The Business Case for Nonsense: IBM Social Media

The Business Case for Nonsense: IBM Social Media Case Study Tim Washer, IBM twitter: @ timwasher www.facebook.com/timwasher blog: www.timwasher.com Ep 1

“ I've been thinking a lot lately about taking chances, and how it's really just about overcoming your fears. Because the truth is, every time you take a big risk in your life, no matter how it ends up, you're always glad you took it.”
John Dorian, M.D .

Managing Perceived Risks
Gain agreement on rules
Convene bloggers, lawyers, marketing, PR
IBM’s guidelines: http://bit.ly/6Mr217
Experiment inside the firewall
Get some big wins, and promote

Approaches
Uncover most compelling stories
sources: PR, marketing, clients, R&D, customer service, corporate social responsibility
Find most compelling experts/storytellers
News format: recycle b-roll, expert interviews
Rely on nonsense/absurdity/humor to gain awareness
Story trumps messaging
Social media is for stories, not brochures

Episode 1: http://bit.ly/7FWtby Full Series: http://bit.ly/8ZA5zU A Benchmark for Nonsense: “Art of the Sale” The Mainframe Blog

ROI
Objectives:
create awareness for new mainframe value proposition
Increase mainframe awareness with college students
>250,000 views on first episode
Blog traffic increased 25x
Analyst, Press, Blogger coverage
Screened at Chief Sales Officer summit, Price Waterhouse sales training, etc.

"You gotta see this video….IBM is re-positioning the mainframe as a back-to-the-future alternative. The tone of Hoey's spoof training video is in keeping with the kinder, humbler image IBM now seeks to project.” http://bit.ly/7hk9iO

http:// blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p =10085

“ Mad Science” series Featuring John Cohn from Discovery Channel’s from “The Colony” Micro-forecasting http:// bit.ly/mad_science Smart Grid http://bit.ly/mad_science_2

IBM Smarter Planet blog: http:// asmarterplanet.com / YouTube: http:// www.youtube.com/IBMSocialMedia An Exercise in Utility: http://bit.ly/5OYZbg A Brief History of Intelligence http://bit.ly/6e29x Foul Plea: one chicken's appeal for a smarter food system http://bit.ly/7qJi2W Seamus McManus: Beekeeper; Father of Cloud Computing http://bit.ly/7wVidE

http://blog.hubspot.com	1483
http://www.b2bmarketingposse.com	1427
http://socialmediab2b.com	702
http://www.timwasher.com	205
http://newmarketinglabs.com	183
http://www.dutchcowboys.nl	83
http://www.slideshare.net	48
http://stefankrojer.blogspot.com	36
http://heikkihallantie.blogspot.com	28
http://crosstechmedia.com	28
http://stefankrojer.blogspot.ch	17
file://	13
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	10
http://techmath456.blogspot.com	8
http://stefankrojer.blogspot.de	7
http://krojer.posterous.com	7
http://somepalvelumme.wikispaces.com	4
http://ifaline.com	3
http://ideen.posterous.com	3
http://www.lmodules.com	3
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com	2
http://stefankrojer.blogspot.co.at	2
http://feeds.feedburner.com	2
http://74.125.153.132	1
http://demo13.ifaline.com	1
http://www.tradeopolis.com	1
http://boxcar.basecamphq.com	1

The Business Case for Nonsense: IBM Social Media

by Tim Washer

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