March 25th, 2009
Fortune 500 series: Texas Instruments uses social media to connect 10K+ engineers
A frequently asked question around corporate social networking is, “What kinds of companies are using it?” When social media first became the trend it is now there was a lot of speculation about how only smaller, flexible companies could implement effective social media program. I started this Fortune 500 series a few months ago to prove that point wrong. Companies such as Cisco, Office Max and Newell Rubbermaid discussed their varying strategies and measurement of their tactics, as well as why social media has become an important business driver. The latest interview in the series, with Texas Instruments‘ (TI) director of global Internet marketing, Devashish Saxena, about how the electronics designer and manufacturer engages with its large community of design engineers and delivering customer design support. He also talks about how social media is becoming a larger priority given the state of the economy.
Q. [Jennifer] At a high level, please tell me about the company’s social media strategies.
A. [Devashish] I think of social media as the evolution of the Web from an information/content channel into a social channel. One where people are primarily making connections and using those connections to drive decision making about everything from brands to purchases to films/music/books and a lot more.
At TI, we have approached social marketing strategies by understanding how design engineers (our target audience) can exploit the evolving social nature of the Web. We focus on their design process and their dependence on the Web. We try to keep in mind what the design engineer is trying to accomplish and balance that with what our business/marketing drivers are.
From a social marketing perspective we are pursuing several strategies at TI. Our first area of focus is on the delivery of customer design support. As design engineers pick and start designing w/ TI chips, they often run into situations where they have very specific questions about how to use our products. They can always rely on calling TI’s customer support centers, but more and more of them have relied on ad-hoc engineering communities that have sprung up all over the Web. The problem with these is that there is usually no access to TI engineers here. We have spent countless hours talking with our customer engineers to help us understand their needs and how they go about filling them today.
One of our first steps was the establishment of the TI E2E Community with a focus on creating value by connecting engineers to engineers (both customer and TI engineers) with the primary purpose of delivering design support. We identified forums, video and blogs as the three legs of this community. Forums are pretty self-explanatory, w/ videos and blogs the idea is to develop tricks and trips, design help content - our motto: “peer-to-peer over a beer” [stolen with acknowledgment from the Microsoft Channel 9 guys]!
We are approaching 10,000 registered members - over 80 percent of them are customers. These engineers are coming on a regular basis and becoming the best marketing tool for this site as they continue to find value on a daily basis.
Our goal is to continue to keep bringing new product areas into the E2E community for design support.
One final point, the more time we have spent in this space the more we are realizing that as the online channel evolves into a social medium, our social marketing strategy becomes our online strategy.
Next: What were the first steps TI took? –>
Jennifer Leggio, aka "Mediaphyter," writes about the "social business" side of social media - including enterprise, security and reputation issues. See her full profile and disclosure of her industry affiliations.
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| 03/26/09
