Live Blog: How to Make Collaboration Cook

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Paul

When building a collaborative workplace, a “build it and they will come” attitude is a recipe for disappointment. Effective deployment strategies demand a mix of promotion, training and tolerance of the adoption strategies that employees choose.

Speakers at Lotusphere today offered tips on rolling out collaboration platforms to employees who aren’t accustomed to the concept. The start with knowing what you want to accomplish.

At BASF Chemical, a €100 billion European chemical supplier with 109,000 employees, the goals were three fold: Encourage networking, share knowledge and improve collaboration across the far-flung organization, said Dr. CheeChin Liew (right, @twiliew), Enterprise Community Manager. The company already had a mix of stand-alone blogs, forums and wikis that had sprung up to address specific problems, but there was no integration between them. BASF Chemical wanted to see two-thirds of those silos move to a shared service within a year.

Don’t talk platforms to the users, Liew cautioned. Speak in terms that make business sense. Community managers made it a point to emphasize the value of sharing, whether through blogs, forum posts or just bookmarks. “Once people start sharing, they want to go to the next level, like file-sharing or managing a wiki. Once they connect through sharing, others will imitate them,” he said.

BASF Chemical set up webinars, learning events, demonstrations and consulting services to move people onto the new platform at their own pace. Pariticipation should be voluntary and motivated by perception of value, he said. “You want people inviting others to join the community.”

As participation grew, BASF Chemical kept the momentum growing through a demo-oriented road show, presentations by guest speakers and community exchanges. Half-day sessions built in lunch gatherings so that employees would network with each other. Informal networking is important, Liew said, and don’t start the session with lunch. Make it part of the organic learning process.

Best practices are recognized through online nomination and voting in which people recognize the accomplishments of their peers. This crowdsourcing component is an important part of nurturing the image that the network is owned by the employees and not mandate by management, Liew said.

BASF Chemical’s approach hit the mark, with participation growing from 1,000 people in the pilot phase to 28,500 after 18 months. More than one-third of new member signed up because of peer recommendations. Equally important: Most new participants moved over from existing networks, seeking to broaden their range of connections. “They joined the community to move beyond the silos,” he said.

The collaboration network now supports over 2,300 communities, which fall into four basic categories:

Expert and professional communities are created by users to benefit the organization. They cluster around topics of professional expertise.
Personal networks are formed by users for other users and generally relate to non-professional topics.
Initiative and service communities are built by the organization for users and usually concern topics that the company wants to communicate to employees.
Projects and working teams are formed by the organization for the organization and typically have a project management component

Community organizers are allowed to set their own access controls. More than half of the communities restrict membership in some way, about 15% are completely open and 30% are moderated. Don’t set rules about how open a community should be, Liew cautioned. People will choose the path that works for them. Organizations should also be prepared for a certain amount of non-work-related conversation. That’s perfectly all right if it attracts others to come on board.

Finally, it’s important to be sure you have the means to highlight success stories. Liew told of one product manager who spotted a post on the company’s Facebook page that he couldn’t decipher: “Holi hay ghar me mat bhetto.”

Google Translate couldn’t figure it out, so the product manager put the question on the network. Within 13 minutes he learned from another employee that the request was in Hindi and related to colors for a festival in India. The manager uploaded a video of BASF pigments and quickly got 35 likes and four positive comments. It was a small victory, but one that demonstrated the power of community intelligence.

This is one in a series of posts sponsored by IBM Midsize Business that explore people and technologies that enable midsize companies to innovate. In some cases, the topics are requested by IBM; however, the words and opinions are entirely my own.

McKinsey Research Again Validates Social Technology Benefits

Posted on December 27, 2011 by Paul

Here are highlights from the fifth annual McKinsey study, “How social technologies are extending the organization” (registration required). McKinsey’s groundbreaking research in this area has consistently demonstrated that companies that leverage social technologies most aggressively see the payoff in market share gains, improved productivity and higher customer satisfaction. However, the research also indicates that becoming a fully networked organization is difficult, and remaining fully networked may be even harder.

Seventy-two percent of the respondents report that their companies are deploying at least one technology, and more than 40 percent say that social networking and blogs are now in use.

