General Electric Social Media Strategy – Innovative Technology oriented Content

GE social media strategy can be called a digital content factory which is a convergence of different social media platforms that allows company and customers publish and share their own content. The company deals with significantly high quality content that discusses the innovations in technology, emerging technologies, explanation and description about existing technologies. Along with Facebook, Twitter—there are other social networks like Google+, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube on which the company actively allows sharing and publishing of customer generated content of different types along with creating daily, original content on our own owned channels like GE Reports and Txchnologist (which then gets distributed socially and on third party blogs and news sites). According to Beth Comstock, GE CMO, since business itself is social and customer engagements are critical for the business survival, GE utilizes social media tools and platforms allow us to connect directly with our customers, from product ratings to reviews to customer communities where real time collaborating and innovating is happening. Linda Boff, executive director of global brand marketing, GE said, “Real-time marketing is the ability in near real time to produce a response through content, experiences or service to a live event or customer event that delights your audience or customer into engaging with your brand around a shared moment.”

GE strategically utilizes the social platforms to tell stories about the way the company impacts the lives of people and tells the stories about the successes and the challenges the company is facing and using content that is creative and highly impacting visually has allowed the company build a strong relationship with their customers. On social media platforms GE focuses more on on technology and innovation and not on selling its products and services. GE has many Facebook pages including GE Appliances, Lighting, Aviation, etc. and on these pages most of the content is related to questions, images, videos and links relating to a wide range of topics, including jet engines, medical science, outer space and data science. There are also more interesting initiatives, such as ‘Stump the scientist’ which asks Facebook fans to pose questions to one of GE’s chief scientists

With a global presence in more than 150 countries and over 300,000 employees worldwide, General Electric (GE) is a conglomerate that operates in everything from finance through to aviation, appliances and healthcare. Most of the GE businesses are highly regulated businesses like healthcare, energy and financial services the company always have to be very cautious about the content and for overcoming the issue it has a team of strategist, producer, designer and lawyer to make fast decisions on both the content and the distribution. The company has been successfully using the various social networking sites to engage with customers, partners and investors and significantly improving the brand value of the company. We've done some research on our content marketing," said CMO Beth Comstock, speaking with Adweek at the ANA Masters of Marketing conference. "And we get 30 percent extra value for every dollar spent."

Case Study: Enterprise Social Network @ Pfizer – Pfizer World intranet & My World

Pfizer, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies in terms of revenues, with employees of around 1, 00,000 and operations across 150 countries in the world had implemented an enterprise social network styled intranet within the company for their employees to communicate and collaborate across the globe. Pfizer World intranet is built on Microsoft SharePoint platform and the company prior to this had more than 400 intranet sites. Bob Libbey, Head of Digital and Social Communications at Pfizer, Inc., likes to think of PfizerWorld – the company’s singular internal channel - as an online town square. “People come to get their news and information about the enterprise - about the various pieces of Pfizer - that’s a big part of what’s made the project a success. Obviously we use email a lot; we distribute a promotional newsletter twice a week to show what’s upcoming in PfizerWorld. We need to be careful not to overload people. We’re always looking for ways to help people sort their information. That to me is the biggest challenge right now - helping people prioritize all the news and information that we’re sending to them,” Libbey explains.

In 2008, the site had 1.4 million article views; in 2009, the number jumped to 3 million article views, along with 10 million site visits on the whole. For 2010, article views topped 5.2 million and visits reached 55 million. In its third year, PfizerWorld generated 5.3 million article views and 61 million page views, up 279 percent and more than 1,000 percent respectively over the predecessor site. And the project yielded $20 million in maintenance, support, and development savings over the four years. The news crawl runs along the bottom of people’s desktops and includes the top stories of the day from PfizerWorld, top news clips of the day disseminated by the Media Relations team and breaking news as needed.  Pfizer also launched a social networking hub called My World,  a personalized intranet page to increase employee engagement, enable information sharing and facilitate collaboration; and a colleague message board called Moving Pfizer Forward to encourage candid discussion about company issues and employee engagement  and introduced as part of our PfizerWorld intranet platform back in 2010. That first year this internal networking hub drew 41,000 unique users who generated 800,000 page views. The second year it rose to approximately 60,000 users driving 1.6 million page views. Pfizer expanded its Social Media Policy to reflect the rise in usage of internal and external social media channels across the company. 

