Building a social enterprise at IBM

Editor's Notes

• #5: Social Business began at IBM in the mid-1980s with Virtual Machine (VM), the electronic networked environment built on the mainframe. VM made it possible for hundreds of thousands of IBMers around the world to work, message, participate in forums, access internal and external news feeds, and complete administrative tasks remotely. Since then, the evolution has continued as collaboration technologies have evolved. With the application of newer social technologies to the enterprise,, such as social business platforms like IBM Connections , IBMers explore new ways to partner and collaborate with each other in service of our clients. IBMers are tapping into the power of a more open way of working, a way that allows all of us to flatten hierarchy and reap the benefits of open communication and scalable collaboration.
• #6: Know and follow IBM's Business Conduct Guidelines. IBMers are personally responsible for the content they publish on-line, whether in a blog, social computing site or any other form of user-generated media. Be mindful that what you publish will be public for a long time—protect your privacy and take care to understand a site's terms of service. Identify yourself—name and, when relevant, role at IBM—when you discuss IBM or IBM-related matters, such as IBM products or services. You must make it clear that you are speaking for yourself and not on behalf of IBM. If you publish content online relevant to IBM in your personal capacity use a disclaimer such as this: "The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions." Respect copyright, fair use and financial disclosure laws. Don't provide IBM's or another's confidential or other proprietary information and never discuss IBM business performance or other sensitive matters publicly. Don't cite or reference clients, partners or suppliers without their approval. When you do make a reference, link back to the source. Don't publish anything that might allow inferences to be drawn which could embarrass or damage a client. Respect your audience. Don't use ethnic slurs, personal insults, obscenity, or engage in any conduct that would not be acceptable in IBM's workplace. You should also show proper consideration for others' privacy and for topics that may be considered objectionable or inflammatory—such as politics and religion. Be aware of your association with IBM in online social networks. If you identify yourself as an IBMer, ensure your profile and related content is consistent with how you wish to present yourself with colleagues and clients. Don't pick fights, be the first to correct your own mistakes. Try to add value. Provide worthwhile information and perspective. IBM's brand is best represented by its people and what you publish may reflect on IBM's brand. Don't use use IBM logos or trademarks unless approved to do so.
• #14: A comprehensive Social Measurement Framework entails accurately measuring the (1) digital marketplace and IBM’s position within it (in terms of both online conversation and organic search), (2) IBM owned social properties and IBMer impact in the marketplace, as well as (3) IBM’s digital disposition, or our organizational culture’s preparedness to truly execute against a social strategy. Here we will focus on the IBM SMEs’ impact ….
• #15: The term “brand ambassador” has been a round for ages, but do we really want to create brand ambassadors? The analogy isn’t quite right. Nor do we want to put pressure on IBMers to mindlessly share content on their personal networks. So we have a bit more of a nuanced approach. IBM has been working on a bunch of different enablement tiers that create an ecosystem of social enablement for IBMers. Starting with a foundation of guidelines and policy – we’ll go into more detail in a bit – and moving up to general education about social media, cybersecurity and reputation for all IBMers in the Digital IBMer hub. From that tier, IBMers can move into the Forward Thinker Program (formerly known as the Expertise Locator) which enables them to be surfaced on ibm.com and other external experiences – and also to be identified for the IBM Select program, which is a small group of high-tough, bespoke plan enablement for the top tier. All of this is managed by people from many different areas within IBM – the social business managers…we’re not suggesting that we create a whole department of social business managers, but this is definitely an emerging set of skills Social Business and Community Mgrs IBM Select Program High touch, high value/potential SMEs Strategic, tactical external placement Forward Thinker Program Intermediate touch, high value SME’s Scalable service to surface expertise externally (on and off .com domain) and internally (w3) based on needs of the business IBM Voices Program Digital IBMer Hub Low touch, high volume core enablement, education and across IBM Digital Program channel enablement Self-serve surfacing and engagement Social Computing Guidelines and Policy for all IBMers
• #16: Social Brand Engagement Guidelines draft created and validated with Digital Program Leadership Team. Many “we’ve been waiting for these” comments. SBE guidelines have been applied to new accounts and a few existing accounts: On existing and emerging platforms most new accounts engaging our Social Brand Team to follow the standards. Existing IDs not up to standards contacted to bring up to standards and fakes removed. On new platforms, like Google+, we are now able to halt or slow the spread of un-official, out of compliance accounts before they take hold. Marketers and communicators like having guidelines: they want to be on-brand Higher signal to noise ratio is attracting more engagement with our official channels. Example: 30% increase in followers on LinkedIn in a few weeks following the guidelines. For 2012, we continue to formalize and enforce the standards and remove fakes. An automated registration process is also in the works for 2012.
• #19: Step two was all about figuring out what we were up against. What was the world finding when they came looking for us? We launched an inventory project and found thousands of accounts that could be considered to be representing IBM.
• #21: Monitoring social activity across critical venues, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and blogs, by SME on a monthly basis allows for quick enhancements – as needed – to drive measurable results, such as traffic to ibm.com and real demand generation activities once there. Results on this slide represent our pilot with nine SMEs. However, we will activate @100 SMEs through IBM Select in 2012 across CMO, Cloud, Social Business, Business Analytics etc. We intend to scale this 5x in 2013. Also, this dashboard in its present state is compiled manually and data is monthly-- and delivered through a partnership with a research vendor – we intend to automate it and get closer to real-time in 2013 as part of our scaling the program.
• #22: This is a representation of the 3,200 brand account names found via our inventory project.