Executives at internally networked organizations note the highest improvement in benefits from interactions with employees; those at externally networked organizations, from interactions with customers, partners, and suppliers.

Executives at fully networked organizations report greater benefits from both internal and external interactions. Developing organizations [those with the lowest rate of social media adoption] report lower-than-average improvements across all interactions at their organizations.

Self-reported operating-margin improvements correlated positively with the reported percentage of employees whose use of social technologies was integrated into their day-to-day work.

Market share leadership in an industry, the final self-reported performance measure, correlated positively with the integration of social tools in employees’ day-to-day work.

Roughly half of the internally and externally networked enterprises slid back into the category of developing organizations; that is, they did not maintain the benefits of using social technologies that they had achieved earlier…It appears that it is easier to lose the benefits of social technologies than to become a more networked enterprise, which suggests that significant effort is required to achieve gains at scale.

The respondents affiliated with fully networked organizations are the likeliest to believe that greater process change will occur in their own organizations. In larger numbers than respondents in other clusters, they think that social technologies will lead their companies to adopt entirely new processes under current conditions and to do so even more aggressively if all constraints were removed.

They say that with fewer constraints on social technologies at their companies, boundaries among employees, vendors, and customers will blur; that more employee teams will be able to organize themselves; and that data-driven decision making will rise in importance.

As Business Goes Social, CIOs Sit on Sidelines

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Paul

The disconnect between CIOs and the emerging world of social business became clear to me at a conference I attended about two years ago. I entered the room late, but figured I could quickly catch up on the proceedings by checking the Twitter stream of attendees. With an estimated 300 senior IT executives in the room, I expected there would be plenty of chatter going on.

To my surprise, not a single tweet had been logged during the past hour. A technology that was revolutionizing the way business people communicate was being completely unused by the executives who manage technology in America’s largest corporations. As I began prodding my network of CIO contacts, I learned that this was not unusual.

Most CIOs are taking an attitude of, at best, benign neglect toward social networks. A large percentage of them are still actively blocking employee access to sites like Facebook and YouTube. The most recent research by Robert Half Technology found that 31% of U.S. companies block social networks completely and 51% limit access to business purposes only. While those numbers have improved from two years ago, they still indicate an entrenched suspicion that social networks are at best time-wasting extravagances and at worst latent security threats.

Same Old Song and Dance

These fears are legitimate, but we’ve heard them before. The argument that employees will waste time on new technology goes back to the introduction of the personal computer. CIOs also closed ranks against Internet-based e-mail and the Web itself in the early days of those technologies, citing fears that employees would use their new toy computers for games or would subvert the central control of the IT organization.

In fact, that’s exactly what they did. And given access to social networks at work, people will use them to play and waste time. CIOs should not only accept this fact but embrace it.

Anyone who has children knows that playing is one of the most effective learning techniques humans have. Experimentation unearths ideas that have practical applications. On the early Web, people “surfed.” In the process, they learned the skills that have redefined office productivity. Today, the people who can quickly find, organize and interpret information are among the most valuable in the workforce. Playing pays off.

In its formative years, social media has been largely relegated to marketing departments under the assumption that it’s just another form of communications. BtoB magazine asked 375 marketers last year who was primarily responsible for social media within their companies. Only one person identified the IT department. My anecdotal observations pretty much echo that. CIOs just don’t see social as part of their charter.

What a shame, because social technologies has about as much to do with marketing as enterprise resource planning (ERP) does with accounting. This is about the finding new ways of doing business with a customer base that’s empowered with information. It’s the very center of where business is going.

Demand-Driven Economics

In their book, How Companies Win: Profiting from Demand-Driven Business Models, Rick Kash and David Calhoun argue that developed economies are in the process of transitioning from supply-constrained to demand-driven. We are awash in goods and services today, they point out, and prices are flat to declining in many markets. That means that there’s little incremental benefit to be had from making supply chains more efficient. In the future, value will come from generating demand that never existed, as the iPhone has done.

A decade ago, CIOs played a key role in implementing ERP and optimizing supply chains in many companies around the globe. While some of that was a byproduct of the Y2K problem, their willingness to lead such mission-critical projects was a feather in their cap.

