November 10th, 2009

Creepy elves and disco dancing: A business win for OfficeMax

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 1:58 pm

Categories: Advertising, Branding, Corporate Social Networking, Customer Loyalty, Facebook, Fortune 500 Series, Marketing, Social Business, Social Media

Tags: OfficeMax Inc., Dance, Portals, Web Technology, Internet, Jennifer Leggio

Who knew that weird dancing elves could be good for business?

OfficeMax today announced the return of its Elf Yourself portal, a silly site that allows people to create elf-like images of themselves doing a variety of dances from country to disco and even hip hop. While I’ve been a fan of Elf Yourself for some time but had no idea that it had come back for the 2009 holiday season until ZDNet colleague Jason Perlow posted his (hilarious) personalized elf last night. While all of this is entertaining, I got to wondering about what value this is really driving for OfficeMax. Last year I spoke with OfficeMax vice president of marketing and advertising Bob Thacker about the company’s social media strategy for my Fortune 500 series, and he brought Elf Yourself up as a social media success.

“Social media embraced the ‘Elf Yourself’ concept, endorsed it and readily shared it among online communities, which turned this campaign into a digital phenomenon that attracted millions, set a new viral marketing record and landed a considerable ‘win’ for OfficeMax,” he said.

I reached out to OfficeMax again today given the launch of the new site, which is now chock full of Twitter and Facebook connectivity. As a matter of fact, users of Elf Yourself can just connect to the site with Facebook Connect and select a picture from any album, saving hassle and upload time. And later today, the feature will launch that allows users to automatically post these elves to their own walls or their friends’ walls, spreading the Elf Yourself chaos even further than before. An OfficeMax spokesperson said the company selected to leverage Facebook this year to enable a deeper social media experience.

But, beyond creating giggles, what is this really doing for Office Max? The stats I received from OfficeMax are surprising:

• The Elf Yourself site has had 284 million site visits each holiday season since the tool’s launch in 2006. These site visits were measured over only a two-month period each year when the site was live.
• Of these 284 site visits, 256 million elves were created
• A study in 2007 showed that more than 1/3 of Elf Yourself users said the visit to the elf portal influenced their decisions to visit OfficeMax

What’s so great about Elf Yourself is that while it’s clearly an OfficeMax deal (powered by JibJab, of course) it’s not so in-your-face with its marketing that you grow tired of the brand. Yet, somehow it gets engrained in its users that OfficeMax is behind the whole thing.

What do you think of OfficeMax’s Elf Yourself? Oh, and here’s my terrifying Elf:

November 9th, 2009

American Express OPEN keeps 'pulse' on small business with social media

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 9:44 am

Categories: Brand Management and Monitoring, Branding, Corporate Social Networking, Customer Loyalty, Fortune 500 Series, Marketing, Microblogging, Small Business, Social Business, Social Media

Tags: Social Media, American Express Co., Small Business, Small Business Owner, Business Owner, IQ, OPEN Forum, Jennifer Leggio

The Fortune 500 series has historically focused on how large companies are using social media to help to further their own businesses. One company, American Express, has a division called OPEN that is exclusively dedicated to the success of small business owners and their companies. The growth of these businesses in turn means that OPEN will succeed, and the company has realized that social media has become a priority for small business owners and is putting a great deal of focus there with its social media activities and its new Pulse offering.

I spoke with Jason Rudman, director of strategy and marketing for American Express OPEN, about the company’s social media strategy and delivery, as well as benefits to its small business customers.

Q. [Jennifer] How exactly is American Express OPEN is leveraging social media to grow the business of its customers?

A. [Jason] Business owners tell us every day that their business resiliency and growth depends in part on their ability to connect with others for advice, support and networking. At the same time, many business owners have what we call a “high relationship IQ” but a “low social media IQ.” Beginning in 2007, OPEN Forum established itself as a leading source of business insight and advice. We have evolved the experience to be both an online resource and networking site created to meet the needs of small business owners, to help them solve problems and to start to bring relationship IQ and social media IQ into equilibrium, thereby helping our customers through the social media learning curve.

Q. How did OPEN’s social program begin?

A. Originally launched in 2007, OPENForum.com initially served as the on-line companion to a live event-driven platform created with the goal of providing key networking opportunities for small business owners to grow their businesses.

