Original Post: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-ibm-uses-social-media-to-spur-employee-innovation/
How IBM Uses Social Media to Spur Employee Innovation
Yet, how do you pull off “authentic” while maintaining the company brand message?
It’s tough enough for a small business. What if you’re #2 on Business Week’s best global brands list, with nearly 400,000 employees across 170 countries?
At IBM, it’s 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,” says Adam Christensen, social media communications at IBM Corporation.
“We represent our brand online the way it always has been, which is employees first. Our brand is largely shaped by the interactions that they have with customers.”
Thousands of IBMers are the voice of the company. Such an approach might be surprising for #14 on the Fortune 500.
Organization: IBM
Social Media Stats:
- 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
Results:
- Crowd-sourcing identified 10 best incubator businesses, which IBM funded with $100 million
- $100 billion in total revenue with a 44.1% gross profit margin in 2008
Edgy at 114
At 114 years old, IBM seems to be the Madonna of the corporate world, staying relevant from decade to decade. The first company to build a mainframe computer and help NASA land a man on the moon still holds more patents than any other U.S.-based technology company.
As it turns out, its decentralized social media approach is another milestone in the company’s history—driving unprecedented collaboration and innovation.
IBM lets employees talk—to each other and the public—without intervention. With a culture as diverse and distributed as IBM’s, getting employees to collaborate and share makes good business sense.
“We’re very much a knowledge-based company. It’s really the expertise of the employee that we’re hitting on,” Christensen says.
No Policing
IBM does have social media guidelines. The employee-created guidelines basically state that IBMers are individually responsible for what they create and prohibit releasing proprietary information.
But the document lacks any mention of brand messages or values.
Nor does IBM corporate regulate employee social media activity. Only three people hold social media roles at the corporate level, and oversight isn’t part of their jobs.
“We don’t police. The community’s largely self-regulating, and so there hasn’t really been a need to have someone go about and circuit these boards and blogs,” Christensen said. “Employees sort of do that themselves… And that’s worked wonderfully well.”
17,000 Inside Blogs
IBMers use tools such as Twitter and LinkedIn for external activity, but take advantage of mostly IBM tools inside the company. Internally, 100,000 employeeshave registered on the blogging platform to rate and comment on posts across 17,000 blogs.
What Works: IBM’s Culture for Social Media Innovation
- Stand back
Have guidelines, but don’t police from above. Employees tend to self-regulate. - Involve employees in SM planning
Let employees write the guidelines and they’ll feel empowered. - Give them the tools—and a green light
Not every company can create their own tools. Look for powerful social media tools and encourage employees to use them to do their jobs better.
Bring together employees, clients, partners and friends for powerful idea-sharing.
In this vibrant forum, employees exchange ideas, advance conversations and do a little self-promotion of their projects.
An internal wiki serves as a hub of information, drawing well over a million page views every day. Additionally, downloads in the company’s user-generated media library now total 11 million.
An IBM tool called Dogear functions like Delicious, a social bookmarking site. Blue Twit mimics Twitter. A tool called SocialBlue acts like Facebook, helping employees stay connected with former colleagues and get to know new ones.
Like Facebook, the 53,000 or so SocialBlue members share photos and status updates. In IBM’s widely dispersed environment, family photos mimic cubicle-decor and dialogue mimics water-cooler interaction.
Thousands of Voices
Run an online search for “IBM blog” and you’ll find countless IBMers posting publicly on everything from service-oriented architecture to sales to parenthood. If you want to blog at IBM, you simply start.
IBM lists all of its blogs in a simple directory sorted by the name of the blogger.
They share thoughts, ideas, presentations, photos, videos, you name it. In 2006, the IBM mainframe blog hit the big time for posting a series of videos on YouTube that linked back to the blog. The Art of the Sale mockumentaries, in The Office style, lightheartedly poke fun at IBM and corporate sales in general.
Part I of The Art of the Sale racked up 250,000 views on YouTube.
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