls11

Here’s a great example of aggregation and listening at a major event!

Sign up and see how this  could help your business move into becoming a Social Business!

http://www-949.ibm.com/social/lotusphere/reg/LoadRegistration

What do you think?  How could we improve it?

Sandy

#ls11

I am so excited about IBM’s Social Business Industries Symposium. It is January 31st and February 1st in Orlando Florida.

It will be focused on how organizations are investing in social strategies to drive greater profits and revenues.

We will focus on a roadmap of entry points to get started in your transformation.

The topics will help C level executives focus in on:
1. Leveraging social for business value
2. Re-engineering business processes in order to become much more effective social business – what does that mean?
3. Organizational change and transformation to become social business: from hierarchic to more distributed leadership and management

Plus there will be a ton of success stories around repeatable patterns in: Sales, Marketing, Customer Service/Support, Product Development, HR, and Operations.

If you are interested in coming, please email me at scarter@us.ibm.com!

It is Truly a MUST ATTEND EVENT!   #ls11

Wow!   We won a Platinum MarCom award!!

We, IBM,  created a comprehensive marketing strategy designed to energize thousands of IBM Software Business Partners worldwide and drive double digit software revenue growth by leveraging social media.

The Perpetual Campaign. Based on feedback from our Business Partners through blogs, tweets, calls, and classic surveys, we developed a Business Partner strategy that would leverage social media and traditional tactics to deliver greater client value while driving software revenue growth for IBM and its Business Partners, and allowing for continual feedback from the Business Partner community on new requirements.

One cycle of our perpetual campaign centered around our January 25 virtual event at which 20 core announcements were unveiled. Using Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Blogs, YouTube videos with a blend of traditional marketing tactics such as emails, newsletters, and web postings, IBM invited the entire ecosystem of Business Partners, Analysts, Press, Value Added Distributors, and IBM colleagues to the virtual event.

An innovative virtual invite on YouTube was created and sent to all Business Partners. In addition,virtual communities were leveraged to send invitations on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Pre-briefings with analysts and others resulted in an active stream of tweets directing Business Partners to the virtual event.

The IBM Virtual Event.  The virtual event itself, on January 25, 2010, combined avatars, virtual chatting, keynote and breakout sessions plus an online exhibit hall and press center. Key Business Partner enablement offerings included certifications on cloud computing architecture, industry summits with the availability of industry sales mastery tests across 17 industries, and a Green ROI tool to address clients’ demand for green solutions. More than 7,000 Business Partners worldwide participated in the virtual event, with more than 10,000 immediate downloads of IBM assets and over 9,000 keynote and webcast views. To personalize the virtual experience, participants were invited to create avatars and network with peers and specialists at the Expert Pavilion. A key indicator of the initial success of the virtual event showed that attendees stayed at the event twice as long on average compared to other virtual events.

The Results While the January 25 virtual event was successful, reaching 7x the number of participants compared to a single face to face event at 50% of the cost, it was not the end game. We then expanded our deployment in terms of scope, reach and results. Business Partners, who previously would provide a quote for a campaign, were encouraged to utilize social media to drive the message. More than 50 Business Partners issued their own press releases indicating how the new IBM announcements would help them level their business. Others, such as Software Information Systems (SIS) reached out to their customers with a YouTube video talking about the impact of the announcements on their business and how it would help their customers. Other Business Partners, such as Prolifics, accessed our virtual event center and hosted their own client virtual event that included custom virtual briefing centers with on demand access to IBM assets, live sessions, chats, and videos. Still others utilized Facebook and Twitter to communicate with their customers and others about the value of the announcements.

The Momentum Continued The momentum and energy of the virtual event continued and led to a second wave of our compaign, centered on cloud computing architecture. Utilizing analyst recommendations via blogs and face to face events with Business Partners, IBM introduced IBM Cool Cloud Cash Workshops, and offered education – both online and face to face – to prepare Business Partners for cloud computing architecture certification, allowing our Business Partners to differentiate themselves in the market. Cloud-certified Business Partners, such as CloudOne, are utilizing social media to take their skills, solutions and services to their clients to drive more revenue.

