I read a terrific case study this morning on socialmediaexaminer.com on how IBM uses social media. Social media is about being, well, "social"...so how does #14 on the Fortune 500 list, a 114 year old global corporation, find it's inner-socially engaging, conversing self?

By losing control.

There is no corporate Twitter Account or corporate blog. That's right, not one. With nearly 400,000 employees in 170 countries, IBM is counting on the aggregate of all those IBM voices to be "the brand" and the voice of the brand.

Think about it. That's 400,000 Twitter accounts. It's a lot of voices talking about the brand in the marketplace. And the IBM brand is defined by its customer and the interactions those customers have with its employees.

It's also a lot of control to give up, willingly, strategically, intelligently - because what they get in return is unprecedented collaboration and innovation. The self-regulated conversations between IBM employees (internal blogs & social media sites) and between IBM employees and it's customers produce results:

* Crowd-sourcing identified 10 best incubator businesses, which IBM funded with $100 million

* $100 billion in total revenue with a 44.1% gross profit margin in 2008

In a knowledge-based business, it makes good business sense to facilitate employee conversations (just as in a customer-service based business which is what Best Buy does with Blue Shirt Nation) as a way to drive improvements and innovations (as well as creating another path to navigate corporate political structures to gain internal support for new initiatives and projects). But just because this hands-off, unregulated social media strategy works for Big Blue doesn't mean it will work for every knowledge-based company.

Why?

Corporate culture.

Reading between the lines of the article, the work environment at IBM has to be one of trust, confidence and value. Valuing the contributions of individual employees. Valuing diversity of opinion. Trust in management. Trusting that employees can represent the brand. Confidence in what the product and brand is. Confidence in who best expresses the brand in the marketplace.

The takeaway - know your corporate culture before deciding on your corporate social media strategy.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-ibm-uses-social-media-to-spur-employee-innovation/