Now the rules have changed and the new challenge is to drive demand. The information-empowered customer will impact every business at every level. We are in the first stages of the shift in market conditions from supplier push to customer pull. Understanding the dynamics of these new interactions and organizing businesses around them will be the major business challenge of the next five years.

Why would CIOs not want to be at the center of all that?

John Dodge agrees with me. Writing on the Enterprise CIO Forum, he suggests that one reason CIOs aren’t more active in social business is that they see themselves as analytical types, making their skills ill-suited to social interactions. That may be true, but I’d argue that analytical skills are sorely needed to help companies make sense of the cacophony of conversations going on around them and their markets. Social business isn’t just about engagement, but also about listening and understanding. CIOs have a lot to contribute by applying algorithmic discipline to that process.

Recent Writings: Negativity, Social Gaffes and Farewell to Case Studies

Posted on July 15, 2011 by Paul

I haven’t had a chance to blog here lately because most of my writing is been on assignment for other publishers. Here’s a sampling of what I’ve been talking about.

Love Your Critics

The CMO Site likes to stir things up, so my posts there tend to be on the controversial side. In Why Brands Should Love Public Complaints, I make the case that your critics can be your strongest allies. Why? Because a little negativity reinforces the validity of the positive comments you publish.

The whole concept of enabling negativity to appear on your own website rubs a lot of marketers the wrong way, but I’d argue that it’s great for building integrity. The article notes that Epson reported that revenue per visitor nearly doubled after it started including customer reviews on its site. The fact that one out of 10 customers may displeased with product can be looked at another way: 90% are happy.

The right approach is not to deny that you have unhappy customers; everyone’s got a few. They’re going to vent their frustrations anyway, so encourage them to do it in a place where you can respond and juxtapose their opinions with the vast majority who are satisfied.

Good Riddance to the Corporate Case Study

In this post I rant just a bit about corporate case studies, those pervasive and largely useless vessels of happy talk that no one really believes. Corporate case studies used to have a purpose in the days when customers couldn’t find each other, but today all it takes is a few searches or LinkedIn queries to identify experienced buyers.

It’s not the concept of the case study I don’t like; it’s the format. Once the legal department gets involved in approvals, most meaningful content gets sucked out of the article. Case studies also don’t answer the questions prospective buyers really have. That’s why prospects have always viewed case studies with suspicion. Today, they mainly ignore them.

So rather than investing time and dollars in paying writers for stories that no one believes, why not focus on greasing the skids between your happy customers and your prospects? Make it easy for the two parties to connect and then get out of the way.

The Futility Of Whisper Campaigns

PR practitioners who undertake influencer relations programs often discover an odd disconnect between them and traditional media relations: Bloggers don’t operate by the same rules as reporters.

The recent example of this disparity ended up embarrassing a prominent PR firm, and I analyzed the story in BtoB magazine.

In case you missed it, early last month a pair of new employees at Burson Marsteller, both of them veteran journalists, contacted a security blogger and offered to help him write and place an op-ed piece that exposed “sweeping violations of user privacy” by Google.

It turns out the blogger was more interested in the motivations of the PR firm than in Google’s allegedly intrusive behavior. After he posted the e-mail exchange online, some USA Today reporters dug up the fact that Facebook was behind the whisper campaign.

Burson, which claims to be social media-savvy, did exactly the opposite of what it would counsel its crisis communications clients to do: It clammed up. The incident was a huge black eye for the agency and a lesson in how not to pitch a blogger.

Do You Need A Social Media Specialist? Yup.

My latest column in B2B was actually sparked by a conversation I overheard on a plane. A guy in the seat behind me was railing to his companion about the idiocy of hiring social media specialists. In his opinion, everyone in a company should learn to use the tools. Expertise shouldn’t be concentrated in one person or department.

I agree with his second point but I couldn’t endorse his overall premise. Nearly every company I’ve encountered that is succeeding in social media has a center of excellence. They are delegating social interactions to one person, but they’re shortcutting the learning process by hiring people who can train others. In this column, I explain why a social media expert can save you time, money and embarrassment (see Burson above).

What’s your approach? Read more and comment on BtoBOnline.

Let Your People Speak!

