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A Journey In Social Media

A journal about my personal thoughts regarding evolving a comprehensive social media strategy at a large company.

Those Who Talk vs. Those Who DoNovember 19

Sorry, I need to get something off my chest. 

And I may alienate a portion of the community in doing so. 

But -- well -- something needs to be said.

There Are A Lot Of Experts Out There

Like any hot topic, there are many people out there offering expertise on the whole 2.0 thing: social media, social networking, social computing, whatever.

And, occasionally, I go surfing the chatter-sphere to see what people are talking about.  Like most surfing, you find a few bits are interesting, with a whole lotta "meh".

I do appreciate those brave souls who have hung out their consulting shingle and tried to make a living on helping companies make the transition.

I think that those of you who follow this blog and this journey realize we've rolled up our sleeves, and made an amazing amount of progress in a very short time -- due to a combination of some very talented and passionate people, and a corporate culture that can evolve much faster than most people realize.

But -- really --  to take our approach to task and say "we don't get it" or "we're missing it" or "what we really don't understand" or "we did it all wrong" and otherwise lambaste us for what we're doing? 

I would favorably compare our practical organizational knowledge and methodologies on what we've learned to many of the "experts" out there -- especially those who haven't had the privilege of actually doing this sort of corporate transformation on

A Really Open ConversationNovember 17

I said that I'd share with you various stories as we learn to use our social media capabilities in new and interesting ways.

Well, one of those situations are upon us now.  And, truth be told, we're handling it pretty well.

You see, we're using our internal platform to help communicate less-than-positive news internally.

As The Economy Slows

Like any other company, we're tightening up the belt a bit as we head into a most decidedly unpredictable economic environment. 

But, this time around, we've got our internal platform EMC|ONE.  And we're using it in some pretty interesting ways to share the news, discuss it, and -- hopefully -- get back to business sooner than later.

Spontaneous Vs. Planned

The first memo came out in a traditional way -- there was a minor change to our vacation policy to keep the amount of carryover vacation down to a manageable number.  Not a big deal in the broader scheme of things, at least the way I think about these things.

But a couple of spontaneous discussions emerged on the internal platform, right out there for everyone to see. A few people were (ahem) rather pointed in their thoughts about this particular change in vacation policy.

Some people were quite upset regarding the inconvenience involved -- they had made plans far in advance, which were now impacted.  Others had particular work-related situations that didn't make it easy to burn off enough vacation in time -- they

An Object Lesson On The Value Of Social Media ProficiencyNovember 10

I still see many companies out there furiously searching for the magical "ROI" that will create the case for investing in social media proficiency.

Cynically, though, the very fact that they're looking for an ROI silver bullet that will somehow magically convince naysayers and other risk-adverse types is an oxymoron in itself, IMHO.

So, let me share the news.  Today, we used our social media machine to accomplish something big and visible that we just couldn't have done any other way. 

A Bit Of EMC Context ...

EMC makes advanced technology products and services that help people manage information better.

Like any high-tech company, we spend a lot of money on R+D, occasionally coming up with entirely new concepts in the industry.  As an example, this morning, we publicly announced an entirely new form of "cloud optimized storage" that represents some seriously progressive thinking.

But it's one thing to come up with something revolutionary, it's another thing to tell everyone about it in such a way that you extract full economic value.

I used to run EMC's product marketing group many years ago, and -- back then -- when we came up with something very new and interesting, the only real channel we had to "spread the news" was to issue a press release, and then schedule day

Convergence with the 1.0 WorldNovember 6

As we move along in our journey, I'm pleased to share with you the harder questions we have to wrestle with, how we're making our decisions, and how it all turns out -- for better or worse.

No one has written the definitive book on this stuff (yet!), so we all should feel free to use our best collective judgment in deciding to go one way or another. 

And now, we're getting to a very interesting discussion on this whole "2.0 vs. 1.0" thing.

I don't have any answers yet, but it's turning out to be interesting, to say the least.

Our Story So Far

So, to recap our story so far, we built our internal social computing platform over a year ago (EMC|ONE), and it's cruising along.  More to do there, but all goodness.

About 4 months ago, we formed a group to accelerate the formation of external communities, but maintain a certain loose coherence to things.  That's coming along very nicely as well, all things considered.

Outside of GE and a few others, EMC is probably on a short list of companies that's really putting this social stuff to work in a meaningful and business-transforming way.  It's being done with intent and focus, which is a nice way to do things.

We now have two related pillars to our 2.0 strategy -- internal and external.  Both are important.  Both are related.  But they're run by completely different teams, using completely different methodologies, requiring completely different skills, and on

It's Always Been Here -- Hasn't It?November 4

Had the experience of meeting a relatively new employee at EMC the other day -- she had been here for less than a year.

I mentioned that I was sorta involved in our internal and external proficiency efforts, including the EMC|ONE platform, and I came away with some new insights that were a bit surprising.

Just Part Of The Landscape?

This person shared with me that it was great working at a company where these sorts of internal communities were an ingrained part of the culture, had been here for a long time, etc.

I stopped her, and explained that our internal platform was relatively new -- it had only been up for a few months when she joined the company.  And there was a time not too long ago when there was serious doubt that we'd ever do anything like this.

She was surprised in return -- she thought that the maturity of the environment and the level of engagement pointed to something that had been around for a very long time indeed.

I look at the internal platform, and I see a brand new capability that's just getting out of its childhood.  She looks at it as a "senior citizen" with the wisdom of the ages.

Somewhere here there's an important insight that I'm probably missing -- this stuff is most effective when it's "just there", so to speak.  There's nothing special or unqiue about it -- it's just another business tool at everyone's disposal, and you're expected to use it effectively and efficiently.

That