Category: Drew’s Articles

Pivot Preview: Social Business

Posted on by Drew Neisser

In my recent MediaPost article, I argued that social media is a ripe avocado whilst social business is guacamole, taking something that is good already and transforming it something that is truly amazing. While the analogy seemed to hold up and allowed me to showcase IBM’s updated platform that helps companies make “guacamole,” it didn’t provide an inside look at how B2B brands are approaching social business.

To redress that shortcoming, here is my recent interview with Danna Vetter, VP of Consumer Strategy at Aramark.  Danna does a particularly good job explaining how Aramark moved social from being a tactic to a business strategy.   And by the way, Danna will be presenting next week at the Pivot Conference in NYC.

Drew: First, can you explain to the uninitiated what Aramark does?
ARAMARK provides food, facility, and uniform services for a number of verticals, including sports arenas and stadiums, hospitals, colleges, universities and schools, and businesses around the world.

Drew: What does it mean to become a social business?  
To be a social business, you have to integrate your business processes with social technology. To take that further, one could argue that a truly social business has leveraged social technology, tools and channels to fundamentally change the way they do business.

Drew:  Has Aramark become a “social business?” And if so, can you talk a bit about the journey?
We’re not there yet but we’re working toward it. We’re still early on our journey, but we’ve recognized the importance of getting there and have made some great progress.

The reality was that social was happening all around our company (and with our consumers and clients) whether we were actively involved from a corporate perspective or not. Like most companies, our first steps were removing the fear of social for our executives and business leaders. So we brought the right stakeholders to the table and created the kinds of governance, strategy, and framework to ensure people were actively involved and comfortable with the process. We needed to make sure social was no longer a tactic, but a business strategy.

We trained the organization on the importance of why ARAMARK was leveraging social. And for our active social users, we gave them the proper training and resources to operate within their social strategies. We also created listening frameworks that helped identify, route, and respond to social conversations. This has all helped us limit risk and enable new technologies that we needed to be using.  And by creating a connected environment, it also set up our employees to communicate and collaborate in ways that they weren’t before.

Drew:  Where in the organization did the impetus to become a social business come from?
It started with our consumers. The table has been turned and consumers are driving how and where they will be serviced, they expect the companies and brands they interact with to be active in social. To promote, listen and react when they speak up. As a consumer strategy team, we were able to identify this and escalate the need and urgency to take part in these social conversations.

Drew: As VP, Consumer Strategy are you part of the marketing department?  If not, how important is having a broader purview than marketing in order to implement a social business transformation?  
At ARAMARK, marketing lives within each line of business. What’s unique about my team is that we sit in a corporate function that helps accelerate consumer strategies across all of our businesses. This setup allowed for my team to be the catalyst for the social business vision, but we couldn’t do it alone. The reality is that we worked, and continue to work with individuals in all of our businesses and functional areas (including HR, Legal, Corporate Communications, Privacy and others) to move us forward in the journey. This cross-functional team and effort is essential in moving the social business vision forward at a company as large and complex as our organization.

Drew:  Have you been able to link your efforts to become a social business to any tangible goals like customer satisfaction or sales?   
We are still in the beginning of finding ways to link those goals to bottom line results. We have had some great wins in terms of leveraging our listening framework to identify consumer issues and connect them to the right people across the organization – and eventually to solutions. We also have some success in terms of using social channels for marketing and promotions, but we’re often in a situation where we’re trying to connect online promotion with offline action. To be honest, it’s just hard to track that type of interaction. We’re working on it, and I don’t think we’re the only company facing that challenge. Right now, we are trying to focus our active users on building our networks, engaging with our audiences, and listening.

Drew: What advice would give to a friend in your role at another company about the social business journey?
Be patient and stay aware. It is not an overnight project. Just when you feel like you have won over everyone needed, there’s a whole other set of people you have to win over.

Social and digital technologies are making leaps every single day. You need to adapt and evolve what that means for your company as well as your strategies. Make hard decisions and be ready to change them tomorrow.

Finally, find the right people. Every organization has people who are passionate about social media from a personal perspective. Find those people and put them to work.