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Paul

IBM engineers celebrate Watson's victory (from a YouTube video)

IBM engineers celebrate Watson's victory (from an IBM YouTube video)

Earlier this week I wrote an article for SocialMediaB2B.com that made the case that last week’s IBM Watson Jeopardy challenge, in which an IBM computer thrashed the two greatest Jeopardy champions of all time, was the greatest B2B marketing campaign ever.

One reason I liked it so much is that IBM let scientists – instead of corporate suits – tell the story of their achievement. This was documented in more than 30 videos that IBM posted on YouTube as well as chat sessions and group Q&A interviews on the website reddit.com.

If you want to see the passion that the IBM scientists brought to this project, watch the 11-minute summary video that was posted shortly after the contest ended. It’s clear that Watson’s accomplishments were more than just a technology triumph. Researchers reacted as if their child had just graduated from Harvard. Their passion was contagious and genuine.

Why don’t more companies let the people who build and support their products come out of the shadows the way IBM did? In part, I believe it’s fear that people will do the wrong thing. It also reflects the time limitations that developers and engineers themselves often cite as a reason to stay in the shadows. Let’s look at each in order.

Tell Stories

Effective communications is about storytelling. Ronald Reagan taught us that. People don’t respond to statistics, feature charts and positioning statements the same way they do to other people. Entrepreneurs excite us when they share their vision, yet successful companies bury enthusiasm under layers of approvals and official spokespeople.

B2B customers have intense information needs, and their questions are often best answered by the people who build and service the products they use. Some companies understand this. One of my favorite stories from Social Marketing to the Business Customer is Indium Corp., which built a constellation of search-optimized blogs that put their engineers directly in touch with the people who buy their highly specialized products. Result: 600% jump in leads in six months. Marcom Director Rick Short (left) says his job is to “get engineers talking to customers and then get out of the way.”

Do unofficial spokesmen sometimes say the wrong thing? Sure. Does it matter? Not really. Corporations are far too sensitive to the indiscretions of individuals, which usually can be sidestepped with an apology or explanation. A couple of hours of media training does wonders.

Blogs Are the New Trade Shows

The issue of time commitments and availability is valid, but usually overstated. Many engineers are only too happy to write papers and travel thousands of miles to deliver presentations, yet writing a 500-word blog entry or recording a how-to video is seen as overwhelming.

There’s a contradiction here. Engineers naturally like to share, and they know that conference presentations are good for their careers. Contributions to the company’s social media programs potentially reach a much larger audience than a presentation at a trade show. They go to the trade show because that’s what’s always been done.

I wish more corporate marketers would adopt Rick Short’s philosophy and see themselves as facilitators rather than spokesman. They should be the ones urging recalcitrant executives to draw contributors out from behind the curtain. They should have the statistics to demonstrate that the blog reaches a larger audience than the trade show. They should be the ones positioning customer communications as a privilege, not a chore.

The best way to encourage individual contributors to participate in your social media programs is to celebrate them. That doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. Recognize contributions to the corporate blog in your employee newsletter, or hand out awards for the most prolific or creative contributors every quarter along with a small gift certificate. When people see that their involvement is good for their careers, they quickly come on board.

Oracle’s Updated Social Media Policy

Posted on November 24, 2010 by Paul

Dated 11/22/10. Most hyperlinks have been removed because they refer to pages behind Oracle’s firewall. This is a well-crafted policy.

The Oracle Social Media Participation Policy applies to

All blogs, wikis, forums, and social networks hosted or sponsored by Oracle (e.g., blogs .oracle .com, wiki .oracle .com, mix .oracle .com, forums .oracle .com).
Your personal blogs that contain postings about Oracle’s business, products, employees, customers, partners, or competitors.
Your postings about Oracle’s business, products, employees, customers, partners, or competitors on external blogs, wikis, discussion forums, micro-blogs (e.g., Twitter, social networking sites).
Your participation in any video related to Oracle’s business, products, employees, customers, partners, or competitors; whether you create a video to post or link to on your blog, you contribute content for a video, or you appear in a video created either by another Oracle employee or by a third party.
Your participation in any virtual world activities related to Oracle’s business, products, employees, customers, partners, or competitors.

Since social media activities can impact your ability to do your job and Oracle’s business interests, it is extremely important to follow the requirements set forth below.

