Internal Use of Social Media

In this video Jon Iwata, SVP of Marketing and Communications at IBM, discusses using Social Media as an Internal Tool. One idea is that as employees become comfortable using social media inside the company they will be able to utilize those skills in communicating with external clients and business partners.



One quote from Mr. Iwata about maintaining control when using social media internally, "Are they (your employees) going to criticize management sometimes? Of course. But they are doing that anyway."

Too many organizations are worried about controlling their employees. I know many corporations that block blog and video sites on their intranets. Where is the trust? Social media will not work until leaders trust their employees and realize that much of this communication is already going on. They can "unearth ideas" if they will loosen their grip on employees.

Business Value of Twitter

I am envious of several of my IBM colleagues who are spending the next few days in Orlando, Florida. No, they are not hanging out with Mickey and Minnie. It's Lotusphere 2009! Even though I am not there in person I am able to get a very detailed report what's going on via twitter.

I'm a new adopter and the business value of twitter has slowly increased. Today that value culminated as I received live tweets on the iPhone via TwitterFon from Luis Suarez, Luis Benitez, and Chris Pepin while they attended Lotusphere. These individuals are leading the way in social software adoption internally within IBM and externally with our clients. I'm excited to attend Lotusphere via twitter the next few days.