Home > Spotlight > Intel’s Social Media All-Star Talks Strategy

I linked up with Ekaterina Walter this past week, Intel’s social media gal herself, to talk engagement and online presence particularly for large corporations. This is what she had to say:

Before you, Intel’s social media presence was almost non-existent. Why was it so important to bring this form of communication to Intel? I suppose this is an excellent question for any large organization struggling to grasp social media.

[Walter, Ekaterina] The way consumers communicate with each other and with brands fundamentally changed. We didn’t have a choice. Traffic to Fortune 100 company websites decreased significantly while engagement on social networks with brands increased. More and more there is an expectation among consumers that brands need to listen, be responsive and know where key conversations happen. And if brands don’t, the perception is that they don’t care. The price of inactivity was greater than the risk we could have encountered.

The bigger question is how did you do it? How do you begin an authentic conversation from a company so large? It feels overwhelming.

You start small. Listen first. Understand where most conversations are happening. Then you focus on the most critical channels and you engage. Participate in as many conversations as you can. As you prove the value through listening and small pilots and as your team and budget grow, you then decide how to expand your scope and what to prioritize. Early on you need to ensure you have strong governance structure and clear guidelines in place, bring relevant training to your employees. As you become more sophisticated, you invest in appropriate infrastructure and expand your scope to cover your presence on more social networks. Then you scale your strategies and your infrastructure globally.

That is where having [the] central Social Media Center of Excellence really adds value. Some benefits include:
*       Overall strategic vision
*       Global presence on social networks
*       Social media policies and guidelines
*       Company-wide strategy for different audience segments (consumer, business, corporate, youth, etc)
*       Unified approach to social branding, search engine optimization, branding and much more
*       Working with multiple stakeholders on integrating social thinking into the strategy and not as an afterthought
*       Corporate-wide training
*       Enterprise-wide tools, solutions and approaches which lead to educated engagement, unified measurement and significant decrease     in costs
*       Playbooks on multiple social properties and subjects
*       Point of view documents on latest major developments/announcements
*       Establishing effective and real-time communications with social media practitioners, key stakeholders, partners, management
*       Integration into the critical central functions like customer service, risk management and response, PR, HR, legal, privacy, etc
*       Support in hiring into the social media roles across the company
*       Recommendations on the best agencies/tools/approaches
*       Collection of case studies and best-known practices guides (both internal and external)
*       External thought leadership

How do large corporations develop their voice online when it’s so easy to sound cold and distant?

You strike the balance between your brand voice and your human voice. Every community manager would have his/her own approach. But if (s)he is clear on the key brand objectives and understands what brand’s voice is, it makes it easier to mix in your own voice – that is what helps you humanize your brand.

It seems to me like there are three sects of social media users: people go grew up with it and maybe take it for granted, the companies who are struggling to understand the ins and outs of it and the the converts: older generations and companies who made the shift. So for the confused, why is social media important? Why aren’t ads, commercials and other traditional media enough?

Traditional media isn’t dead and it will never be. However, married with social amplification strategies it reaches much father and has bigger effect. Consider Ogilvy’s recent study “Does investing in social media create business value?” Here are just some data points from the study:
-       People who were exposed to social media + PR increased their spending by 17% over the previous time period
-       People who were exposed to social media + TV were twice as likely to buy
-       Social media + OOH exposure was linked to 1.5X higher likelihood of increase in spending
-       Exposure to multiple channels was most often associated with sales impact

Traditional media is great for starting the word of mouth. But then some customers want to be able to extend this exposure into social conversations. They want to be able to talk to brands. Moreover, they demand brands to be accessible. You don’t want to miss the opportunity to create those social touchpoints with your customers because this is a golden opportunity to create relationships, establish emotional connection and amplify your traditional media message.

How do content and social media impact one another?

Content is king. This hasn’t changed. Relevant content should be at the core of brand’s strategy. Creating relevant content is an amazing way to add value and strengthen those relationships you build through your online conversations. Your customers love to be in the know and this is a great way to position yourself as an industry expert. You want to become a trusted source in the community and sharing sought-out content is the only way to become one. You should then use your social channels to distribute that content across the web and use content as a catalyst for conversations.

 

Ekaterina Walter is a social media strategist at Intel. She is a part of Intel’s Social Media Center of Excellence and is responsible for company-wide social media enablement and corporate social networking strategy. She was recently elected to serve on the board of directors of WOMMA.