REQUIREMENTS

This section describes the requirements that are most relevant to Oracle employees participating in social media of various kinds (Oracle hosted and external).

Follow the Code

The Oracle Code of Ethics and Business Conduct and Oracle’s corporate policies–including the Acceptable Use Policy, Information Protection Policy, and Copyright Compliance Policy–apply to your online conduct (blogging or other online activities) just as much as they apply to your offline behavior. Make sure you’re familiar with them.

Make Sure Your Management Approves

Social media activities must not interfere with your workor productivity at Oracle, and your personal activities should take place outside of work. Your current management must approve your activities related to Oracle’s business. In addition, if you are VP-level or above, make sure to contact Carol Sato (carol .sato @oracle .com) of Oracle‘s Corporate Communications team to discuss work related blogs. Please be aware that Oracle may choose to restrict social media activities that relate to your employment or Oracle’s business.

Don’t Misuse Oracle Resources

Don’t use company resources to set-up your own blogging environment, even if you are blogging about matters related to Oracle. Oracle resources, including servers, may be used solely in connection with formally authorized blogging environments that have been established following consultation with Global IT, Global Information Security, Legal, and Oracle Brand and Creative. Please contact blogs _us @oracle .com if you have questions regarding setting-up authorized blogging environments.

Protect Confidential Information

You may not use your blog, micro-blog or other social media to disclose Oracle’s confidential information. This includes nonpublic financial information such as future revenue, earnings, and other financial forecasts, and anything related to Oracle strategy, sales, products, security, policy, management, operating units, and potential acquisitions, that have not been made public.

Protecting the confidential information of our employees, customers, partners, and suppliers is also important. Do not mention them, including Oracle executives, in social media without their permission, and make sure you don’t disclose items such as sensitive personal information of others or details related to Oracle’s business with its customers. Third party social media services use servers that are outside of Oracle’s control and may pose a security risk. Don’t use these services to conduct internal Oracle business.

In addition, you may not publish (nor should you possess) our competitors’ proprietary or confidential information. You may make observations about competitors’ products and activities if your observations are accurate and based on publicly available information. Take care not to disparage or denigrate competitors.

Don’t Comment on Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) Activity

You must not comment publicly on Oracle’s or our competitors’ M&A activity, including potential and pending acquisitions. This applies to potential acquisitions regardless of their status–in diligence, announced but not closed, integration plans for acquired companies, etc. Any commentary on what a transaction or potential transaction may mean to Oracle, positive, negative or neutral can be problematic.

Don’t Discuss Future Offerings

Don’t discuss product plans, upgrades or future product releases. Because of potential revenue recognition issues, it is especially important that we do not give the impression to customers or potential customers that a given product upgrade will include specific features that will be incorporated into the product within a specific time frame. See Revenue Recognition Guidelines. Any exceptions must be approved by senior management, Legal, and Revenue Recognition.

Refrain from Objectionable or Inflammatory Posts

Do not post anything that is false, misleading, obscene, defamatory, profane, discriminatory, libelous, threatening, harassing, abusive, hateful, or embarrassing to another person orentity. Make sure to respect others’ privacy. Third party Websites and blogs that you link to must meet our standards of propriety. Be aware that false or defamatory statements or the publication of an individual’s private details could result in legal liability for Oracle and you.

Don’t Speak for Oracle

Remember that you are not an official spokesperson for Oracle. Make it clear that your opinions are your own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the corporation. See Policy Regarding Communications with Press and Analysts.

For this reason, Oracle employees with personal blogs that discuss Oracle’s business, products, employees, customers, partners, or competitors should include the following disclaimer in a visually prominent place on their blog:

The views expressed on this [blog; Website] are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle.

Similarly, if you appear in a video, you should preface your comments by making it clear that you are not an Oracle spokesperson and your opinion doesn’t necessarily reflect Oracle’s.

No Legal Commentary

Stay away from discussing items of a legal nature. For example, employees must not post comments related to legal documents such as Oracle’s software license agreements.