Q. What are the most important objectives that American Express OPEN is trying to meet with social media?

A. Engage business owners in a new set of experiences that increase loyalty, value perception, and relevance of our brand and continue to lead in the online engagement space to attract partners, so as to ultimately create additional compelling benefits for Cardmembers and convert prospects.

Q. How are you measuring the success of these programs?

A. For OPEN Forum, we keep a pulse on how we are doing by measuring engagement and soliciting feedback. The level of engagement in both our content and the business interaction among our Cardmembers is the best indicator of our success.

There are a set of metrics that we focus on monthly, such as unique visitors (UVM), repeat visits, time spent on the site, enrollments in Connectodex^SM [our proprietary networking tool for OPEN Cardmembers], etc., that form the basis for how we are resonating with business owners.

We are also starting to measure the brand impact that OPEN Forum is having for OPEN – it has been extremely positive since we started measuring our impact in Q4 2008, as well as amplification effect of our content and the “buzz” quotient of all that we do. Finally, there are some emerging stats that are peaking our interest – for example, how many times and how frequently is OPEN Forum being retweeted; this again shows a level of engagement and interest in what we are providing business owners.

Q. Marcy Shinder of American Express OPEN said during her presentation at the Conversation Marketing Summit that social media was invented by business owners. Why do you think this is true?

A. Small business owners are successful by building individual relationships – for example, with customers, prospects, vendors – based on an innate ability to talk to everyone, to get to know people. You might say this is “social IQ” and that many entrepreneurs possess this in droves. You see it frequently when a small business owner engages their customers or reaches out to new ones through a very personal style of marketing. Social media as we know it today is just an extension of this in the digital universe.

Next: Introducing Pulse –>

October 27th, 2009

2010 Predictions: Will social media reach ubiquity?

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 9:19 am

Categories: Blogging Best Practices, Brand Management and Monitoring, Branding, Corporate Social Networking, Enterprise 2.0, Government 2.0, Marketing, Microblogging, Public Relations, Social Business, Social Media, Social Media and Security

Tags: Social Networking, Facebook, Marketing, Network, Twitter Inc., Social Media, Foursquare, Poken Pulse, PR People, Jennifer Leggio

The year 2009 has been a pivotal one in social media. We’ve seen the explosion of a previously misunderstood social network as well as the rampant adoption of social media by major brands. We’ve seen these companies take big chances, some ending in success and others ending with harsh lessons learned. It seems that almost everyone’s brother, sister, mother and grandfather are now on Facebook, and that social media itself is a bubble baby no more. At the same time, it’s important to note that both business users and consumers have barely scratched the surface of opportunity that the tools and strategies around social media can provide.

In order to achieve continued success many things have to happen. Cracks in the echo chamber, widespread communication of proven successes, best practices for return on investment (ROI) are just a few. And as companies embark on their 2010 planning, they are hoping for a glimpse of what is to come.

Rather than create a wish list, I followed Peter Kim’s model and turned to my network to find out what it believes social media will become in 2010. I asked about 40 people to participate and 31 responded with at least a few words on what might happen next year.

The predictions are meant to be thought-provokers more than gospel, and come from a mix of thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and folks who get their hands dirty every day dealing with social media for their companies. Predictions range from general social media to enterprise 2.0, government 2.0, security, public relations and even location-aware social networks. But the over-arching theme of most of the predictions say that 2010 is the year that social media will just be, rather than serving as a shiny new toy.

Without further ado, here are the 2010 social media predictions.

Next: David Armano, Karen Auby, Andrea Baker, Nenshad Bardoliwalla –>

October 20th, 2009

PR + Google Wave: When opportunity meets overkill

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 11:06 am

Categories: Advertising, Branding, Google Wave, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media, Spam

Tags: Google Inc., Social Media, Jason Perlow, Blogger, Obviously Wave Etiquette, Public Relations, Cyberthreats, Marketing Research, Blogging, Spam

Marketing and public relations professionals are sitting on a bevy of opportunities for outreach: phone, text, email, and, heck, even old-fashioned faxes. Over the last couple of years these professionals have been given cookiespatted on the back for making “good” use of social media and specific social networks to reach their target audiences as well. But when is enough enough? Here are some common offenses:

1. Adding a journalist / blogger on Facebook and entering into a trusted network only to blatantly pitch said journalist / blogger on his or her “wall”
2. Spam @ messaging a journalist / blogger on Twitter multiple times to get them to review / write about your news or technology
3. Commenting on unrelated FriendFeed posts to try and get the writer’s attention

Those are annoying yet pretty controllable by either taking the person out of your network or blocking them. However, my ZDNet colleague Jason Perlow yesterday pointed out a new form of digital marketing spam that’s harder to control — and wickedly invasive: Google Wave spam.