Pivot Preview: Social & Beauty

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Let’s just start with the fact that Sephora has nearly 4 million fans on Facebook and over 700,000 followers on Twitter.  Clearly this is a company that is doing something right on social media and well worth a closer look.  Thanks to the kind folks at Pivot, I got the chance to interview Bridget Dolan, VP of Interactive Media at Sephora, prior to her presentation at the conference next week.  I am certain you will find her comments as enlightening as I did.

Drew: What role(s) does social media play in Sephora’s overall marketing strategy?  Do you assign different roles to different platforms?
Social media plays a major role in Sephora’s overall business strategy. We value the engagement and conversations we have with our customers through our multiple social channels and encourage this social engagement throughout the organization.  After seeing how successful the Sephora Facebook and Twitter pages have been, we implemented a Pinterest integration when we re-vamped Sephora.com in April 2012, and have also since created a Sephora Instagram account. Both have seen a lot of organic growth over the summer and we are always looking at new social platforms for other ways to engage with current and potential clients.

Facebook and Twitter allow us to hear from our clients real-time and react one-on-one; we respond to every single customer question and give our clients a voice. We then learn from our clients and use that information to inform our strategies throughout the organization.

Pinterest and Instagram allow us to react to micro-trends, like showing your spirit with Olympic nails.  We also provide Sephora fans a look behind the scenes of what it is like to work at Sephora, be at our shoots, and which products we are obsessed with. BeautyTalk allows us to foster a beauty community on our site, to get customer questions answered by Sephora experts and other beauty enthusiasts. Tumblr lets us tell our trend and brand stories from another angle – insights from our beauty editors.  YouTube lets us share our expertise and teach customers how to apply makeup and see the latest trends – which encourages them to shop, play and enjoy makeup.

Drew:  A recent Forrester study said social media drove less than 1% of sales for most companies.  Is Sephora performing above that average and if so, why do you think that is the case?
Sephora is a huge company, and driving 1% of overall sales is still a big piece of the pie. I do believe that social media is influencing a lot of sales that can never be tracked: watching a Sephora YouTube video, then shopping at the store on the weekend, or liking an Instagram post on your phone in the coffee line, and buying the products online when back you’re at your desk.

Drew: Have some social platforms proven to be better at driving Sephora sales than others?  If so, please explain.
Facebook is our largest social media platform, and is still driving the most sales for us by far.  But the velocity of Pinterest growth combined with its shopping-centric nature have made it a very promising sales channel since we launched on that platform 6 months ago.

Drew: Is driving sales the wrong metric for social and if so, what metrics do you use to rationalize your investment?
Whenever we can measure direct sales, we do, but it isn’t the only metric to consider – really social media is about engagement.  We are fostering a long-term relationship with our customers.  We want her to be inspired to try new things, find information through sources she trusts, find products that really get her excited, and help her to use the product to its fullest with confidence post-purchase.  Social media helps her with the entire purchase cycle, and keeps her engaged with our brand for all of her beauty needs.  If you can create a venue to engage your most valuable customers, and enlist them to be evangelists for your brand to all of their friends, plus they will answer all of your other customers’ beauty questions because they are just that passionate… it is priceless.

Drew:  A lot of brands would kill to get nearly 4 million fans on Facebook.  How have you been able to attract so many fans?  Media?  Promotions?  Both?
Bridget: Sephora has truly passionate fans that love beauty and love Sephora.  The beauty category is a natural fit for social – our customers have always talked amongst their friends about beauty products they loved, but Facebook makes it much easier to connect with other Sephora fanatics.  We have done a bit of advertising and a few promotions, like Fan Fridays, but we mostly view Facebook as a place to have fun with our customers, and I think they can tell how much we love talking to them.

Drew:  Is there one Sephora social program that you are particularly proud of?
I think BeautyTalk is one of the more innovative undertakings we’ve done in social media.  We created a robust community on our site where our clients can come to ask any beauty question or talk about beauty,  organized by category. This allows our customers to find really rich answers with multiple points of view, combined with real-time advice from our experts.

Drew:  How has Fan Fridays been working for you?
Fan Fridays has been a great program, and our customers love it.  When we have an early access product or really hot promotion, we can be out in as little as 20 minutes.  We keep trying to support the growth, but it can be hard to anticipate which Fan Fridays will go wild until your wall lights up and you realize you need even more for next week… again.

