Digital Transformation in the Enterprise

Crisis preparedness - Are you ready?

It's always interesting to watch how brands deal with a crisis when they arise. As example, JetBlue had their hands full this week with an unfortunate situation at 36k feet. The good news, the brand reacted swiftly and confidently, suggesting they have a well-established crisis response framework in place.

But it seems JetBlue may be in the minority here. There are endless examples of brands seemingly caught completely unprepared for the inevitable. In a study by Burson-Masrsteller, a whopping 79% of business decision makers believe their company will experience a crisis within the next twelve months.

So why then do only 38% of global respondents feel that they are prepared to deal with an emerging crisis through new media?

In our socially-connected world, every customer has a microphone, an audience and an opinion. Brands must be prepared for a potential crisis. In a best-case scenario, crisis planning never sees the light of day. But more often than not, advanced planning can help manage, and often times mitigate, a crisis from causing irreparable damage to your brand.

So what's your level of crisis preparedness? 

@LenDevanna

 

 

Social Connects Companies... To Themselves

One of the things I love most about being part of the social revolution is the unexpected 'ah-ha' moments that surface almost daily. I had one such moment this week, and wanted to share the observation.

Given the command and control structure that remains prominent in the traditional web, there are inherent checks and balances in place to ensure consistent messaging and positioning. In that model, a centralized web team is usually organizationally agnostic, with their focus being on providing a consistent experience to visitors of a traditional .COM site, as example.

As we know very well, social flips that model upside down, providing a direct path from subject matter expert to audience. In effect, it can remove all of the checks and balances that the more traditional model provided.

An Approach to Enterprise Social Media Education

To celebrate Social Media Day, we thought we'd share a little something with the community...

At EMC, we pride ourselves on our approach to Social Media adoption. When we started this journey years back, we chose to focus on employee proficiency - and that strategy has paid us back many times over.

But, the social world is constantly changing. New tools and techniques show up daily. In addition, we've all become so completely ingrained in the digital world that it's easy to lose sight of the larger picture, the incredible reach we have, and the vast diversity of our audience.

To that end, we set out to create an educational video highlighting the opportunities and possible pitfalls of social engagement. While it's designed with our global EMC family in mind, the key points should resonate with just about everyone... Give it a look.

 

 

Congrats EMC - First Place for Social Media Marketing

Much like the Academy Awards... The winner gets up on stage, is humbled at the recognition, especially given the competition at hand, and ultimately sets out to thank the Academy, a long list of producers, family and friends, actors and the like.

Except for us, it's not about the Academy, the Directors, or anything like that. For EMC, it's about our social voices. It's about the multi-year investment we've made in helping our global workforce become 'socially proficient'.

EMC's been awarded first place in B2B Online's 2011 Social Media Marketing Awards for the technology category. The recognition is based on our supporting social campaign for EMC's record breaking product launch back in January.

There were several components to this social campaign - from driving early speculation as to what EMC was up to, to engaging influential social voices, to a rather addictive Facebook game that went rather viral and helped us grow our Facebook community significantly.

All in all, the 'social' aspects of the campaign ended up realizing 28% of the total audience at the launch event in January... Not bad, eh?

But, as suggested above, what can't get lost here is the power of social proficiency. Since beginning our journey some years back, we've taken an inside-out approach. We invested in ourselves - helping our global workforce of more than 48k become 'proficient' in the social world. These are the folks that ultimately helped us go BIG.

So kudos to EMC, our highly-passionate and always engaged global employees, and a stellar Social Media Team that I'm honored to be a part of.

Oh... There's one more thing... We're honored to now be up for the 'People's Choice Award'... How about casting a vote for your pals at EMC? I hope we can once again show how we EMC'ers like to GO BIG using #SocMed.

Thanks!

 

Opportunity - Manager of EMC's Social Brand

Social Media is, among other things, a catalyst for transformation. On the surface, it represents the move from a uni-directional to a bi-directional web. Now everyone has a voice.

Down a layer, it provides an incredible opportunity to break down traditional barriers and establish meaningful relationships with your customers and other audiences.