It appears that POM Wonderful, the popular brand of pomegranate juice, was experimenting with Google Wave by adding a group of food bloggers to an unsolicited Wave. Perlow writes:

Well, welcome to the next generation of spam. Commercial, unsolicited Google Waves. As if using and trying to get used to Google Wave was bad enough, the PR agencies and marketing firms of the world have decided to start taking advantage of us, because we’re a captive audience and if they’ve ever contacted us in the past via e-mail on GMail, they now have a full contact database of people to torture by Google Wave if they were able to get an invite onto the system.

But it’s more than just annoying. It’s risky. Perlow points out that since Wave is designed to be collaborative, and people can’t opt out of Waves, by the time you delete an unsolicited Wave the damage is done. “People who have never made acquaintance with each other do not necessarily want to be “Waved in” with other people. There’s no “Blind CC” with Wave. Obviously Wave Etiquette is venturing into the world of the unknown,” he writes.

Is this a time when the PR and marketing industries need to police themselves? I had a colleague once say to me, “If you’re out there, you deserve to be contacted.” However, does that mean that if you have an email address — or a Google Wave account — are you supposed to lie down and just take unsolicited spam and Waves?

“In a perfect world, PR people would have such a great story, tailored so perfectly to the right journalist, that they could deliver it by carrier pigeon and it would still get printed,” said Peter Shankman, founder and CEO of Help A Reporter Out (HARO).  “Sadly, a good number of PR people use technology as a crutch to mask their lack of a good pitch, lack of homework, and lack, in the end, of caring about their craft. And that’s sad. For a lot of PR people, Google Wave is just the next crutch.”

What do you think? Let me know in the TalkBacks.

October 13th, 2009

Nine 'don't miss' social business sessions at Blog World & New Media Expo

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 12:59 pm

Categories: Blog World Expo, Blogging Best Practices, Brand Management and Monitoring, Branding, Community Management, Conference News, Corporate Social Networking, Social Business, Social Media

Tags: Media, Blog, Social Media, Jennifer Leggio

Next week kicks off the long-awaited Blog World & New Media Expo in Las Vegas. The conference is an annual event dedicated to trends in new media, including blogging, podcasting, social media, online video, music, television, radio, gaming, entertainment and communities. Keynotes include many of the usual social media suspects: Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, Jeremiah Owyang, Guy Kawasaki, Laura Fitton, and so on. There will also be some entertainers on hand to keynote as well, such as Kevin Pollak, Anthony Edwards and Jermaine Dupri.

The most interesting pieces of the conference, to me anyway, lie in the Social Media Business Summit, a track that focuses on tools and guidance for businesses using social media. This summit runs Thursday through Sunday alongside the other tracks at the regular conference. Here are the business sessions that I have marked as “don’t miss” on my own schedule:

• B2B Social Media
• Internet Marketing for Smart People
• Why Blogs Are Your #1 Search Marketing Tool
• Crisis Communication in the Era of Social Media
• Listening 2.0: Activating Social Media Across the Enterprise
• Bullseye Marketing: Precision Targeting on the Social Web
• Social Media Customer Engagement, Customer Loyalty
• From Skeptic To Advocate: Proving the Business Case to Your Boss or Client
• Social Media: The Bad and the Ugly
  

I’d like to selfishly note that yours truly is speaking during the Social Media Business Summit at 12:45 p.m. on Friday on “Don’t Jack My Brand: Security Awareness for the Marketing Manager,” a session that puts some of the security onus on marketers who need to protect their customers, partners and corporate entities against the risks of brandjacking. Add it to your schedule here.

I’ll also join Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter Group, Ted Murphy of Izea and blogger/entrepreneur Wendy Piersall on the keynote panel “Sponsored Converations” at 2:45 p.m. on Thursday. Please join us.

What other sessions are a “don’t miss” for Blog World & New Media Expo?