Drew:  You have over 100,000 followers on Pinterest which is way more than most brands.  What are you doing on Pinterest that is gaining so much traction?
Beauty is inherently a visual category, but right now things like nail art and gorgeous product shots are inspiring our customers to re-pin our images. We also have integrated Pinterest deeply in our site so every product and brand image is pinnable. We do all of our own photography in house, and that investment pays off in a place like Pinterest.

Drew:  Is there a brand out there that you think is just killing it in social?  If so, which one and why?
I think it is the “brand” that Eva Chen created for herself.  She is literally on every social media channel – trying innovative things, living the life, inspiring people every day with videos, pictures, products, quotes.  And she is creating a unique footprint in each venue that is relevant to that platform and her followers in each.

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Pivot Preview: Crowd-Sourced Finance

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Innovation doesn’t just happen.  It takes innovators; individuals and organizations willing to take a chance, to go out on a limb to try something new and unexpected.  One such innovator is Paul Wilmore, who as Managing Director of Consumer Market, is helping his organization, Barclaycard US, crowd-source product ideas like the new Barclaycard Ring.  I was delighted to catch up with Wilmore before he speaks at the upcoming Pivot Conference in NYC.

Drew:  Your Pivot topic, Crowd-Sourced Finance, is quite intriguing.  Can you give me a preview of the conversation you’re going to have with Brian Solis?
Crowd-sourcing can be used to take the guess work out of product development and traditional market research tactics. It’s a more interactive and intimate way to build a better product. That goes beyond just Finance but Barclays can leverage this new model to build better products and deepen relationships with our customers.

Drew: What role might a major financial institution like yours play in crowd-sourced finance?
I am hopeful this model changes the way financial institutions engage their customers, forcing them to build products that are simpler and more transparent and allowing the end consumer to be part of the solution not just a user of an end product.

Drew:   Is crowd-sourcing in some ways a threat to the traditional banking model?
Not a threat but a better way for consumers and financial institutions to work together.  Crowd-sourcing helps to take the guessing out for the bank and get right to the questions of what’s important to customers.  Financial institutions need to have the fortitude to be completely open and honest with their customers in order for this model to really work.

Drew:  Could crowded sourced finance have an impact on the credit card market?  If so, how might that happen?
It’s already happening.  You’re seeing issuers coming out with tools to put more control into the hands of consumers such as the online capability to re-structure a debt, change a payment schedule to ensure that a loan is paid down and set up auto payments.  Consumers have more choice in reward card redemption options – most programs now offer travel, cash back and merchandise.  And now with Ring, consumers actually decide jointly how it works.

Drew: Because of regulatory concerns, most banks have been reluctant to fully embrace social media.  Will the same trepidation apply when your competitors look at crowd-sourced finance? 
There is no question that banks have a long way to go in social media.  However, I’m pleased that my institution was willing to embrace social media for the launch of Barclaycard Ring and allow our team to have conversations with members of the community, answer questions frankly and share what’s happening with the program.  Today, our members review an updated, online profit and loss statement for the Ring card portfolio.  This is a big step for banks.

Drew:  Tell me about Barclaycard Innovation Lab.  Where did the idea come from and how has it worked so far?
The Barclaycard Innovation Lab was created as an initial step to invite consumers to help us co-create the launch of Barclaycard Ring.  We know it was very important to be in market quickly with this idea and get real consumer feedback (focus groups only go so far).  Six months after the initial crowd-sourced concept was pitched to the company, we were in market with an invitation only community, asking members to help us co-create the next evolution of the credit card.

Drew:  Since you launched the Innovation Lab in May, what has been the biggest surprise?  
The level of engagement of the community members.  Members are answering other members questions about the credit card and financial products in general.  Members are posting very thoughtful ideas around how the community concept and underlying products should continue to evolve.  Members have voted on product features and charitable organizations to support.  This level of engagement has been very strong and fairly consistent since launch.

Building Your Brand on Social

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Having worked with lots of big companies over the years, I always get excited when one of them is able to do innovative marketing because frankly, I know how hard it is for them to get out of their own way.   One behemoth that has been doing innovative programs in the digital space for many years is GE.  So you can imagine my excitement when I caught up with Katrina Craigwell, Manager, Digital Marketing at GE Corporate at a recent BDI Conference. As you will see, Katrina does a great job explaining why GE is an active participant in emerging social platforms like Instagram, Tumblr, Viddy and Pinterest.

