B2B case: Getronics’ New World of Work
In January 2011, GeTronics BeLux launched their NWOW campaign with a textbook mix of social media channels and tacts. NWOW stands for New World of Work.
But what exactly does Getronics do? I asked Peter Vanwelkenhuysen, Chairman of the Innovation Board at Getronics Belgium SA/NV.
Peter Vanwelkenhuysen: Getronics is THE ICT Workspace company.
Expert in workspace management services, connectivity, datacenters, and consultancy, Getronics helps organizations and its employees to improve performance. To do this, Getronics has a complete portfolio of integrated ICT services for the large enterprise market.
How does Getronics use social media?
Vanwelkenhuysen: Social media is part of the Getronics Marketing Communication mix. We integrate social media platforms in our campaigns to extend our audience and to create traffic towards our corporate website and campaign websites.
Social media is also used by HR/Talent Management to attract young potential.
Social media is also used internally as we use already wikis and blogs internally and will roll our own internal social network ‘Connect’ next month February.
And finally, social media is also used to monitor the Getronics brand experience.
All of these are in an early stadium and will be part of a more formal social media strategy policy and plan, that is in preparation (closely aligned with the one of Getronics Corporate).
One of the first visible aspects of this social media strategy is the @GetronicsBelux Twitter account.
Vanwelkenhuysen: Getronics Belux is using the Twitter account to communicate with her customers, partners, suppliers and friends. We monitor our campaigns and Getronicsbelux related tweets and try to respond or assist where possible.
Speaking of campaigns: What exactly is Getronics' New World of Work campaign about and how did you use social media to launch it?
Vanwelkenhuysen: In short, NWOW is flexibility while you work. It doesn’t matter where and when it happens – performance is everything. The basis of this concept? Managers who trust their employees to go out and get results, and a workforce that holds itself accountable for what it does.
The NWOW campaign uses a specific Linkedin group and Facebook page to build and inform a community about or discuss around The New World or Work.
New blog posts, videos, announcements, press releases, polls or any news about NWOW are communicated via twitter and the facebook and linkedin communities.
Our objective is to improve our (brand) visibility, confirm our thought leadership in NWOW, inform companies and individuals and encourage talent to work at Getronics.
- Campaign site: http://nwow.getronics.be/
- LinkedIn Group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=3737912
- Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/nwowgetronics
- YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/nwowgetronics
What is the business value of social media?
The Premier Business Leadership Series in Las Vegas in November 2010 hosted a panel discussion around the business value behind social media.
Panel host Martin Giles, US Technology Correspondent, The Economist:
For many organisations, the world of social media is both an exiting and terryfying prospect. It's exiting, because it enables you to have conversations with your customers in ways that simply were impossible five, ten years ago. But it's also terrifying, because with one tweet, or one post on Facebook, a disgruntled customer can spark an online tsunami of protest that quickly spreads across the world. [...]
All of this raises lots of questions:
How should you build a social media presence?
Who should own it?
How can you measure and analyse the value that you're getting from your social media activities?
In this panel:
- Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs and author of Social Media 101.
- Charlene Li, founder of Altimeter Group and coauthor of the cricitally acclaimed, bestselling book Groundswell.
- David Meerman Scott, Marketing strategist and author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR.
Social Media decision maker: are you thinking long term?
In a 27-page report Career Path of the Corporate Social Strategist: Be Proactive or Become Social Media Help Desk, web strategist Jeremiah Owyang explores the two possible career paths for the social media decision maker in a company (he calls them Social Strategists, but you might just as well think of them as Conversation Managers).
In short:
- Most Social Strategists and their programs lack maturity, with only 23% of Social Strategists having a formalized program with long-term direction.
- They are overwhelmed with six major challenges – with little relief in sight:
- Resistance from internal culture,
- Measuring ROI,
- Lack of resources,
- An ever-changing technology space,
- Resentment and envy of the role,
- A looming increase in business demands.
With demands just about to increase, they have two possible career paths:
- Fall behind in requests from vocal customers and internal business units, thereby becoming reactive which we call the “Social Media Help Desk”, or
- Develop a proactive program that gets ahead of the demands, and operate from a strategic planning position.
Further reading:
Innovation is the real ROI of social media
If your company is serious about including the social dimension must be included in each department and embedded within the company culture, this means that way your executive level and their departments work must change. But the good news is: by doing so, companies are able to discover the real return on investment of social media: Innovation.
Not every employee dreams of waking up to 15,000 Twitter followers
- Remove the Barriers to create a habit of socialness and collaboration
- Focus on One Network to start
- Give Them Guidelines For Interaction
- Create an In-House Resource, e.g. a wiki as the hub for the company’s social media policy
- Highlight Real-Life Examples
- How To Calm Employees Into Social Media @ Outspokenmedia.com
Social CRM = listening tools feeding information into a CRM system
"CRM systems need to actually acquire and fully integrate listening and monitoring into their offering." This enables "listening tools [to] close the loop on customer history and response recording."
Social CRM: most popular online IDs used to sign in
Users have made on thing clear to sites: when it comes to using and existing online identity to log in to a website, they want a choice of providers.
Overall the most popular online identities to log in with are Facebook (52% for entertainment sites) and Twitter (45% for news sites).
Profile data is available to websites after a user authenticates directly using an existing identity. Data varies widely by provider and depends on user permissions.
Full infographic at:
Social CRM: the time of the passive customer is history
Two quotes from Chess Media Group's Guide to Understanding Social CRM:
"Social CRM is based on the simple premise that you are able to interact with your customers based on their needs, not your rules."
"[T]hese customers are more engaged than ever before, and are setting the tone, pace and direction that companies must go. Companies must begin to collaborate with and engage the customer, but need to be respectful, and therefore must also deliberately decide on the proper response to each interaction with her. This will require greater internal collaboration with finance, operations, innovation, and other departments within the company."
Further reading:
- Chess Media Group's Guide to Understanding Social CRM (.pdf 4.3 MB)