Enterprise Social Networks Case Study – Nestlé created Facebook styled intranet NestChatter

Nestlé has more than 330,00 employees worldwide and manages some 2,000 brands like Nescafe instant coffee, Kit Kat, Maggie, Nespresso coffee, Pure Life bottled water, etc. and each day sells 1.2 billion items. Nestle has a very active presence on various social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, etc. The company successfully manages 1,500 pieces of content being posted every day on social media, 50 percent of all Nespresso capsules being sold online, 180 million Facebook “likes” (with growth of 5-7 percent every month) and 200,000 employees on an internal social media platform. The company has more than 170 million fans across over 750 brand pages on Facebook alone. Company planned to embrace the social media both externally for customer engagement and internally for employee engagement. For social media strategy to be successful a well-planned and developed content strategy is a must. Content developed by professional media agencies, content generated by customers and also the content generated by employees is essential for any social media strategy to work. Enterprise Social Networking software developed by IBM, Saleforce.com, etc. play an essential role as the companies can create their own Facebook styled intranets within the company for active employee engagements.

Nestlé embraced social media inside the organization successfully and it implemented one of the largest internal social networks with more than 200,000 users using enterprise social network platform developed by Salesforce.com’s Chatter platform. Facebook styled intranet which Nestlé created is called NestChatter that significantly increased the level of sharing and collaboration by employees in the company located worldwide. Employee communities were formed with an agenda to promote online listening best practices and another strategy “Winning with Mobile” that is mobile apps and mobile friendly sites. Company went further and also used it to recruit talent with relationship-building skills and such employees were identified based on the way they collaborated and participated on the intranet platforms. Nestlé has been on focusing on finding ways to encourage and spread virally digital communication among employees across the globe. Employees are asked to blog and are scored on likes, viral share and post clicks. There is an internal version of YouTube and Facebook (similar to Chatter) with employee-generated content.

NestChatter streamlines the passions and experience of employees to create content, and use it as internal currency and also encourages creating new ideas and recognizing innovative staff members. The intranet too also improved the efficiency of employees through sharing information, collaborating on projects across geographical regions and time zones, efficiency of marketing teams that using the information created new innovative campaigns for various products and also helped in testing and interacting with customers in innovating new products and improve existing products. Active engagement by customers has reduced significantly the time to market and product failures too. Another case that significantly highlights the need for Facebook styled intranets within the organization that not only promotes employee engagement but also generates content that is very critical component of social media strategy.

Social Media Strategy Case Study @ Nestlé – Digital Acceleration Team key to success

Nestle faced a severe back lash on various social media platforms from customers in 2010 when Greenpeace boycotted and posted a viral video which highlighted the company’s use of palm oil produced from unsustainable practices which destroyed rainforests major  habitats of orangutans. Nestle strategy of forcefully removing the viral video and improper handling of Facebook pages protests failed which forced the company to relook at its social media strategy as a whole. Nestlé embraced a new social media strategy based on principle of open engagement to rebuild its reputation and an ethical code implemented that promoted open, honest engagement and this strategy was communicated to employees worldwide. Company developed a new framework using data and insights gained from social media activities on various platforms and used it to develop new successful and innovative campaigns. Social Media monitoring and engagement on various social media platforms by a dedicated team has enabled the company to engage with consumers and public and avoid negative sentiment and social crisis.

Nestlé created the Digital Acceleration Team (DAT) which continuously tracks consumer sentiments in real-time and instantly responds to any negative trends they identify on various social networking sites. The DAT team is responsible for listening and monitoring worldwide social media conversations and identifies early warnings about negative sentiments. The DAT team is also responsible to strategize and determine which the best approaches to social marketing both in terms of driving reach and engagement. DAT also produces training videos for Nestlé operating units worldwide, and also manages an internal social networking system that enables employees to find and work with others sharing similar interests. Blogging is encouraged, and the firm has its own YouTube-like, internal video-sharing system called DigiTube. DAT also conducts a program for company executives working at different parts of the world to the company’s headquarters for eight months of intensive training in digital trends and the skills learned there are taken to regional offices worldwide. DAT members have ‘hack-a-thons’ to solve problems, anticipate trends and search for ideas.

Nestlé’s social media strategy has been successful as the company successfully manages 1,500 pieces of content being posted every day on social media, 50 percent of all Nespresso capsules being sold online, 180 million Facebook “likes” (with growth of 5-7 percent every month) and 200,000 employees on an internal social media platform. The company has more than 170 million fans across over 750 brand pages on Facebook alone. Post the DAT model success company scaled it worldwide and launched in India, China, and Italy with plans for 12 other locations. Company has been focusing on active employee engagement on various social networking sites as content is critical and employees are the best source of the content as the company do not want to totally rely on professionals and media agencies for social content. Nestlé sells 1.2 billion products a day across the globe and significant numbers of customers are active on various social networking sites and company has to engage with them on such platforms and respond to their opinions and interests.

Social Media Sales Strategy @ IBM Listening for Leads & inside sales teams

IBM had been using the social media and networking platforms to drive sales for its products and services. IBM believes the fact that in the current business world both current customers and prospective customers are aggressively engaging on various social networking sites and the company had developed a social strategy that is hugely successful. IBM social media sales strategy started in the 2009 when the company initiated the “Listening for Leads" program that uses Social Media to help identify opportunities by sales representatives.  Business to Business sales teams use many internal websites that help them to know more about the products and updates and also have a blog with RSS feeds connected to LinkedIn and Twitter through which customers can follow them and maintain relationship. Additionally inside sales teams were set up called “seekers” who on a voluntary basis go to particular social media sites where they listen to conversations and determine whether there’s a potential sales opportunity. The leads then transferred to a lead development representative, a telephone sales rep who has been trained to have a conversation with the lead to qualify and validate the opportunity and then pass it to the appropriate sales resource to follow up. A variety of performance were used by IBM to measure success like retweets, mentions, reach, revenue, and leads, analyze patterns and trends in the data and with the help of marketing analytics understand how sales were improved. IBM found that reps with strong customer relationships and social platform usage had a 2-6% improvement in sales over their colleagues who were less effective.

With the success of social selling in B2B sales teams IBM extended it to B2C and all sales teams within the company and equipped them with necessary training so that join the ongoing social conversation and use it to identify and progress new opportunities. IBM invested in social media training, toolkits and personalized digital pages to help its inside salespeople generate leads and manage account relationships. IBM successfully used this strategy in pushing sales of Public Cloud commerce engine. Three months after launch, 19 per cent of all Public Cloud inside Sales Rep Page traffic could be attributed to social media activity – and 11 per cent of these visitors clicked through to commerce sites. Additional results for the first three months include: 55 per cent increase in Twitter followers, more than 3500 tweets and retweets compared to less than 500 at implementation, more than two thousand clicks driving prospects and clients to rep pages and the SmartCloud Enterprise website. The cost involved in driving this traffic was far less than the traffic generated through the traditional media and advertisements and the conversion rate into sales is also high. Inside sales teams also called as virtual sales teams or remote sales teams within IBM consisted of employees with domain expertise and specialists that can effectively engage with customers and help them resolve their problems and queries. IBM inside sales teams have effectively supported the field sales teams in closing more deals and generate millions of dollars of revenues to the company. IBM internal social media profile includes 17,000 individual blogs, 1 million daily page views of internal wikis and information-storing websites and more than 400,000 employee profiles on IBM’s initial social networking initiative, IBM Connections which is playing a big role in its social media sales strategy.