Internally, Pfizer created new employee channels, including the only pharmaceutical-company sponsored blog for Pfizer scientists, Think Science Now, on Pfizer.com; a personalized intranet page for employees; and a colleague message board. Pfizer also made content easier for visitors to share through Facebook, RSS etc. Many of the blog postings from Think Science Now appear on Pfizer’s Facebook page, for instance. Pfizer had been able to implement and integrate social network styled tools and platform internally so that employees can actively use it, collaborate and communicate with colleagues across the globe and work together to achieve the organization goals.

Case Study: Enterprise Social Networks @ Toyota – Knowledge Sharing & Collaboration

Toyota uses Salesforce.com enterprise social network platform called Chatter that facilitates internal communication between hundreds of thousands of Toyota employees across the world to interact, share and collaborate with each other on a day to day basis and work for the organizational growth. Employees have to login to access the intranet, join groups and participated in discussions of their interests and can post updates, comments, opinions, questions and get answers and suggestions from coworkers based in 170 countries around the world.  With Chatter platform allowing collaboration and sharing of information and documents employees can actively collaborate and work together to resolve critical issues. “People have only 24 hours a day,” says Toyoda. “But through social we can connect with many people at once.” Enterprise social networking platforms are critical tools for knowledge management as organizations need to document and share the knowledge within the organizations effectively for growth. "Most of the knowledge is tacit. It is walking around in the heads of our employees," said Steve Kang, social enterprise manager for Toyota. "The question is how do you get that knowledge? How do you extract that knowledge? Because it's not written down anywhere. This provides us with a way to do that."

Toyota started using the Chatter based intranet since 2012 and employees can access the intranet not only through desktops but also using the mobile devices like iPad, Android and BlackBerry applications. Employees can create topic centered groups and engage with others on this platform and interactions should be mostly work related and one of the popular group is the "ask all Toyota" for employees to pose questions to other Toyota workers around the globe. Another important usage of Chatter in Toyota is the cross-departmental task forces that collaborate across different departments located across the globe and they prefer chatter rather than the traditional email as Chatter allows easy flow of information between collaborators.  Even the senior management in Toyota actively use intranet to communicate with employees and employees keep track of the posts by the senior management. Toyota even implemented a translation service within the chatter so as there will be seamless interaction between Japanese and Non-Japanese employees that enhanced communication among Toyota employees around the world, leading to quicker decision-making and information-sharing as enhanced communication ultimately help to make products and services best suited to consumers. Along with digital modes of communications Toyota also uses face-to-face contact where in Senior management regularly walk around and talk to employees and also regularly hold roundtable discussions. Employees are critical part of organizational success and organizations need to implement platforms that allow communication, collaboration and sharing of information and knowledge between employees and also with senior management so that they can also work together for achieving the organization goals and objectives. Enterprise Social Networks also allow employee engagement with customers and also allow engagement on external social networking platforms too. 

Case Study: Unilever Social Media Strategy – Internal Digital Social Platform & Project Sunshine

Unilever Plc sells more than 400 brands of products across the world in 190 countries and the company iconic global brands include Dove soap, Hellman's mayo, Ben & Jerry's ice cream, Axe deodorant, etc. Unilever is world's No. 2 consumer-goods company and spends more than US$10 billion on advertising and promotion of its products. In 2013 end, Unilever launched an internal companywide social media campaign Project Sunshine that shifted from different marketing campaigns for individual products in different countries to a new strategy that promotes the brands' social-mission stories and urges consumers to make small changes in their own lives—changes that generally involve buying Unilever products. The company shifted its focus based on the fact across consumer products industry most of the players have realized social media as cheapest and effective way of reaching customers and also need to have a centralized marketing strategy which will enhance the effectiveness of social media strategy overall. Social media marketing is different from traditional marketing as social media is real-time and companies need to sense and respond immediately and constantly review and change their social media strategy.

The internal digital platform was designed and built by Accenture using Salesforce.com Chatter, the enterprise social networking technology, that will help Unilever connect its marketers, brand managers and partners in 190 countries and enables sharing of knowledge, best practices and creative assets across the company. According to Accenture press release, “The new applications boost collaboration amongst our marketers globally, helping them to easily find people, information and conversations that they should be a part of,” said Marc Mathieu, SVP Marketing, Unilever. “The platform provides our team with the tools they need to develop and build our brands in local markets, which is critical to driving our ‘Crafting Brands for Life’ strategy. It also frees up time for our team to create more magic – that is, to engage with consumers and create more effective marketing, which will be key to delivering our ambition to double the size of our business while reducing our environmental footprint and increasing our social impact.”

