Mark Hillary, CEO of IT Decisions in São Paulo, Brazil, travelled to Bangladesh in November 2011 as part of a BASIS mission funded by the UN International Trade Centre. In addition to speaking at the BASIS outsourcing conference and the eAsia event, Mark also delivered a workshop on ideas for using social media for smaller companies...

1. Social Media for SMEs – getting
your business noticed…
Mark Hillary: CEO, IT Decisions
BASIS Bangladesh Outsourcing Conference 2011 with the
International Trade Centre
Dhaka, Nov 30, 2011

2. Agenda today
• Intro and thoughts – what’s
changing?
• The tools out there
• How best to use them
• How do you measure success?
• Examples, best/worst practice
Keep it simple, interrupt at any
time, but we can also talk for
longer at the end…

3. Mark Hillary
j.mp/markhillary
• Studied CS/SE, first job as a programmer
• Ended up running global trading tech for an i-bank
• Quit banking to focus on writing and also tech
research for the Commonwealth - and an MBA
• Seven books about tech/globalisation
• Several blogging awards, regularly blog from
Reuters and Huffington Post, London 2012
• Teach MBA at Loughborough and LSBU
• Run research company in Brazil – itdecs.com

4. When it works?
Community
Conversation
Creation
Great for kids… but business?

5. Opportunities…
Let’s not kid ourselves – we are no longer
living out the Millennial outsourcing
goldrush…
The world is not very flat… the Doha
round talks have rumbled on for a
decade without agreement
Tom Friedman really just showed us a path
towards how the globalisation of services
might work

6. The world has changed enormously,
even in the past 5 years – after
Facebook
We are living in a far more globally
connected world --- in terms of
business, culture, lifestyle…
Graduates today do not remember any
life before being connected globally
24/7… Netscape 94 was tipping point

7. Information Technology is much
more than just IT today…
The Arab spring… Occupy movement…
almost all industries… individuals are
now consumers of technology enabled
services - in the past people using IT
were specialists.
• As we talk, IT is changing the world and
you are a part of that change and this is
a great business opportunity

9. Offshoring is not about being the lowest cost
location… it’s about working with the right
person, people, resources, company…
We are in a new era of globalisation with new
possibilities
It’s no longer about selling systems integration
or just bits of code… you need to truly sell
“services”

10. • So where do you fit in if there are so
many opportunities?
• If the supply chain for intellectual
services is now global then surely you
already fit in…
• So why aren’t you telling all your
prospective customers that you are ready
for business?

11. • A really important strategy for services in
Bangladesh is to embrace the new world….
go global and go SME
• Your customers can be anywhere and they
are already out there…
• You may not even know them if you sell a
cloud based service – do you ever think about
where your Gmail service is located? Why
not?

12. Back to reality…
• To serve them, you need a few things as
hygiene factors… political and economic
stability, infrastructure, and educated
people… you have all of this…
• Worry less about selling Bangladesh the
brand and think more about how social
your own business really is... You have to
start communicating globally to sell
globally

13. Structure changes?
• You have the people, the companies, the
basic infrastructure… you just need to
make sure that your companies are
visible in the places where SMEs go
looking to buy services…
• Job auctions like oDesk are making this
easier, but are not the whole answer

14. Structure changes – customer services
Think from the perspective of the SME
client… if you wanted a website built, if
you want a mobile app built, if you want
help building some bespoke CRM…
where do you look?

15. Where are SMEs looking?
Online… in the press, in the blogs, on social
media, in forums, on job auction websites… so
to be frank, your SME clients are not reading
Gartner research and deciding to give you a
contract because of it. They are finding your
company mentioned online, with client
references, or links to a job well done, and they
will care much less about you being in
Bangladesh than how good the example of your
work is…

16. Going Social
Could you run your business without a
telephone or email?
So don’t you think that creating a
social business is going to be
fundamental to your success in the
next decade?

