Posts by Teri:
- Twitter: We use Twitter for community engagement, marketing promotion, corporate awareness, relationship building, customer support, knowledge sharing and recruiting.
- Facebook: We also use Facebook for community engagement, marketing promotion, corporate awareness, relationship building.
- LinkedIn: While we have groups and much presence on LinkedIn, our official use has been relegated to a Rolodex for staying in touch and recruiting.
- Community: People visit our blogs, forums and our user-group platform.
- Marketing blog: This is a place where we share our secret sauce with the rest of the world in an attempt to promote discussion and establish market thought leadership.
- Specific channels: We have channels on YouTube, SlideShare, Flickr for video, presentations and photo file sharing.
- Be transparent (identify yourself).
- Be respectful (attribute your comments).
- Beware of stranger danger (everybody has an agenda, figure out who you are dealing with before you engage).
- Add value (don’t tell us what you are doing because nobody cares; tell us what you are thinking and why it matters).
- Understand that permanency can be good and bad (be careful, and don’t post something you’ll regret).
- Stay relevant (time is of the essence on the social networks; news from one minute ago is old news).
- Don’t be tedious (be interesting and have a personality; what works in the real world will work in the social world).
B2B Social Media in Action: ServiceNow
June 22nd, 2011How one company celebrates the power of being connected
Meryl K. Evans, Professional Services Journal Editor interviews Rhett Glauser of ServiceNow
Recently, I experienced the power of social media. I lost all applications on my BlackBerry when I installed a major operating system upgrade. Yes, I backed up my smartphone prior to the upgrade, and it didn’t restore anything. Three of the applications came from one company, and I contacted the company because I couldn’t download and install the apps even though I had all the activation numbers.
First, I went to the company website and searched its frequently asked questions. Nothing there. Next, I submitted a trouble ticket. No reply within a reasonable amount of time. Then, I tweeted a message that mentioned the company. A representative replied within minutes and solved the problem within an hour. After that, I tweeted kudos to the company.
Every business makes mistakes. How they handle those mistakes makes the biggest impact. Learn how ServiceNow, a software-as-a-service company, incorporates social media into its corporate strategy and has tapped into the power of being connected.
Professional Services Journal: Why do you use social media?
Rhett Glauser: ServiceNow uses social media to engage its community comprised of customers and IT professionals.
PSJ: How does your company incorporate social media into its overall strategy?
RG: Almost every area of our business includes some aspect of social media. Other areas where we use social media include marketing, customer support, customer engagement and recruiting.
ServiceNow understands the power of being social and has built social functionality called Live into its IT management software. Our IT customers use it to provide better service to businesses.
We drink our own champagne, and the entire company collaborates on our company Live stream. Employees ask questions and rapidly get answers: developers at headquarters support sales people in the field and employees share knowledge and freely give help. It has made us a more efficient, transparent and connected company.
PSJ: What social media tools do you use (Twitter, LinkedIn, forums, etc.), and how do you use each one?
This page
http://www.service-now.com/social-networks.do highlights the company’s social nature. As a company, we use the following social media tools:
PSJ: What are the business results and benefits from using social media?
Aside from the high number of followers or likes, it’s quality, not quantity. Externally, customer engagement and knowledge-sharing are huge benefits. Any customer has access to any ServiceNow developer through various social channels.
Internally, ServiceNow company collaboration has exploded to match the company’s growth. The ServiceNow Live stream allows us to keep up with ourselves.
PSJ: What advice do you have for others considering social media?
Start by watching and following others first and figure out how you want to get involved. From there, I have a few rules that work for me, and I’ve seen work for others.
It all comes down to having good manners and interacting with people in the social world just as you would in the real world. Legitimacy plus authenticity results in valuable relationships with real people. To this point:
PSJ: Any advice for those new to social media?
Being social takes effort, thoughtfulness and consistency. Keep at it.
PSJ: Please share a memorable interaction that happened in social media.
Check out the sequence of tweets below. This is a good example of customer engagement and vendor transparency made possible only through social media. This is what it’s all about.
How does your company use social media? What positive social media experiences have you had as a customer or employee? Share your experience in the comments.
About Rhett Glauser
Google “Rhett Glauser” for his social profile, check out his Twitter stream at http://twitter.com/rglauser, peruse his blog at http://blog.service-now.com or find him on Linkedin. If that scares you, here is a more traditional bio: Glauser has spent a decade talking and writing about the IT management industry for companies like Symantec and Altiris and the last three years at Service-now.com. Most of his time is spent helping journalists from publications like The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, InformationWeek and CIO Magazine understand complex IT management trends and technologies.