For effective social marketing the digital platform will help Unilever brand team create a central hub that showcases individual brands and allows marketers and partners participate in conversations and also access relevant content and assets. There also has to be collaboration with the central brand teams in company headquarters and local teams in different countries so that company maintains uniform brand strategy on various social networking sites. “These tools really help us harness the power of the brands, the power of the people in Unilever and our agency partners – that combination is very powerful for us,” said Mark McClennon, CIO Consumer, Unilever. Unilever believes social media savvy consumers are expecting from the company high ethical standards, accountability and transparency across all the company’s brands and Unilever is using the social networking sites to deliver the message of sustainable living.  

Enterprise Social Networks 2012 – Increasing adoption in near future

The success of consumer social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc have forced the businesses to provide enterprise social networking within the organizations as employees are asking for such platforms and if not provided employees are using free social networks which is risky for the businesses as they lack control. Enterprise social networks are social networks deployed internally within the business organizations where access is limited to their employees and limited number of stakeholders like consumers, etc and are tightly controlled through strict policies by company management. Enterprise social networks have seen good adoption since past few years and these networks include Facebook styled profile pages that highlight employee expertise, interest, hobbies, activity streams and updates, blogs, wikis, communities, forums, RSS feeds, bookmarks, video/photo sharing and other tools that help employees within the organization spread across the world to communicate, collaborate and share knowledge and information and break barriers erected in multi national companies. Business to Business and Business to Consumers communities can also be built on the enterprise social networking platforms that allow sharing, collaborating and participate in the business related conversation and projects. Mostly IT and Internet Companies are at the forefront of enterprise social network adoption and traditional companies like manufacturing, etc have yet to adopt these platforms.

Forrester predicts explosive growth for the enterprise social software from 2011 revenues of US$ 600 million to US$ 6.4 billion by 2016 which is a CAGR of 61%. It also predicted that new social enterprise applications that allow systematic grouping of employees, information and processes will deliver good return on investment when compared to previous generation of collaboration apps like email, instant messaging, and videoconferencing that are called Unified Communications & Collaboration.  According to Gartner Research, the worldwide market for enterprise social software will top $769 million in 2011, up 15.7% from the $664 million spent in 2010; $578 million spent in 2009 and predicts revenues will reach US$ 1 billion by 2012. IDC forecasts that enterprise social software market will generate revenues of nearly $2 billion by 2014, which is a CAGR of 38.2% over the 2009-2014 forecast periods. Research firms predict a significant growth in enterprise social network revenues in the near future as more and more business organizations start adopting these platforms internally for their employees. Surveys by Forrester and Altimeter Research have highlighted that despite having attention of the management, adoption is slow but increasing and management’s have yet to be convinced of the potential of enterprise social networks in terms of productivity and profitability.

Similar to email that changed the way employees communicate within the organization; enterprise social networks will change the way employees interact, collaborate, and share information and knowledge that is critical for their performance improvement and organizational profitability. These platforms bring a personal touch to communication, sharing and collaboration process and motivate employees who are geographically dispersed and with different socio-cultural backgrounds by creating a sense of empowerment, also through employee profile pages employees and management can know about the expertise, interests and collaborate in key projects and transfer knowledge and finally play a critical role in organizational innovation and development as employees share their knowledge, best practices, streamline processes by avoiding duplication, wastages and provide ideas for the development of the products and services. This will finally lead to improved products and services, improved communication and collaboration with customers which will help in improving their satisfaction and improved organization reputation and profitability. Engaging employees in the innovation and idea generating process is one of the crucial activities being done by most of the businesses today be it large or small and the enterprise social networks will act as a backbone for such initiatives. Along with enterprise social networks, consumer social networks presence is also critical for the businesses and businesses have to find a way to securely integrate the consumer and enterprise social networks for better results.

Businesses are just looking at enterprise social networking as a collaboration and communication tool for employees but not as a tool that will help in faster decision making, business process improving, employee retention and a tool that help in reducing the email volumes and meetings costs. Businesses too are not convinced about the return on investment or business value that these platforms generate and because of this the spending is very low on these tools, after initial euphoria there has been reduction in focus and there is not serious effort from the management to measure the impact of these platforms. Lack of active participation of the employees and lack of proper training, understanding of the significance of the enterprise social networking in terms of improving their performance, productivity and organizational performance is also slowing down the adoption of enterprise social networks. Some of the businesses are offering gifts and other incentives to encourage employee participation but with limited success. There also need to be an organization policy and guidelines for employees for avoiding the misuse and other problems. Businesses also need champions, responsible for monitoring, controlling and initiating the various activities on the enterprise social networks and champions should be selected from all the levels of organization including the management executives and they should be active.