Drew: Pinterest is an interesting platform choice for a B2B brand.  Why did GE want to be there? 
We’re big advocates of experimenting with digital content, we like innovative platforms that help us tell our story to a wider audience.  We took a bit of time to think about how we’d frame our content for the Pinterest audience, but after that it was a matter of getting up quickly, and succeeding or failing fast.

Part of our challenge is to communicate the breadth of what GE does in an understandable format, for a wide audience. If you say ‘GE’s Jenbacher Gas Engine’ to someone, it’s a bit tough to visualize. If you show them this, it captures imaginations and gets people to take a look. Along with our presences on Instagram, Tumblr, Viddy and SocialCam, Pinterest was another opportunity to tell our technology story in a visual format, and reach an imaginative audience.

Drew: Is the “media the message” in this case?  Are you demonstrating that GE is innovative just by being on these new channels?
Every new channel gives us the opportunity to tell our story in a unique way, to a new audience. The GE story is very broad, from the number of industries in which we operate, to the end consumers that we impact. In digital, we have the space to tell more of that story than ever before. Innovation is about smart solutions and new ways of thinking. Not all platforms make sense for us all the time, but we challenge ourselves to evolve how we think about sharing our story, as quickly as the digital landscape evolves.

Drew:  You have a lot of boards on Pinterest.  Are some gaining more traction that others?
Our quotes from Thomas Edison are a favorite among the community, earning the highest volume of engagement per post. That board drove home the power of visualizing words. It seems like a simple concept, but it’s an important reminder and proof point that a good quote is great, but a good quote delivered visually travels well on many of these platforms.

And of course, we find most of all that frequency and consistency are key. The more regularly we pin, the more we build momentum – the same goes for our Instagram, Tumblr, Viddy, SocialCam presences and so on.

Drew:  I really like the That’s Genius! and The Archives boards—what’s the thinking behind looking backward on such a contemporary site and for a brand that wants to be recognized as innovative today?
We started with content from the archives on Instagram, and the response from the community there was incredibly enthusiastic. For us, it’s about the ability to look in all directions, and share what cutting edge science and technology was in 1900, as much as a vision of what it will be in 2100.

Drew:  “Badass Machines” is a fun and not particularly corporate name for a Pinterest board.  Was there much debate internally on this one?
Not much – we knew we were experimenting, and this was an extension. We were noticing that the more our content featured big, shiny tech, the more excited our community would get. It gave us an opportunity to geek out with people, in a way that seemed to add value. We wanted to continue to drive that experience on every platform.

Drew: You mentioned at the BDI Conference that many of these social media efforts are quite inexpensive and considered experimental within GE.  If you had to demonstrate ROI for your Pinterest activities, what metrics would you point to?
For all of our social content, we look very closely at user engagement and sharing – Likes, Repins, Comments, Follows, etc. Our goal is to better communicate the breadth and depth of what we do, and give consumers the opportunity to participate in the story as much as possible. If the content isn’t good enough to inspire a user to share it with a friend, then we haven’t quite succeeded.

Drew: One of your boards (GE Inspired Me) is based on an Instagram photo contest.  Can you talk about that contest a bit and how these two platforms work together?
At the end of 2011 we wanted to open up our Instagram feed, and add another talented Instagram user to the short list of photographers who take photos for the GE feed. The brief was pretty simple – snap a photo inspired by the way GE works in the world and tag it #GEInspiredMe. We were blown away by the submissions, that were both beautiful and filled with awesome tech.

The winner, Adam Senatori, shot at GE Aviation in Wales, and continues to work with our Aviation business – it’s been great to have his work at the GE feed. We also wanted the submissions from other participants to live on and continue to be shared, the Pinterest board was a perfect place to do that.

Drew:  Have you tried something on Pinterest that didn’t work as well as you might have hoped and if so, what where the lessons learned?
When you experiment, not everything sticks, and often times the things that do are a surprise. With experiments on any platform, we have to think hard about every single touch-point of the user experience, and make sure we’re adding value at every turn. That’s the thing that keeps me up at night – what if the user goes left and not right? What if they want to share this piece of content in a different way?