17. Consequences?
So the opportunity is out there,
but if you are not engaging in
the places where your clients
are then unfortunately you are
nowhere…
Perhaps we should stop calling
all this outsourcing and just
start calling it “social business
as usual…”

18. The tools of the trade…
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Wordpress
• Google+
• YouTube, Flickr, Scribd, Slideshare…

19. Facebook
Great for building
communities
Event promotion and
branding
Easy to integrate the
‘like’ button
elsewhere
Great reach – everyone
uses Facebook

20. LinkedIn
Great for more business focused lead
generation
Becoming an essential business tool –
the modern résumé
Good search and marketing tools –
getting more sophisticated
Useful for industry leads, discussions

21. Twitter
Short promotional discussion
Great for creating a buzz and
promoting something more
substantial
Excellent for listening, seeing what
people are saying

22. Listening on Twitter
1. Start with a fresh account
2. Follow the key influencers in your
field; journalists, analysts, advisors,
consultants, executives…
3. Add search terms specific to your
field
4. Just listen… either the subject or the
person speaking will be relevant

23. WordPress
Blog platform of choice
for most
Can be self-hosted with
free software or hosted
by wordpress for
simplicity
Open source, always
being improved

24. Google+
Great concept and tied
to Gmail
Circles idea neatly ties
openness and
privacy together
Business pages just
launched
Still too early to know
if it will work out

25. Others… YouTube,
Flickr, Scribd,
Slideshare…
Great supporting tools
Need a place to host
documents, slides,
photos, video, but also
where that content can
be found online too
Easy to embed into blogs

26. Bolting it all together
1. Who is your audience?
2. What do you want to say?
3. Why are you doing this?

27. Because we are at BASIS, let’s assume…
• You are involved in IT services in some
way or other…
• You are selling services, possibly with
some branded products or platforms
• You are an SME, rather than a giant

28. What would an initial strategy look like?
1. Core is your blog; gives you credibility
and helps SEO
2. Develop traffic with twitter and interact
with the right people
3. Create community with Facebook
4. Reach industry insiders with LinkedIn
5. Support multimedia with other platforms

29. Facebook
Twitter Blog LinkedIn
Flickr YouTube Scribd SlideShare

30. What do you get from all this?
• Ultimate objective is more business
• Often hard to measure cause and effect
• Don’t get too hung up watching fans, likes,
followers, and comments…
• How many requests for information,
meetings, lunches have you had?
• Are influencers engaging more with you?

31. Finally, a few stories from the
frontline… not all applicable
to you directly, but all giving
a glimpse of the power of
social media for business…

32. BT: British Telecom
• Rapper Mike Skinner tweeted
that BT broadband was
terrible
• When BT fixed his problem he
told all his fans how great BT
is!
• Setup a small social media
support team
• Now about 40% of customer
queries coming into the firm
via Twitter

33. Virgin Media
• Complaints about cable TV service often
appearing on Twitter
• Started reacting to every single tweet –
even the crazy ones
• Check user profiles to trying
personalising the customer care

34. Teleperformance
• Biggest contact centre firm in the world
with almost 130,000 agents
• Not only called on to do social customer
service, but also need to market their
own brand using social channels
• Executives started industry blogging
• Result has been huge attention from the
analyst and trade press community

35. Disasters? Too many to mention!
• United breaks guitars
• Delta charges excess baggage fee to
US military coming home from action
• Domino’s staff mess around with food
• Rats in Taco Bell
• Kenneth Cole… Cairo jokes
• Habitat using Iran hashtags

36. Key things to remember:
• It’s not TV. Not broadcast. Share,
engage, converse… don’t just Tweet
press releases
• Listen to the community… huge value
in listening to what they are saying
• Study the influencers and target them
• You can’t control the community, don’t
try
• Transparency and honesty are crucial,
don’t astro-turf or embellish…

37. Mark Hillary
I live in São Paulo, Brazil, but please feel
free to get in touch online…
markhillary.com
mail@markhillary.com
twitter.com/markhillary