Mark’s New Blog!
Category: Uncategorized (Page 56 of 72)
Team:
I am honored to have been asked to write an IBM point of View on Social Business. This book, called GET BOLD, comes out on September. It has inside its covers over 70 case studies from Great and Leading Clients like: Celestica, Avery Dinenison, IBM, Cemex, and more.
Compliments of IBM, here is Chapter 1 to you to see what it will contain!
Yes, you all know I love Twitter! But did you know that it is a powerful business tool?
In IBM, our ibm.com team must attract a high volume of leads from a new set of customers. Since Social has become a tool for getting information on products and services, we wanted to explore how to leverage word of mouth. For instance, after a Twitter search or deeper conversation in a LinkedIn group or forum, potential buyers might ask companies for more information, but they also often turn to their peers, other clients and trusted advisors.
So our ibm.com team decided to go social. Our inside sellers drove prospects to their Rep Pages –- personalized ibm.com pages that play a “virtual business card” role for inside sellers. These pages have relevant information to clients, enhance the relationship, and give clients one-click access to interact with their reps.
After training on how to engage and nurture potential clients, the ibm.com team built Twitter profiles to establish a presence in the social networking world. The ultimate objective of this pilot was for sellers to use social media to add value to conversations and build a pipeline of leads.
We (IBM) also worked with an outside firm to identify the most prominent influencers in the our space, so sellers could then follow them and comment on or retweet their posts and learn and connect. We developed a unique engagement strategy for each influencer, based on their activity and what they were saying.
To make it easy to maintain their Twitter presence, sellers also have a social message calendar, accessible via the feed reader function within Lotus Notes. The calendar features time-sensitive messages reps can tweet, with enough content for three tweets a day.
Over a 7 month period, these ibm.com teamates increased their Twitter followers by 5X
In the first two weeks of this effort, sellers’ Rep Page visits rose by 106 percent –thanks to a systematic pattern of Twitter mentions. The sellers reached 1.9 million contacts.
As we move ahead, social selling success will be reflected by the rep’s Klout score, that we discussed on yesterday’s blog post. which gauges influence in the social world, an increase in the number of direct Twitter followers, and relationships developed with key influencers.
Many thanks to Kelly Meade and Diane Karsch for their work here at IBM on this Social Selling Initiative!!!
There are huge debates on the value of Klout. (Don’t know what it is ? Go to Klout.com and check it out!) Klout currently tracks a user’s Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Foursquare activity. It is reportedly looking at Google+ integration!!
My Klout score to date is 61.
I have been reading about it for a while.
From the Klout blog: “We think you are influential. Klout isn’t about figuring out who is on the ‘A-list.’ We believe that every person who creates content has influence. Our mission is to help every individual understand and leverage their influence.”
Do you use Klout? I have noticed some putting their Klout score on their business card (which is interesting as it changes weekly for me!)
Let me hear from you! Sandy
At Blogher, Indra Nooyi, CEO of Pepisco, spoke to 3500 women at Blogher on Saturday. She really set the pace saying that the future of Pepisco is Digital!
Why don’t more CEOs leverage Social? Or do they?
A majority 64 percent of CEOs are not using social media to engage with the public and other stakeholders, according to a new study from PR firm Weber Shandwick.
Here’s the facts that I gathered on CEOs using Social.
- George Colony, the CEO of Forrester, had an interesting view on CEOs This is taken from his interview withBarb Dybwad . “I polled the audience and asked, “How many people in this audience have a CEO who they think could be social?” And I would say it was about 10%. Yeah. So that’s today — five years from now you put the numbers out. Maybe 20%? And maybe 10 years from now — I think it’s going to be 50% in 10 years. I think boards are going to be looking for people who can be social. Now in crisis, look at Toyota. The CEO of Toyota had a blog, but it was in Japanese. And it was about driving. So, he sells most of his cars to in English-speaking countries, and no one could understand it. That would have been a very good tool for him to use during this crisis, I think, to hear from the CEO in the CEO’s voice. He came and testified in front of U.S. Congress, so he could have preceded it with some talking about it socially, and that would have helped their cause I think.”
- On LinkedIn, there are 1.3M people who are listed as CEOs. Many of them are firms that market to CEOs, but I would estimate about 1M CEOs are on linkedIn. I could not tell how active they are.
- From PR firm Weber ShandwickThe study also found that the most admired CEOs had a greater online presence (41 percent) than those who were less admired (28 percent). CEOs with more years on the job tended to be heavier social networkers. And CEOs running American companies proved more socially active online than those in EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa), Asia Pacific, and Latin America.Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20019465-93.html#ixzz1UYBtOVore
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Great case examples. I love Bill Marriott’s blog, It is sassy, informative, and transparent http://www.blogs.marriott.com/ On Twitter, I love Zappos’s Tony’s tweets, and on LinkedIn Gary Kelly, the CEO of Southwest Airlines, and his use of Answers. I’d love to know your FAVORITE CEO bloggers, twitters, etc!
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Indra Nooyi Sets Pace at Blogher. I found that Indra set the pace for other CEOs at Blogher on Saturday by recognizing that her company’s future is tied to digital!
What do you think? Should CEOs be Social ? Or not?