4:30 — Kurt Vanderah introduces Xerox’s Interactive and Social Marketing VP, Duane Schulz. He will share the presentation From Early Adopters to Community: How Xerox used a major launch to move from social media silos to activation of an integrated community of practice.
4:31 — Duane asks the audience how many of them have said “Boy, I’m behind.” He says we all feel we are behind; the good news is that if you are here, you are ahead.
4:33 — Duane presents Xerox’s discovery of social media in early 2009.
4:34 — Duane: We developed a belief that our role at corporate level is to enable social media within the company, from top-down.
4:36 — Duane: Social Media Marketing Strategy Team: Social media-savvy employees around the company that “got it”: with an agenda to move to the next level. And we formed a group of 9 people. This was a good beginning, but we needed a unifying event.
4:37 — Duane: What we did then was take ColorQube Launch. This was an opportunity for social media integration; it appeared around the launch of Xerox revolutionary solid ink multifunction printer.
- Start with listening
- Set the table
- Build destination
- Start the conversation
- End with listening
4:39 — Duane explains how “End with listening” is about measuring and assessing what is working and what is not.
4:41 — Duane: People around the company whose function was not related to marketing or communications started tweeting, started blogging.
4:43 — Duane shares early results behind their social media strategy: interest in Xerox color multifunction on the web more than doubled. Additionally:
- Practitioners across the firm engaged with the launch – it was everyone’s launch
- A model for business based social marketing emerged. “We did not have a twitter strategy; we had a strategy to use twitter to work for our business.”
4:45 — Duane presents how social marketing moved from “discovery” to “activation”. This resulted in:
- Hub and spoke organizational model
- Social marketing team expansion
- Guidelines and registrations
- Listening strategy and programs
- Social media community center
4:45 — Duane presents more of Xerox’s results: social media customer engagement is up 215% since the triggering event.
Q&A
Q: Tac Anderson: Were you able to tie this to the results of previous product launches?
A: Duane: Yes, we concluded that there is a correlation between digital assets and web experiences, and it is a category changer.
Q: All day I’ve been hearing how a little group starts with an idea, but in companies there are a lot a groups having ideas. Was there any push in your company to tie these ideas together?
A: Duane: There is nothing that can substitute getting minds together to tell us what they think. Recognizing that what they are doing is cool is valuable. I have people meet within the company and share what they are doing. We tie different listening groups. Social media is important enough to push it.
Q: How do you get your executives on board? Did you have any policies in place to regulate what people were writing about?
A: Duane: Since we have such a strong iconic brand we didn’t need to get our executives on board. We had easy access to senior management. In term of guidelines, we have policies, but they are about what you CAN do. For example, instead of an approval process, we have a registration process.
Q: How do you identify your influencers and measure how influential they are?
A: Duane: Frankly we use a listening platform that gives as a picture of the ecosystem and we just go from there.