Don’t Post Anonymously

While you are not an official spokesperson, your status as an Oracle employee may still be relevant to the subject matter. You should identify yourself as an employee if failing to do so could be misleading to readers or viewers. Employees should not engage in covert advocacy for Oracle. Whenever you are blogging about Oracle-related topics or providing feedback relevant to Oracle to other blogs or forums, identify yourself as an Oracle employee.

Respect Copyrights

You must recognize and respect others’ intellectual property rights, including copyrights. Whilecertain limited use of third-party materials (for example, use of a short quotation that you are providing comment on) may not always require approval from the copyright owner, it is still advisable to get the owner’s permission whenever you use third-party materials. Never use more than a short excerpt from someone else’s work, and make sure to credit and, if possible, link to the original source.

Use Video Responsibly

Remember that you may be viewed as endorsing any Web video (whether hosted by YouTube or elsewhere) or other content you link to from your blog or posting, whether created by you, by other Oracle employees, or by third parties, and the Social Media Participation Policy applies to this content. Also, recognize that video is an area in which you need to be particularly sensitive to others’ copyright rights. You generally cannot include third party content such as film clips or songs in your video without obtaining the owner’s permission.

Stick to Oracle Topics on Oracle-Sponsored Blogs

Blogs that are hosted or run by Oracle should focus on topics that are related to Oracle’s business. Take care to avoid subject areas that are likely to be controversial, such as politics and religion.

Blogging Best Practices

A “New Media Handbook for Bloggers” is available as a separate document for employees interested in establishing a blog. Employees who want to start a blog on sites that are sponsored by Oracle need to read this document and submit a request as specified in the New Media Handbook for Bloggers.

Reporting Misconduct

While Oracle has no obligation to monitor your participation in social media activities related to Oracle’s business, products, employees, customers, partners, or competitors, we reserve the right to do so. We do count on our employees to help us make sure that the Social Media Participation Policy is being followed. Please report possible misconduct (copyright violations, harassment, misstatements, et al.) to the Oracle Compliance and Ethics Helpline or, for possible copyright violations, to copyright _us @oracle .com.

What Should Apple Do?

Posted on July 13, 2010 by Paul

Now that Consumer Reports has given the iPhone 4 a thumbs down, Apple has a full-blown crisis on its hands. If the company was engaged in active dialogue with its customers, Apple would be in a better position to contain the crisis, or at least tell its side of the story. However, Apple shuns social media of all kinds. Its main communication to the market on the iPhone reception issue has been this letter from its public relations department, which invites no response.

So let’s hear what you think: Should the company continued to stay above the fray and face a growing tide of criticism or should it engage with its critics and potentially be forced into a recall situation? Please share your comments below. Include your name and a link to your website. An edited collection of these comments will be submitted to Awareness for its community blog

Oracle’s Social Media Policy

Posted on July 8, 2010 by Paul

With the acquisition of Sun complete, Oracle distributed its social media policy to employees this week, and I was forwarded a copy. A version from six months ago can be found here. This is a nice, concise document that covers all the bases I can think of. It’s particularly useful in its approach to copyright and permissions. Perhaps it will help you in formulating your own policy. Chris Boudreaux has assembled an amazing database of 167 social media policies from businesses, government agencies and nonprofit organizations that you may also find useful. Employee names and e-mail addresses have been withheld and I’ve removed links to several documents that are available only behind Oracle’s firewall.

The Oracle Social Media Participation Policy applies to

All blogs, wikis, forums, and social networks hosted or sponsored by Oracle
(e.g., blogs.oracle.com, wiki.oracle.com, mix.oracle.com, forums.oracle.com)
Your personal blogs that contain postings about Oracle’s business, products, employees, customers, partners, or competitors
Your postings about Oracle’s business, products, employees, customers, partners, or competitors on external blogs, wikis, discussion forums, micro-blogs
(e.g., Twitter, social networking sites)
Your participation in any video related to Oracle’s business, products, employees, customers, partners, or competitors; whether you create a video to post or link to on your blog, you contribute content for a video, or you appear in a video created either by another Oracle employee or by a third party.

Since social media activities can impact your ability to do your job and Oracle’s business interests, it is extremely important to follow the requirements set forth below.

REQUIREMENTS
This section describes the requirements that are most relevant to Oracle employees participating in social media of various kinds (Oracle hosted and external).

