Mar 25, 2011 Staff

IBM's Twitter Use for Marketing


How does a huge company with an already recognizable brand use Twitter in their marketing efforts? Mitch Wagner of the CMO Site explains how big companies face a different challenge than smaller ones when it comes to Twitter.

Small companies do everything they can to be heard and to have their brand or products recognized. Big companies may have several brands they'd like to manage with Twitter, and many employees to do so.

"Our goal is not to have a couple of big IBM accounts; our goal is to have a couple of hundred thousand IBMers on Twitter," - Adam Christensen, manager of social business for IBM worldwide. IBM has hundreds of official Twitter accounts and tens of thousands of employees on Twitter. Individual brands within IBM manage those accounts. Official accounts can only be operated by those with permission to speak for the brand. Best practices are shared company wide. Metrics are tracked by several of IBM's own products.

IBM measures four categories in all social media:
Influence - Are market influencers being reached?
Action - Are people following links, etc.?
Reach - How many people are following IBM vs. competitors?
Preference - Do people approve or disapprove of what IBM is doing?

IBM only tracks employees Twitter use when they are discussing IBM business or are part of an IBM campaign. Employees also know that IBM discussion on their personal Twitter accounts will likely be caught by IBM's Twitter monitoring.

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Published by Staff March 25, 2011