Enterprise Social Networks is a major trend and the businesses have to change their approach in implementing this platform by looking at it a source of business value creation and formulate policies & strategies for increased participation of employees and use it a transformational tool for overall organization development. They are just looking at it as a mere technology without having any performance metrics for measuring the impact. The constant communication and collaboration will generate knowledge, streamline processes and increase the flow of information across hierarchical levels within the organization. Management can interact with employees at all the levels and the two way communication will be a major advantage for management to understand employee concerns and for employees to understand management plans and strategies. For the success of enterprise social networks, top management and executive sponsorship is a must and their regular participation is also necessary. Like the way consumer social networks changed the way people communicate with family and friends, voice their opinions and share information and knowledge, enterprise social networks too have the potential to change the organization communication, collaboration and knowledge sharing processes by removing  communication barriers between the employees and the management and together work for attaining the organizational goals.

Social Media @ HCL Tech – Social Network platform Meme to "connect, share, learn & grow”

HCL Technologies is a global technology and IT Enterprise and it has 88,000 employees with offices in 26 countries and generates revenues of around US$ 3.9 billion. HCL Tech provides multi-service delivery in key industry verticals including Financial Services, Manufacturing, Consumer Services, Public Services and Healthcare. HCL takes pride in its philosophy of 'Employees First, Customers Second' which empowers their employees to create value for the customers. Employees need to communicate with one another for project related activities and also for understanding each other personally and culturally. These interactions are essential for the global organizations to run smoothly, knowledge management, innovation and operational efficiencies. HCL believes that younger generation work force is looking for openness, transparency and lack of command and control and collaborative work style and the organizations have to transform themselves to look like Facebook, which is not hierarchical pyramid and embrace social media in the organizations. When the idea of internal social network propped HCL management was concerned about the productivity of the employees and with belief on their employees approval was given.

HCL developed its own social network for internal use, called Meme, which was modeled after Facebook, and the site was opened for use among employees in April 2011.  MEME, has almost 60,000 registered users, 49,917 photos uploaded in 15,290 albums, 38,498 messages, averaging about 11 per connected employee, have been sent over the platform, 2,400 queries in Ask HR tab and has 1,579 groups where employees can discuss topics ranging from work-life continuity & passion factors at work, participate in contests, download Meme to their mobiles and through which they share feedback and provide enhancement suggestions. Younger employees are attracted to this platform as they are very familiar with communication and collaboration tools like Facebook, Twitter, etc and the numbers highlight that this social networking tool is well adopted by the employees. Employees can share their queries on MEME and get answers from other employees and experts within the company.

HCL Technologies had many initiatives such as social network called U&I that employees can use to interact with CEO, Communities called Employee First Councils around health and hygiene, art, music, corporate social responsibility and business related passions such as a particular technology or a vertical domain area, My Blueprint, another social networking system allowing managers to share plans for their specific business areas and get feedback from another 8000 HCL Tech managers. The company Employee First and Customer Second policy itself highlights the importance for a strong intranet within the organization to engage in open dialogue with his employees. HCL Tech CEO Vineet Nayar believes that the only way to bring innovation to the centre stage of the company to grow faster in the economic turbulent time is to get innovation going at the bottom of the pyramid to employees. He also says that only by putting employees first would you be converting the management and managers and management of the company to be in the business of enthusing and encouraging and enabling the employees. HCL is one company that has seen tremendous success with its Employee First policy. 

Social Media @ Wipro – My Wipro World for employee collaboration & networking

Wipro is a global IT services and consulting company and the company has 136,734 employees with 72 plus global delivery centers across 5 continents and generates revenues of around US$ 7 billion. Wipro has more than 150 global Fortune 500 clients across financial services, retail, transportation, manufacturing, healthcare services, energy and utilities, technology, telecom and media. Wipro believes that employee’s particularly younger generation want to interact with management regularly and social networking tools within the organizations provide a platform for communication and feedback between the employees and managements. Employees need to communicate with one another for project related activities and also for understanding each other personally and culturally. These interactions are essential for the global organizations to run smoothly, knowledge management, innovation and operational efficiencies. Wipro blog can be found on the website home page and blog posts are posted by the senior managers in the company and the topics are mostly technology and vertical related. Wipro had published blogging policy for all their Employees in 2010 which ensure that any content (Blog post, article or comments) published by Wipro Employees on internet are governed by the strict guidelines.