Follow the Code
The Oracle Code of Ethics and Business Conduct and Oracle’s corporate policies – including the Acceptable Use Policy, Information Protection Policy, and Copyright Compliance Policy – apply to your online conduct (blogging or other online activities) just as much as they apply to your offline behavior. Make sure you’re familiar with them.

Make Sure Your Management Approves
Social media activities must not interfere with your work or productivity at Oracle, and your personal activities should take place outside of work. Your current management must approve your activities related to Oracle’s business. In addition, if you are VP-level or above, make sure to contact <name withheld> of Oracle‘s Corporate Communications team to discuss work related blogs. Please be aware that Oracle may choose to restrict social media activities that relate to your employment or Oracle’s business.

Don’t Misuse Oracle Resources
Don’t use company resources to set-up your own blogging environment, even if you are blogging about matters related to Oracle. Oracle resources, including servers, may be used solely in connection with formally authorized blogging environments that have been established following consultation with Global IT, Global Information Security, Legal, and Oracle Brand and Creative. Please contact blogs_us@oracle.com if you have questions regarding setting-up authorized blogging environments.

Protect Confidential Information
You may not use your blog, micro-blog or other social media to disclose Oracle’s confidential information. This includes nonpublic financial information such as future revenue, earnings, and other financial forecasts, and anything related to Oracle strategy, sales, products, policy, management, operating units, and potential acquisitions, that have not been made public.

Don’t Comment on Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) Activity
You must not comment publicly on Oracle’s or our competitors’ M&A activity, including potential and pending acquisitions. This applies to potential acquisitions regardless of their status–in diligence, announced but not closed, integration plans for acquired companies, etc. Any commentary on what a transaction or potential transaction may mean to Oracle, positive, negative or neutral can be problematic.

Don’t Discuss Future Offerings
Don’t discuss product plans, upgrades or future product releases. Because of potential revenue recognition issues, it is especially important that we do not give the impression to customers or potential customers that a given product upgrade will include specific features that will be incorporated into the product within a specific time frame. See Revenue Recognition Guidelines. Any exceptions must be approved by senior management, Legal, and Revenue Recognition.

Refrain from Objectionable or Inflammatory Posts
Do not post anything that is false, misleading, obscene, defamatory, profane, discriminatory, libelous, threatening, harassing, abusive, hateful, or embarrassing to another person or entity. Make sure to respect others’ privacy. Third party Web sites and blogs that you link to must meet our standards of propriety. Be aware that false or defamatory statements or the publication of an individual’s private details could result in legal liability for Oracle and you.

Don’t Speak for Oracle
Remember that you are not an official spokesperson for Oracle. Make it clear that your opinions are your own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the corporation. See Policy Regarding Communications with Press and Analysts.

The views expressed on this [blog; Web site] are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle.

Similarly, if you appear in a video, you should preface your comments by making it clear that you are not an Oracle spokesperson and your opinion doesn’t necessarily reflect Oracle’s.

No Legal Commentary
Stay away from discussing items of a legal nature. For example, employees must not post comments related to legal documents such as Oracle’s software license agreements.

Don’t Post Anonymously
While you are not an official spokesperson, your status as an Oracle employee may still be relevant to the subject matter. You should identify yourself as an employee if failing to do so could be misleading to readers or viewers. Employees should not engage in covert advocacy for Oracle. Whenever you are blogging about Oracle-related topics or providing feedback relevant to Oracle to other blogs or forums, identify yourself as an Oracle employee.

Respect Copyrights
You must recognize and respect others’ intellectual property rights, including copyrights. While certain limited use of third-party materials (for example, use of a short quotation that you are providing comment on) may not always require approval from the copyright owner, it is still advisable to get the owner’s permission whenever you use third-party materials. Never use more than a short excerpt from someone else’s work, and make sure to credit and, if possible, link to the original source.

Use Video Responsibly
Remember that you may be viewed as endorsing any Web video (whether hosted by YouTube or elsewhere) or other content you link to from your blog or posting, whether created by you, by other Oracle employees, or by third parties, and the Social Media Participation Policy applies to this content. Also, recognize that video is an area in which you need to be particularly sensitive to others’ copyright rights. You generally cannot include third party content such as film clips or songs in your video without obtaining the owner’s permission.