But with the rapid expansion of the social universe, it's important to keep a keen eye on your social brand. Via social - are you making it easier for your audience to engage with you, or more difficult? Are you listening and engaging, or just talking? Are your social voices consistent and unified, or all over the map?

There's a new and really cool opportunity here at EMC - Manager of EMC's Social Brand. It's a newly defined role, but I suspect one that will become commonplace in the years ahead.

Click through for the description. This opportunity should be posted up on EMC.com next week, and I'll update this post with specific job code, etc;.

Update - The opportunity is now posted on EMC.com. Head on over to the Careers section - search the openings for Req 71206BR.

Happy Birthday EMC|ONE

Can you believe it? Our little Social Media 'experiment' from late 2007 has just turned three. It's stunning just how quickly the time flies.

In case you haven't been following along, EMC|ONE (our internal community platform) represents EMC's first real forray into the Social Media landscape. While we had a few blogs, discussions forums, and the like pre-dating EMC|ONE, this internal community was the first really big step in what would turn out to be an exciting and transformative journey for EMC.

Social in the Enterprise - Convincing the Curmudgeons

I enjoyed a trip to BlogWorld Expo last week, and was honored to sit on a panel of industry-leaders to discuss the impacts of Social Media in the enterprise. Having participated in several such discussions this year, I continue to be stunned by the number of folks still in the 'convincing' or 'selling' mode.

Perhaps I'm just taking our evolution for granted - But I really struggle to understand how the debate persists. Especially with such compelling data around enterprise adoption so readily available.

Given the number of questions around overcoming this particular hurdle, I thought I'd share a few tips and tricks we used along our way. Not that there was ever resistance to the evolution at EMC, but there's always a crowd that needs help understanding the opportunities at hand...

 

The Evolving Enterprise

I'll be boarding a plane midweek and taking off for some much needed time on a tropical island and off the digital grid. I'll be radio silent while away, avoiding the temptations of Twitter, Facebook, blogging and the like.

While away, I wanted to leave you with a presentation given at JiveWorld 2010 a couple of weeks back. During the discussion, I shared a bit about EMC's journey to becoming a socially proficient company. We've done some great things, learned some invaluable lessons, and still have much work ahead. The slides are below, and Jive has also provided a video of the discussion. I'm hoping there are a lesson or two in there that can help you on your journey.

Talk soon... In the meantime, Aloha!

The Transforming Enterprise

View more presentations from Len Devanna.

See You at JiveWorld 2010?

There's nothing I enjoy more than sharing some of the lessons learned during our journey to become a truly socially enabled company. In fact, I've learned SO MUCH from the larger community over the years that it seems only fair to return the favor. After all, we're in this together, and are collectively building the communications model of tomorrow... Cool stuff.

I'll have a chance to share a bit about our journey next week at JiveWorld 2010 here in San Francisco. The speaking roster is packed with some of the best in the biz - it's sure to be an information-packed event.

Unfortunately, it looks like the conference itself is sold out. That's not to suggest you can't directly benefit from the great content coming from the show... Simply follow along via hashtag #JW10.

Will you be there? I'd love to connect. Drop a note in the comments or ping me via @LenDevanna on Twitter... Hopefully we'll see you there!

The Evolution of Social at EMC

Things have been a bit quiet on this blog of late.. sorry for that. Chalk it up to a plethora of exciting changes - all of which I get to share here with you here. Most notably, Social Media @ EMC has taken another large step in it's evolution.

While simplifying the story a bit, our journey to become a socially savvy brand started in the Fall of 2007. Starting with the launch of EMC|ONE, we set out to develop a high degree of social proficiency among our global employees. Over time, we continued to extend our reach to the outside world, and can now be engaged in many places, including the EMC Community Network, our Facebook presence, and the like.

Truth be told, our amazing progress in this space has been largely organic. Our innovative culture combined with a small but passionate group of social practitioners are among the contributors to our success. While there have been people focused on evolving social, it's often been 'part of the job' as opposed to being 'the job'.

Things have changed, and I believe we've just taken our next big step in this journey.