October 8th, 2009

Sears Holdings Corporation: A silent giant in social media

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 9:23 am

Categories: Branding, Community Management, Corporate Social Networking, Fortune 500 Series, Marketing, Reputation and Privacy, Social Business, Social Business Case Studies, Social Media, Social Media Best Practices

Tags: Sears Roebuck & Co., Social Media, Customer, Q., Jennifer Leggio

Sears Holdings Corporation (SHC) has been a silent giant in social media for some time. Its online community now boasts more than 300,000 users and it was one of the first major retailers to adopt OpenID to connect MySears.com directly from major social networks. The company has been injecting social into most of its brands, which, in addition to well-known Sears, include KMart, Lands End and Orchard Supply Hardware. It hasn’t always been a pretty story, as Sears has suffered some online woes as well, most recently a defaced group of product pages on the Sears Web site. However, the company credits an existing social media presence with helping them deal with that crisis swiftly by allowing immediate engagement with its customer community. I spoke with Rob Harles, vice president of community for Sears Holdings Corporation, about this and more.

Q. [Jennifer] How is SHC using social media?

A. [Rob] We are one of the only retailers – and the only one of our size – that’s created online communities specifically for our customers (MySears.com, MyKmart.com, MyVoice.com for our MyGopher concept). The goal of these communities is to connect with our customers. We offer discussion forums to facilitate questions and answers between customers and associates, an ideas platform to hear what new innovations are most important and product reviews written by customers. The communities also offer an opportunity to address customer service issues. We offer members information about sales, deals, discounts and access to unique coupons and specials for their participation.

Q. How did the use of social media start?

A. We started our first version of our customer community about two years ago. It was primarily intended for research; we used it as a platform for surveys and online focus groups. We realized the greater potential in this forum and quickly moved to expand our community offerings. We launched MySears.com and MyKmart.com in the spring of 2009 with product reviews, discussion forums, member profiles, a company blog, the ideas platform and a number of options for members to find and connect with one another around similar interests. MyVoice followed in July.

Our marketing initiatives have included a social, online interaction, component for some time now on platforms like Facebook. We are becoming more and more purposeful about engaging with customers on those platforms. One example is the recent Sears Back to Campus campaign where we utilized Facebook, Twitter and blogs to let consumers know about the product offering from Sears. We also created several online interactions like the Facebook application that allows college roommates to plan the lay out of their dorm room together, online. They can then buy what they design, creating a link to social commerce.

Q. For which brands, and how?

A. All SHC brands have a social component to them. All brands are represented in our customer communities and have their unique platforms and programs on the greater Web that meet their customers where they are.

One example is our Kmart Design brand. This initiative has introduced our Kmart designers and their design process through blogs, videos and Twitter to customers. Being transparent and upfront about what goes into our design process has proven to be successful; we’ve seen great response in customer engagement and in sales.

Q. What are your social media objectives:

A. Being present in a variety of social media outlets is part of our “Shop Your Way” concept. Shop Your Way is about letting customers choose what works best for their schedule, their shopping preferences and their budget and providing for them through our SHC properties. Our social media efforts offer a choice of online forums for customers to learn more about our products, to share their thoughts with us and to have their concerns or service questions addressed and answered. All within the course of their current online habits.

Support and crisis response –>

September 28th, 2009

10 Fortune 500 companies doing social media right

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 10:53 am

Categories: Brand Management and Monitoring, Branding, Corporate Social Networking, Fortune 500 Series, Marketing, Social Business, Social Media

Tags: Social Media, Jennifer Leggio

Throughout the last year I’ve highlighted several Fortune 500 companies who have a smart approach to social media. Writing about the large companies demonstrates that even giants with hundreds of thousands of employees can successfully flex to run solid social programs. I get approached by a lot of different companies for this series but I only select the ones I think are really onto something. Here are excerpts from the top 10:

Office Max: “Marketing is all about change. There’s a saying that ‘if you don’t create change, change will create you.’ It’s a great thought. I’m continually open to new ideas and new media and new approaches and new methodologies. At OfficeMax, we’ve embraced social media and incorporated it into our marketing strategy to reach today’s digital consumer through humor, entertainment and personalization.” — Bob Thacker, senior vice president of marketing and advertising

Newell Rubbermaid: “The more we engage with our consumers, they more we learn and the more we can expand our social media efforts. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to start small, be flexible and be willing to pull back and change if something does not work.” — Bert Dumars, vice president of e-business and interactive marketing

Cisco: “We see social media, such as blogs, as a great way to build your business and tap into the ideas and input of people using your products.” — Carlos Dominguez, senior vice president in Cisco’s Office of the Chairman of the Board and CEO