We put a lot of emphasis on not being interruptive, on opening up our brand without losing it, and on creating the most value possible for the end user. After that, it’s a matter of absorbing learnings quickly. We’ve been lucky to tap into amazing communities of science and technology enthusiasts across many different platforms who’ve become engaged in our content and part of our story.

Growing Your Customer Base

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Starting a new company can be a daunting challenge unless the entrepreneur capitalizes on the inherent advantages of being small–you can and should be more nimble, more innovative and less risk adverse.  One clear example of that approach is PerkStreet Financial, an online bank that according to Jennifer Spencer, Digital Communications and Community Manager, has “grown our customer base and our staff while spending less on traditional media to focus on how to get the biggest bang from unexpected places, like social media channels.”  I caught up with Jennifer at a recent BDI conference and found what she had to say extremely enlightening and inspiring.  Hope you do too.

Drew: Can you give me a bit of background on Perk Street?
Our CEO, Dan O’Malley, was an executive at CapitalOne, and although his career was going great, the higher he climbed at that company, the less he liked what he saw. He didn’t feel good about seeing people get into debt to ‘earn’ rewards, so he left to start PerkStreet. Our company emerged from his idea that smart spending – using a debit card, living within your means, and avoiding credit cards – should come with rewards. So he founded PerkStreet Financial in 2008, and launched our game-changing cash-back debit card. Today, we’re giving our customers over a million dollars per year in rewards for avoiding debt and spending on debit.

When I found PerkStreet (on Twitter!) I was a debit user who wasn’t getting anything back from my big bank except the runaround when I needed help and fees just to keep my money there. I loved being a customer at PerkStreet so much that I sent them my resume. That’s the kind of passion we all have working at PerkStreet, and a lot of our customer community reflects that sentiment.

Drew: So as an online financial institution, what role does social play in your marketing mix?
Opening a checking account isn’t a snap decision. Social lets potential customers join our community and get to know us before they apply. It also lets people share their excitement about earning cash back on debit, and spread our content to their friends easily.

Drew: Do you think social plays a bigger role because you are an online institution?
I think it does. I don’t know about you, but I certainly feel better about trusting my money to people who put a face behind a name. Everything we do in social, from signing our names to all Facebook responses to using Twitter at live events to help people find us quickly, does that.

Drew: How are you measuring the impact of social on your marketing?  Can you share some results?
Our social measurement is focused on engagement. We use Google Analytics and SproutSocial to pull those numbers together for us. We are always testing, and seeing what messages perform best in which channels, and what that means as far as traffic to our blog, our site, and applications. We get a lot of current customer traffic to our blog, for instance – Facebook is the largest driver of traffic to our blog this quarter, followed by Twitter at 2nd, and Pinterest at 5th.

Drew: A lot of banks/financial institutions  are still afraid of social from a compliance/regulatory standpoint. How are you all overcoming those concerns?  Does it come from having a start-up mentality?
I think it comes more from every department understanding how important it is to our brand and our business to make connections with our community. Our compliance team really “gets it” when it comes to social, and having open communication with them helps. We respect what the other is trying to do and we collaborate to find ways we can work together, since ultimately it will benefit our company and our customers.

Drew: Can you give my readers an example of 1 or 2 social programs that you have done that really worked well for you?
Any time we use social to gather user generated content, it’s a success. Our graphics team is doing some really great stuff with inspirational quotes to help spark conversation (here’s one our fans loved!) and we’ve used VideoGenie to let our customers easily record their own stories for us to add to our website.

Drew: Is social also a customer service channel for you?  If so how does that fit into your overall plan?
Social is a customer service channel as well. Any place where customers can ask questions then becomes a customer service channel, and we need to be there to respond. We use tools like SproutSocial and HelpScout to assign tickets among the social and customer service teams so we can get the best answer out as quickly as possible. With so many banks out there getting slammed for terrible customer service, social channels are a low barrier way for potential customers to see how we treat our current customers. It’s all part of people joining PerkStreet not just because we have good banking products, but because they see that being a PerkStreet customer is a great experience.