Wipro has a Social Media section on its company website home page called Wipro Social which has live feeds of Facebook, Twitter accounts of Wipro technologies & Experience Wipro and also Slide Share and YouTube Channels. Any discussion/posts/updates that quote Wipro are immediately updated on the Wipro Social that allows the company to keep track of various discussions and mentions about the company. Company also has Wipro TV that is part of branding initiative and also airs white papers and content developed by others like TV channels about the company and its leadership. Wipro also has social networking tool for employees called ‘MyWiproWorld’ launched in 2009, which has 116,981 registered users and 3,264 communities and has become an online forum for collaboration, networking, ideation and innovation. Employees can comment on blog posts, chat with colleagues on various chat forums and discuss various issues with HR and their bosses anonymously if they wish to do so. Wipro has integrated both Twitter and Facebook with MyWiproWorld so that employees can bring together their personal and official worlds.

The classifieds’ section of My Wipro World has 56,000 listings and employees use the portal’s classified section to sell bikes and rent homes as and when they relocate to other places. Wipro launched its employee portal ChannelW ten years ago and it has become one of the most effective employee communication platforms in the company. Today, it receives close to 3.5 crore hits a month. Employees can discuss what is happening inside the company, share ideas/thoughts and post advertisements (such as, selling old furniture, etc) in their discussion boards. The intranet provides a platform to share knowledge among Wipro employees and collaborate with one another across various locations. The company also has a knowledge repository called K Net based on Microsoft SharePoint. Both ChannelW and MyWipro World have a significant impact on the employee engagement and motivation of the employees and it has bonded together the employees working from various locations and has provided them the necessary platforms to communicate and collaborate. 

Social Media @ TCS – Social Networking Platform internally for employees

TCS is a global IT services, business solutions and outsourcing company and the company has 226,751 employees with 142 offices across over 47 countries and generates revenues of around US$ 8 billion. TCS is the largest Indian IT vendor and gets most of its revenues from North America, followed by Europe and Asia Pacific. BFSI, Telecom, Retail & Distribution, Manufacturing and Hi-tech are the dominant verticals. BPO contributes around 11% of total revenues. With operations in 47 countries and more than 200,000 employees across the globe TCS needs an internal communication system that helps its employees collaborate and share knowledge. Employees need to communicate with one another for project related activities and also for understanding each other personally and culturally. These interactions are essential for the global organizations to run smoothly, knowledge management, innovation and operational efficiencies.

TCS has an internal communication system that consists of wikis, forums, blogs, personalized websites & other tools for employees to communicate with the management, and share their concerns and queries. In 2011, TCS started building an integrated system that would enhance the employee engagement and communication with management further and the online program is called ‘@TCS’ that looks like Facebook page and which allows employees to share personal information, post photographs, blogs and comments on any topic and upload user-generated videos.  TCS launched this Facebook styled internal social networking platform only in 2011. Another initiative is the ‘Great India Food Guide’ which lists all Indian food joints in various regions as TCS has its employees travelling to almost all parts of the globe and has 50-60 listings of Indian hotels across the globe. @TCS will be launched in other languages like Spanish, Chinese and German and the communications team is responsible for the whole initiative. Company is also evaluating setting up an e-commerce portal for its employees and is planning to create a corporate social responsibility (CSR) corner where employees can talk about various social issues they are working on.

Tata Consultancy services (TCS) developed a platform called Ultimatix which helps to consolidate internal systems and take advantage of group knowledge. TCS invested in this platform of wikis, personalized sites, blogs that not only bring employees together but also help employees to collaborate for organizational benefits. Justask is similar to Q&A forums that enable employees to ask questions openly, Ideamax encourages employees to share their ideas about a particular technology or a process. Ultimatix integrated 50 core applications to streamline operations and internal collaboration for more than 700 business processes. It integrated all internal processes, including HR, finance, and project management, to support over 200,000 staff. TCS has always worked to bring together their employees across the globe and provide them the necessary tools to interact between themselves and also actively interact with the management. TCS also has a Facebook page and Twitter account and they interact with various stakeholders through the external social networking tools and talks about new client wins, interviews and releases. TCS also uses various social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to recruit employees.