Know-How Exchange : Social Media

Hi Jocelyn! Here's an interview I just did with Best Buy's Gary Koelling about the Blue Shirt Nation internal socnet for Best Buy employees:

https://moblogsmoproblems.blogspot.com/2009/08/social-media-mavens-intervie...

Here's a key quote from Gary: "When we first build BlueShirt Nation (BSN) it was an attempt to solve a specific problem. We wanted to get employee and customer insight that could lead to better, more relevant advertising. We never got a direct answer to that although you could argue it led to us to better advertising eventually. Any way, the users made it into a social network. Steve Bendt (the other founder of BSN) and I just happened to have the good sense to stick with it - whatever it became. As it turned out it became quite a phenomenon - a combination of the right executive sponsorship (new at the time), timing - social media was rising and the right target - most of our employees are very early twenties. Perfect storm."

Jocelyn, thanks for posting a question here on the KHE! :)

I have asked Susan Cellura (@susancellura) to chime in here... She's doing a TON of internal social media work at Chevron [and has an internal SM chat on Twitter every Wednesday at 1pm EST.]. You probably saw my tweet to her... I know she's swamped, but she can answer your question with authority.

Also, I know organizations are starting to use tools like Yammer to connect employees. As well, I believe Radian6 allows for connection and social media job sharing (as in, Jane Smith, here's a tweet for you to reply to).

I think the one thing that we need to consider is corporate culture. If there isn't a culture of open communications and creative problem solving, I don't think social media will solve that.

Mack, Best Buy is a great example...thanks for sharing the interview.

Beth Harte
Community Manager, MarketingProfs
@bethharte