Drew: Are you doing things with visual channels like Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr?  If so, what / why and did they achieve your goals?
As far as visual social media, we’re sticking with Pinterest for right now (although the Timeline update to Facebook has arguably made that a visual channel.) No one likes to talk about personal finance, but people are always talking about the things finance affects: home, heart, and health. That kind of content is getting shared like crazy on Pinterest, and we’re excited to be a trusted resource for it.  Our goals for Pinterest, while we still get to know the medium, include driving traffic and using what we find there to inspire visual content on our blog, both of which have happened.

Drew: You talked about quarterly planning-can you elaborate on your campaign approach to social?
We don’t have a campaign approach to social, but rather a social approach to campaigns. As I mentioned above, we do a lot of engagement measuring. We take that into consideration as we approach a campaign, and figure out what messages work best in which channels. A campaign has to move beyond social, even if it starts there.

Drew: What kinds of social things are on your radar for 2013? Or what’s on your social wish list? Bigger footprint?  More engagement? Better analytics?
Like most folks who work with Facebook every day, “more data from Facebook” is always at the top of my wishlist. Right under “Commute to work by unicorn.” Seriously, though, I think the road ahead for PerkStreet will involve more ways we can engage current and potential customers on a very personal level. That might look like an expanded Twitter presence, online chats, and lots of video.

Drew: It’s unusual for a financial institution to feature customer testimonial videos on their homepage.  Can you tell me about how you gathered these and the rationale behind it?
For the “Share Your Story” campaign, we awarded the first 50 video submitters an extra $10 in perks in their accounts to help us get the ball rolling. We used VideoGenie to make it easy for our customers to create and submit videos to us, and also accepted submissions from their own cameras or phones, as well as quotes and photos for the video-shy. In the end we received over 200 unique submissions from our customers in about two weeks, with most of them coming in a few days. During the peak, we were getting submissions on average every 8 minutes. There was so much good stuff in there, we couldn’t help but feature it on our homepage.

Drew:  Do you think these videos have had a measurable impact on new customer acquisition?
We are still testing this homepage to see how it’s impacting conversion. I don’t have any conclusive data to release about it, but if I had to guess, I would say it has performed well from a conversion perspective. There’s little that makes people feel more comfortable about a product than being able to hear from someone they can identify with that the product is working for them. On some level, that’s what social media marketing is all about. Testimonials and reactions from authentic sources influence people all the time in social channels. One thing I love about that homepage is that the content was made by real people in their living rooms, and you can tell immediately. It’s incredibly authentic, because it’s real.

Drew: I love all the interesting content on your blog. Do you see this more as a retention tool versus an acquisition one?
It really serves as both in a very interconnected way. A lot of people find our blog when looking for good, frugal life advice and it leads them to learn more about us, to build a deeper relationship, and ultimately, to open an account. Our blog also supplies great information to our current customers, and gives them added value beyond just our banking products. They visit the blog, learn from it and then share our content with their friends, who learn more about us and open accounts of their own. This way, the cycle begins again. Ultimately, we believe that even if we’re measuring our performance by new account acquisition, we are doing a better job all around if what we’re sharing adds to customer retention and loyalty. No matter what your goals are, content is always going to serve a multiplicity of roles. This fact can’t be ignored or the cycle breaks down.

Update on Social Business

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Two years ago this month, I wrote an article called  Why IBM Could Be Bigger Than Facebook in Social Media and it was my most popular story of 2010.  The performance of this article was not a testament to my stupendous skills as a writer but rather to the unrivaled power of IBM’s army of social sharers and provided yet another proof point to me that all this social stuff might actually work!  That article was based on an interview with Jeff Schick, then VP of Social Software.  I was lucky enough to catch up with Jeff (now VP of Social Business) to talk about IBM’s latest efforts to help transform their clients into social businesses.

Drew: Why do you think CEO’s are waking up to Social Media now? 
IBM’s 2012 CEO Study of more than 1,700 Chief Executive Officers from 64 countries and 18 industries worldwide reveals that today only 16 percent of CEOs are using social business platforms to connect with customers, but that number is poised to spike to 57 percent within the next three to five years. What’s driving this change?

There are three shifts that are creating an opportunity for social to create real business value, that CEOs are finally beginning to realize:

  • Pressure to build and share expertise across an organization for competitive advantage
  • Increasingly influential and vocal customers who are taking to social channels to voice their opinions and sentiment
  • Growing demand for 24/7 and mobile connectedness from both employees and customers.