Summary.  The Business Partner strategy that showcased our Virtual Event has allowed IBM to continue the perpetual campaign, listening and responding to Business Partners requirements to address their skills, solutions, offerings and revenue needs through a variety of social media tactics and face to face offerings, including the latest IBM offering of social media education on how to leverage multi-channel strategies for Business Partner success. From the IBM Virtual Summit an energized community of Business Partners has emerged, contributing great crowdsourcing ideas for new offerings and who assist each other to grow their business.

Tactic Results IBM is a leader in leveraging social media and traditional tactics to create a campaign to drive revenue and grow the business.

Results of the IBM integrated campaign, led by the social media experience and Virtual Summit are:

 Influenced IBM software business results to realize 4 quarters of double digit Business Partner software revenue growth

 7,000 Business Partners worldwide participated in the Virtual Event

 7x as many participants as compared to a single face to face event, at 50% lower cost

 Attendees stayed at the event twice as long as on average compared to other virtual events

 An energized, connected worldwide community of Business Partners enabled to leverage social media and the virtual event to drive their business results

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 11,000 times in 2010. That’s about 26 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 29 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 105 posts. There were 30 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 8mb. That’s about 3 pictures per month.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were twitter.com, stumbleupon.com, booksbysandy.com, linkedin.com, and rapichat.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for what is marketing 2.0, sandy carter, sandy carter blog, different dance steps, and fiskateers.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

My 10 Social Media Resolutions for 2010! December 2009
 

7 Key Social Media Trends in India March 2009

BlogHer — Fiskar’s Use of Fiskateers!!! Great social networking case study! July 2009

The Seven Sacred Pools in Hawaii! A Story Lives in your Heart Forever! July 2009

Social Media Sandy’s Take on IBM’s Industry Symposium November 2010

My predictions for Social Business in 2011:

1. Virtual gifting will become mainstream. The research shows that people value virtual gifts as much as real gifts (now why did I spend all that money on Christmas?) Social dating sites already make lots of money on virtual roses and IBM did the virtual “hex” necklace for our great developers. What will 2011 bring!

2. Crowdsourcing will be used by the crowds. Crowds of successful companies that is. The most competitive and successful companies in 2011 will use crowdsourcing for new products and services. Enough said.

3. Social media and gaming will interconnect and gaming will become “the” currency in 2011. Games like Farmville will become the norm due to the popularity of gaming with all ages and the fun, teachable moments that encompass it. Aren’t Foursquare and Gowalla just gaming platforms? Will everything become a gaming platform? I think so!!

4. Everything is Mobile. I am now on my iPhone more than my computer. In 2011, your cell phone will grow in its usage from wallet, ticket broker, concierge, bank, shopping buddy and more.

5. Cyberwarfare has just begun. With the Wikileaks publicity , cyberwarfare has just begun. It’s power is great and its numbers more than we can imagine.

6. Talent will select companies who embrace social media. Talented resources will want to work for the uberconnected company. Beware — those of you out there who still restrict your employees.

7. Put a ring on it. Engagement is Queen! Customer engagement is the winning strategy in 2011. Purchases are often the result of emotions, maximizing a customer’s hands-on experience within the environment

8. Crystal balls are required. Social Analytics that not only tell you what’s been done but predict based on that information will be the wave of the future.

9. Friends matter most. In the next five years, consumers will increasingly rely on themselves – and the opinions of each other – to make purchasing decisions rather than wait for help from companies. 2011 is the time to get yourself a group of Brand Advocates to assist your brand!

10. PR is 2.0. The potential for PR 2.0 is immense, and I don’t think anyone realizes that PR 2.0 will educate citizens and influence so many in ways corporations and governments have not realized … yet!

11. Social business not Social Media. Today, companies are using social media to talk to clients, to do sentiment analysis…all important. But 2011 will be the Social Business year. Social business is about being able to leverage social tools to have sell side analysts communicate to institutional traders, reinvented CRM systems, social learning, and process changes to incorporate social.