Presentation showing how internal communicators can leverage social media tools.

1. Leveraging Social Media
tools for Internal Communications
Mike Boogaard Mark Smith
Client Services Director Creative Director
View View

2. What is social media?
“A group of Internet-based applications that build
on the ideological and technological foundations of
Web 2.0, which allows the creation and
exchange of user-generated content.”
Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein

3. Again…what is social media?
• A shift in how people discover, read, and share
news and information and content
• Transforming monologue (one to many) into dialog (many
to many.)

4. Internal social media spectrum
Complexity Full social media
integration
Ideas
sharing
Walls
Collaborative
tools
Groups
Polls
Forums
Message Blogs
RSS boards
Interactivity

5. Connection
How is it used? • Foster and facilitate communication
between employee, team members
and layers of the organisation
• Top-down communication (e.g.
Collaboration
podcasts)
• Help teams work more effectively and
• Peer-to-peer communication
efficiently
(group/microblogging)
• Ensure access to most accurate and
• Two-way communication between
up-to-date information
management and employees (blogs)
• Facilitate work out of office
hours, across multiple
platforms
Communication
• Key to employee engagement
• Connections demonstrate a
unified purpose and lead to more
engagement and efficiency
• Easier to find colleagues
(people/skill finders)

6. The numbers
• 45% of FTSE100 companies have an official Twitter account, up almost
50% in a year, while another 17% have holding accounts that they have
yet to start using
• 25% of FTSE100 companies have an official Facebook presence, up
from 20% in November 2009
• 39% of FTSE100 companies have an official YouTube channel, the
same number as in June 2010 but up around a third – from 29% – over
the year as a whole
• Only 12% of FTSE100 companies have a corporate blog, though that
represents a 200% increase since this time last year

7. What are the benefits?
Business case Social case
Employee engagement Nourishes corporate culture(s)
Encourages thought leadership Interaction without geographical
boundaries
Listen to employees
Develop closer relationship with
Increase internal brand awareness (and between) employees
Information sharing
“Companies that use social media achieved yoy
Crisis communication improvement in employee engagement of 18%
compared to 1% in those who didn’t”
Aberdeen, 2008

8. Do’s and dont’s…
Do’s Dont’s
Ensure content is interesting X Don’t ghost write personal content
and engaging
X Stifle communication or be afraid
Allow open communication
of negative comments (but
Give collaborative tools address them)
Create social media
champions/leaders
(the rest will follow) Recommendation:
Take a step-by-step approach and adjust/
Have moderators tweak as you go rather than trying everything
all at once.

9. Case study - IBM
Building a culture of social
media innovation

10. At IBM, its about losing control
“We don’t have a corporate blog or a corporate
Twitter ID because we want the ‘IBMers’ in
aggregate to be the corporate blog and the
corporate Twitter ID.”
Adam Christensen, Social Media Communications,
IBM Corporation

11. IBM’s social media landscape
• No IBM corporate blog or Twitter account
• 17,000 internal blogs
• 100,000 employees using internal blogs
• 53,000 members on SocialBlue (like Facebook for employees)
• A few thousand “IBMers” on Twitter
• Thousands of external bloggers,
• Almost 200,000 on LinkedIn
• As many as 500,000 participants in company
crowd-sourcing “jams”
• 50,000 in alum networks on Facebook and LinkedIn

12. IBM’s social media landscape
‘Socialblue’
• Internal social networking site
- ‘a rich connection to the
people you work with’
• 53,000 users
• Post photos, create lists to
share their thoughts, and
organise events
• Users can create top-five
lists, called 'hive fives' to
share their thoughts on
any topic they are passionate
about.

13. IBM’s social media landscape
‘Dogear’
• Social bookmarking platform
• Lets users centrally store,
categorise, and share a set
of personal Web bookmarks
with others
• Allows people to find experts
on specific topics
• Expertise location helps spur
collaboration and sharing of
resources.

14. IBM’s social media landscape
IBMers’ blogs
‘A menu of expertise and
insight from a passionate
crowd’
• All of its blogs in a simple
directory sorted by the name of
the blogger.
• 100,000 employees have
registered on the blogging
platform to rate and comment on
posts across 17,000 blogs
• An internal wiki serves as a
hub of information, drawing
well over a million page views
every day.

15. IBM’s social media landscape
Company ‘jams’
‘A big, online collaborative
experiment’
• Bringing employees together in
an online forum for three
straight days
• Now includes much bigger and
more diverse crowds - as many
as 500,000 people in some cases
• Together employees - and
friends, family and clients - to
discuss more than 50 research
projects within the company
• 10 best, which became incubator
businesses that IBM funded with
$100 million, all based on “crowd”
discussion.

16. IBM’s social media landscape
Virtual meetings
• A fifth of the cost and no
jet lag!
• IBM’s Technology Academy
used Second Life to hold a
Virtual World Conference
• 200+ participants bought
together (virtually) from
across the globe
• Attendees truly felt they had
attended a ‘real-time’
meeting.

17. IBM’s social media landscape
Smarter Planet
Instrumented. Intelligent.
Interconnected.
• Began as a grassroots
movement among
employees.
• IBM has collaborated with
more than 600 organisations
worldwide that each do
their part in making the
‘Smarter Planet’ vision
a reality.

18. IBM’s social media strategy
Stand back
Have guidelines, but don’t police from above. Employees tend to self-regulate.
Involve employees in Social media planning
Let employees write the guidelines and they’ll feel empowered.
Give employees the tools - and a green light to use them
Identify powerful social media tools and encourage employees to use them to
do their jobs more effectively.
Use crowd-sourcing
Bring together employees, clients, partners and friends for powerful idea-sharing
A risky, but effective strategy

19. And finally…
• Identify your objectives and key messages
• Allocate and train resources to adequately respond and
manage your presence
• Measure and monitor activity
• Respond effectively and in the appropriate manner
• One step at a time!

20. Thank you