How IBM Promotes Employee Engagement with Social Media

January 9, 2010

I am constantly impressed with IBM and its open attitude towards its employees’ use of social media.  The company has on its website, for all to see, its “IBM Social Computing Guidelines” .  

I wrote about this on the Blogger’s Bulletin , a LinkedIn subgroup.  With the start of 2010, other companies, who are floundering with their social media policies, would do well to check out IBM’s guidelines.  One of many lines in the guidelines that intrigued me: “IBM is increasingly exploring how online discourse through social computing can empower IBMers as global professionals, innovators and citizens. These individual interactions represent a new model:  not mass communications, but masses of communicators.” What a profound statement.  Gone are the days when a company can tightly control its message through advertising and printed materials.  IBM has recognized that thousands of its employees, within certain guidelines, are the touch points for communications with customers, prospects and the general public. Read more

Companies Need to Trust Their Employees as Brand Advocates

June 12, 2009

Smart companies are waking up to the idea of their employees being their most important brand advocates.  As I’ve written before, employees are still largely underutilized in this role.  When there isn’t a positive culture of communication within a company, management doesn’t trust employees with carrying their message to the outside world through new social media tools like blogging and Twittering.

Trust is the operative word. Read more

• Try Different — Seth Godin

  The usual mantra is to 'try harder'. Trying harder is impossible when you're already trying as hard as you can.

  But you can always try different.

  Years ago, I was creating trivia questions for a product we built for Prodigy. We had a 99% accuracy rate in doing the questions. Which was great, except there were 1800 questions in a batch, which meant 18 wrong each time, which was totally and completely unacceptable. These were honest mistakes, made by smart people working as hard as they could.

  No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't do better than 99%. So we switched our system completely and did it in a totally different way. Same number of people, same number of hours, 100% accuracy.

  If it's not working, harder might not be the answer.

• Blog Tags

  annual report Blog brand Brand advocates Branding Business Communication CEO Change Communication Communication channel communications Communications Strategy Crisis Communications culture of communication employee communication Employee Communications Employee Engagement Employee Recognition Employees as Brand Advocates Google IBM internal communication internal communications jeannette paladino Jeff Simpkins Key Messages Letter writing Mashable Media Interviews Motivation Nonverbal communication Passion Personal branding Planning Problems public relations Social Media Social Media Strategy Thank You Notes training Trust Twitter viral community Write Speak Sell Writing