Texas Instruments: “First move is to always understand who we are trying to serve. What problem are we trying to solve? We want to create a customer support strategy, not a Twitter strategy! Once we understand the need we are trying to fill, we look at benchmarking against best practices. We have no shame in learning from what other companies are doing.” — Devashish Saxena, director of global Internet marketing

Continued –>

September 22nd, 2009

Fortune 500 Series: FedEx delivers success through social media

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 10:04 am

Categories: Branding, Corporate Social Networking, Fortune 500 Series, Marketing, Social Business, Social Media

Tags: Blog, Social Media, Federal Express, Multimedia Center, Jennifer Leggio

When I first started sourcing my Fortune 500 Series I put out a query on Help A Reporter Out (HARO) to seek out interesting companies and found a bunch. However, one public relations person sent me a nasty email saying that I was “negating the nature of social media” by highlighting large companies instead of small ones. I disagreed.

The importance, and purpose, of this series is to show that even goliaths are flexing to social media. Even if their programs might be raw, they are moving to embrace the model. And if a large company with hundreds of thousands of employees can flex, so can a smaller business. Sometimes, it also helps to know how they did it.

One such goliath is FedEx, a household name worldwide. The company began its trip down the social media path two years ago and has begun a phase of rapid growth. From multiple blogs to multiple service-oriented Twitter feeds and even community sponsorship, FedEx has made social media a priority.

I spoke with Matthew Ceniceros of FedEx’s media relations team to find out more about how the giant is reaping the benefits - and staying competitive - with social media.

Q. [Jennifer] How is FedEx using social media? How is your strategy defined?

A. [Matthew] Our general strategy is to form positive perceptions among key audiences by encouraging meaningful conversations about FedEx around the globe. This is done in a variety of ways by different groups at FedEx.  While I sit inside the Corporate Communications organization, my colleagues in Marketing and IT have also used social networks to communicate to both internal and external audiences.

Our specific strategy for the FedEx Citizenship blog is to:

• Engage in a conversation with key audiences about citizenship
• Introduce transparency into how, why and what FedEx does in citizenship areas
• Empower stakeholders to help tell our story for us
• Build equity and association for FedEx against citizenship platforms

The Citizenship blog (blog.fedex.com) covers the areas where we focus our corporate citizenship efforts: Community & Disaster Relief , Economics & Access, Environment & Efficiency and  People & Workplace.

Q. What tactics are you using? Where are your digital properties?

A. The FedEx Citizenship blog provides insights from our people into FedEx global citizenship programs and the The FedEx Cares Week blog is an internal blog that chronicles the annual global philanthropy event by having team members share their stories about the community service projects. We have an official FedEx Facebook page that allows us to post news and information about the company and for fans and team members to post photos and comments on the world of FedEx. Our advertising group created the wildly popular FedEx Launch A Package app. The week of launch it was one of the most popular apps on Facebook.

Next: Digital properties and Brown Bailout –>

August 11th, 2009

Fortune 500 Series: How EMC used social media to recruit, re-brand, rebuild

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 9:36 am

Categories: Branding, Career Development, Corporate Social Networking, EMC, Fortune 500 Series, Social Business, Social Business Case Studies, Social Media, Social Media Best Practices

Tags: Social Networking, Brand, Social Media, EMC Corp., Storage, Hardware, Jennifer Leggio

EMC can best be described as an entity. Not only in the Fortune 500, the infrastructure information provider was recognized by Fortune as one of the 10 most admired companies for product and service quality. This success didn’t come easy to the giant, which needed to significantly rebuild its business after the 2001/2002 recesssion. Part of that rebuild included acquiring more than 40 companies over a handful of years. The other critical part of the rebuild included attracting top talent to help drive a more successful business. To achieve the latter, EMC turned to social media for its recruiting efforts. The below interview with Polly Pearson, vice president of employment brand and strategy at EMC, details how the company acquired talented employees through social media, how career fairs via Second Life can actually work, and how the company measures success.

Q. [Jennifer] How is EMC using social media as part of its HR efforts?

A. [Polly] We are using social media to build awareness and relationships between EMC and the talent market.  We see social media as an ideal resource to further our employment brand in a meaningful, high-reach and low-cost manner.  For example, externally EMC is using tools such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and employee blogs and tweets to build awareness and affinity with the talent market.  We use these tools to provide a genuine, testimonial-based look at EMC’s culture, careers and capabilities, as well as to bring awareness to certain job openings, company developments and general career tips.