Stick to Oracle Topics on Oracle-Sponsored Blogs
Blogs that are hosted or run by Oracle should focus on topics that are related to Oracle’s business. Take care to avoid subject areas that are likely to be controversial, such as politics and religion.

Blogging Best Practices
A “New Media Handbook for Bloggers” is available as a separate document for employees interested in establishing a blog. Employees who want to start a blog on sites that are sponsored by Oracle need to read this document and submit a request as specified in the New Media Handbook for Bloggers.

Reporting Misconduct
While Oracle has no obligation to monitor your participation in social media activities related to Oracle’s business, products, employees, customers, partners, or competitors, we reserve the right to do so. We do count on our employees to help us make sure that the Social Media Participation Policy is being followed. Please report possible misconduct (copyright violations, harassment, misstatements, et al.) to the Oracle Compliance and Ethics Helplineor, for possible copyright violations, to copyright_us@oracle.com.

B2B Blogging Excellence

Posted on May 25, 2010 by Paul

I was privileged to moderate the BtoB magazine Social Media Awards Breakfast in New York this week. There I got a chance to meet some remarkable people who took chances on social marketing before it was fashionable and won. I first noticed Jim Cahill’s blog four years ago, so it was a particular pleasure to meet him and hear his story.

It took two years for Jim Cahill and Deb Franke to convince the management at Emerson Process Management that a blog was a good idea. Their reticence was understandable. It was 2005, and blogs were widely perceived to be the domain of teenage diarists and scandal-mongers. Why would anyone want to get mixed up with that? And why would they want to read about equipment that manages large industrial plants?

They persevered. Some technology copies were creeping into the blogosphere at the time and clearly enjoying good results. Cahill and Franke eventually overcame objections by arguing that, as communications people, they understood the pitfalls and how to manage them. Emerson Process Experts was born.

Four years and a more than 500 entries later, Cahill is enjoying a new job as head of social media at Emerson Process Management. Process Experts was named Best Corporate Blog by BtoB magazine in 2010 and Cahill is now leading the company’s charge into Twitter and Facebook while institutionalizing best practices among all the Emerson Process Management divisions.

The blog has brought numerous business opportunities into Emerson, including an invitation to bid on a large, new plant that could total hundreds of millions of dollars. “I have the e-mail from that company on my wall next to a sign that asks ‘Is there any value in blogging?’” he laughs.

Even after four years, Emerson Process Experts remains an enigma in a heavy industry that has done little with social media. Topics like “Sensing Liquid Levels with Vibrating Fork Technology” may cause the average visitor’s eyes to cross, but the elite engineers who run giant process control systems can’t get enough of this kind of technical wisdom.

And for a blog this specialized, the traffic is pretty impressive. About 2,000 visitors stop by on an average business day and 15 to 20 messages land in Cahill’s inbox every week. While most are routine, a few gems inquire about business opportunities. After replying with a thank you message, Cahill forwards them on to the sales team.

Search Engine Magic

One reason is the search engine magic that blogs deliver. Search on “process control” or “process management” and Emerson ranks in the top five results. Even rarely used terms like “compressor surge control” deliver Emerson on Google’s first page. The secret is the lack of competition. As an established presence in a community with few other bloggers, Cahill is a big fish in a small pond. And as we know, Google loves blogs.

Cahill approaches his job with a reporter’s eye. He isn’t an engineer, but with more than 20 years at the company, he understands the lingo and is able to write in the customer’s language. “When I pass people in the hall, I’ll ask if they had any recent customer interactions that were interesting,” he says. “I’ll dig into those stories and use the language that the experts used to solve the problem. Those stories are rich in the keywords that customers use.”

His advice to prospective b-to-b bloggers: “Be prepared to stick with it for a while; it takes a couple of years to build up your presence. Listening is a key skill. Blogging isn’t just pushing out information, it’s responding to the interests of your market.”

Thanks, also, to my other panelists: Kirsten Watson of Kinaxis, Mary Ann Fitzmaurice Reilly of American Express OPEN and Petra Neiger, whose team at Cisco Systems created the wonderful My PlanNet simulation game for network managers.

paulgillin.com

Social Media and the Open Enterprise

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