CEOs are quickly realizing that social is the ticket to success both from an internal collaboration and innovation perspective as well as a customer service and marketing tool. It’s no longer a nice to have, social is a must have, a business imperative.

Drew: Are CEO’s seeing this as a transformative “social business” play or more of a marketing channel to drive sales?
Social is certainly helping marketing departments, but it’s reach and potential is far greater and the C-Suite is recognizing this. Not just the CEO, but the CIO and CMO. A blended agenda focused on social is quickly emerging in the C-Suite. They are using social to fundamentally change how they do business whether it’s how they develop products and bring them market, how employees collaborate across the organization, geographies and times zones, how they interact with business partners and customers; social is being integrated into each and every business process to affect change. So organizations aren’t just looking to implement social into one area of the business, they’re holistically transforming into social businesses.

What specific analytics are CEO’s seeking that will help them rationalize an increase investment in social media?
Social analytics help surface the most important information at the right time to help drive innovation, decision-making, and knowledge sharing. CEOs are looking for platforms that not only provide them with the social capabilities, but also the big data analytics. Generally speaking, business leaders lack the tools to gain insight into the enormous stream of information and use it in a meaningful way. At IBM we’re seeing clients come to us saying they want social, but they’re concerned with the amount of extra data the transformation will bring. How can they process, analyze and take advantage of all this extra insight from employees, business partners and customers? To truly realize the full potential of a social business, leaders need to empower a company’s most vital asset – the information being generated from its people.

How is mobile changing social media interactions?
The explosion of mobile devices have paved a unique way for organizations of all sizes, in all industries to transform the new era of Social Business. With the mobile workforce expected to reach more than 1.19 billion by 2013, according to research firm IDC, nearly 1 trillion Internet-connected devices will be in market this year, generating 20 times more mobile data by 2015. Social enabling these workers to be effective, collaborate and innovate is a major requirement for organizations.

The goal is to take the mobile workforce beyond just gaining access to email and calendars but to enable them to collaborate and generate new ideas and be more efficient anytime, anywhere, on any device.

IBM sees social business and the move to enable the mobile workforce as a key driver of business transformation, helping all aspects of an organization from marketing, human resources, sales and customer support and development, leverage the power of social concepts in their business processes.

Drew: What can companies do now to take advantage of the convergence of social and mobile?
The simple answer is to choose a partner that can support both social and mobile on the widest range of mobile devices. Through our IBM Connections software we are enabling mobile employees to create networks, documents, share files through a community that they can access and manage on their mobile device and tablet. The software delivers features that enable mobile employees to collaborate on the fly. This includes developing social networks, sharing files, locating business experts, participating in online discussions and conducting in web meetings.

Drew: What is IBM Connections and how will it help companies in their social/mobile activities?
IBM Connections is the industry’s leading social software platform, ranked number one in market share by IDC for three consecutive years. Connections incorporates sophisticated analytics capabilities, real-time data monitoring, and faster collaborative networks both inside and outside the organization, whether on premises, in the IBM SmartCloud or using the broadest range of mobile devices. Clients today are using Connections to activate their workforce to improve productivity, and gain insight on data to anticipate individual customers needs.

This week we announced the general availability of the newest version of Connections that includes a revamped activity stream for a consolidated social dashboard. The activity stream allows users to act within the dashboard  to do their job. Other new features include trending topics within the enterprise and social network and integration with enterprise email and calendar tools.

Drew: Can you provide one real world example of IBM Connections in action?
LeasePlan, one of the leading vehicle leasing and fleet management companies in the world, is using IBM’s social software platform across the organization’s 40 subsidiaries, in 30 countries and over 6,000 employees. With nearly 800 communities formed, 400 blogs, and over 800 forums, the platform has become an integral component to business operations for the organization, increasing efficiency, enhancing knowledge retention, increasing innovation, and helping to improve customer care and insight. By socially enabling its business processes with IBM’s social platform, the organization is seeing significant improvements in workforce effectiveness.

By collaborating with IBM LeasePlan has been able to transform their business processes. Their internal social network allows employees to find experts faster, leading to better customer service, superior workforce effectiveness, and enhanced product and service innovation. Using IBM Connections LeasePlan is able to transform into a social business.