Internally, we have a global social media platform for community building, collaboration and knowledge-sharing.  This internal platform has resulted in the serendipitous development of organic EMC brand ambassadors who have taken their new found voices and confidence as spokespeople to the external social network airwaves. This has, in effect, multiplied EMC’s external efforts to build genuine relationships with the talent market.

Q. How did that start? Why did you want to add social media into the program?

A. Following the recession of 2001/2002, EMC experienced a multi-year turnaround. We rebuilt our business by entering adjacent markets, altering our business model and acquiring more than 40 companies.  This evolution was a remarkable success. It, however, left some employees with a mild identity crisis.  By late 2006, roughly half of our company was made up of employees who were new to EMC within the prior 18 months. On top of that, by 2007 we were looking at thousands of jobs to fill, a major college hiring program, and the sizable growth of EMC’s emerging global operations in markets such as India, Russia and China.  As we looked at ways to elevate EMC’s brand with our target talent market, we realized we could not out spend our competition.  We wanted to build EMC’s brand at the lowest possible cost, do it on a global basis and reinforce EMC’s core brand attribute as a leading innovation company.

Enter social media. The first tool we used was, interestingly enough, the least mainstream yet came with high buzz and superior results: Second Life.  We held a series of highly effective recruiting fairs in Second Life that showed us the undeniable power of social platforms for business.  The scale was infinite and the cost was low. The connections and relationships happened with a type of immediacy we had never experienced before on a business platform.  In the summer of 2007, we launched behind our firewall EMC’s first customized internal social network.  We named this platform EMC|ONE and today the majority of our employees worldwide are connecting on it and sharing information regularly in a 2.0 manner.

Next: Measuring for success –>

June 16th, 2009

Seagate uses social media to 'humanize' storage devices

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 10:20 am

Categories: Brand Management and Monitoring, Branding, Community Management, Corporate Social Networking, Customer Loyalty, Fortune 500 Series, Marketing, Seagate, Social Business, Social Media

Tags: Social Media, Twitter, Seagate Technology LLC, Harris, Q., Jennifer Leggio

It was about two years ago that storage device company Seagate realized it had to get into the social media game. The company’s initial strategy was to listen, build community and learn. So, the communications team set up a presence on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and so on, and strapped itself in for quite the ride — and learning experience. Today, the company’s social media efforts are a much more strategic component to its overall marketing mix.

I spoke with Rich Harris, who is responsible for the overall social media effort for the company. This encompasses Seagate’s corporate blog strategy, social platforms, ROI measurement, a bit of video and content creation, and in-depth analysis of analytics/reports as they pertain to social media initiatives. Harris discusses the company’s redefined strategy and use of social media to reach a broader audience

“Seagate has just scratched the surface of where we think we can take our social media vision and roadmap,” Harris said. “I think you will see a much wider scope of content and engagement coming from us, ideally on a global level.”

Q. [Jennifer] How long would you say that Seagate has had a social or digital program in place?
A. [Rich] As far as the full social media program goes, it’s really been just about a year. We put the framework together about 18 months ago, but up until July of 2008, Seagate primarily focused on building relationships in the blogosphere, but had yet to fully embrace social media tools as a communication platform. Pete Steege, a Seagate marketing manager, started the first official Seagate blog called “The Storage Effect” in 2007. So, you might say that launched us into it. We built from there adding online properties and a blogging platform. The response has been very positive. It’s an exciting opportunity for the company

Q. How big is the team? How does this team interact with other divisions within the company?
A. Seagate’s social media team is currently made up of one senior manager directly responsible for the overall strategy, planning and implementation, and a support team of 6-7 internal contributors that blog and assist with editing/packaging of the various social media content that we push out there - video, audio, and market segment focused blogging.

Q. When considering new programs, what are your first steps?
A. Our first steps are to look for a marketing/content gap that needs to be filled for our customers. Alignment with our global marketing and corporate priorities is always top of mind. And we closely monitor feedback on Twitter, Facebook, as well as SocialMention.com and other various analytics tools that we have in place to see what the people out there are saying. Resulting programs could be anything from viral videos, contests, to sponsoring events where storage is a key component of the lives of the audience involved.

Next: Impact of the economy and measuring ROI –>