Starting New Social Media Job

Posted on February 1, 2007 by Lee White

After many months of conversation, proposal writing and just trying to figure out how to make it happen, it finally has. Effective Monday (2/5) I begin my new job as the Social Media Guy here at GlaxoSmithKline. This position will be part of the Communications function and my first objective will be to work with all the Communications team members and look at how we can improve the socialization of our media efforts. I am still looking for a good job title. Any suggestions?

I want to thank Ben Edwards at IBM. Much of what I baked into the job description was modeled on Ben’s job.

Filed under: Corporate Social Media | Leave a comment »

Identity, Roles & Search

Posted on January 28, 2007 by Lee White

A while back I was playing with some ideas about how to use identity as the core of a system to improve search. I started to write it as a post but forgot about it. These are the notes: 

  • The individual should be the kernel of the system, everything else is dynamic and should be flexible with regard to the structure of the system structure.
  • Set up a meta data hierarchy with Individual:affiliation:role.
  • Allifiation can be used by search to improve results, the more documents that are affiliated with each other that contain the same searchable criteria would result in higher search results.

I think I know what I was talking about (but not really sure), and I am pretty sure no one else will make much sense out of it. I mainly wanted to get it out of my draft box and I didn’t want to throw it away. So if this sparks any ideas for you, great, let me know. If not, who cares.

You can now return to your regularly scheduled programing.

Filed under: Identity | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Great Blogger Dinner

Posted on January 26, 2007 by Lee White

I have to agree with Nathan, I really enjoyed the dinner last night. I am always skeptical getting together with a group of people you have never met. Tried it a couple of times to no avail, but this time it was a good connection. When I got home I told my wife that it was really nice to have a conversation where everyone else had more experience in blogs, and social media in general, than I did.Blogger_dinner I really hope we get the local Social Media Group off the ground!

That’s me in the middle…

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My 1st Blogger Meet-Up

Posted on January 25, 2007 by Lee White

Hi, it’s me again. Been away for awhile, mainly working on the dark blog. Anyway, I am heading off to my first blogger meet-up tonight (if you don’t count conferences). Nathan Gilliatt of Net Savvy organized the gathering. Here are the details, not that anyone will see this in time to make any difference.

Looking forward to it.

Also looks like big news on the job front here. Not 100% official yet, so I have to wait to tell all, but soon…

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Mission Statement

Posted on January 11, 2007 by Lee White

The goal of corporate social media is to afford every stakeholder an equal opportunity to be heard by decision makers.

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Implementing Corp Social Media

Posted on January 10, 2007 by Lee White

I have spent a lot of time recently trying to figure out the silver bullet for implementing a Social Media infrastructure within a corporate (non-tech) environment. I think I am beginning to see wherein the difficulity lies…

Up to now my focus has been on getting the technical infrastructure in place. And also up to now I have always said that the cultural issues would be a bigger hurdle than the technical ones, but I wasn’t really sure what that meant. I think that part of the cultural puzzle deals with understanding your existing culture. If I were able to magically snap my fingers and have a world-class social media platform in place, I don’t believe that it would go anywhere, at least not immediately, in a fundamentally authoritarian culture. The culture shock would be too great. The norms for operating in an open transparent environment would not be in place.

I believe the answer is organic grassroots growth. Bite off small chunks, start with small groups where trust and openness are already working assumptions. Let those groups be the ones to tell the story. "Be the ball." Use word-of-mouth as the engine to make the case for using social media.

Filed under: Corporate Social Media | 1 Comment »

Time Management

Posted on January 2, 2007 by Lee White


010207_1407.jpg
Originally uploaded by ljw7189.

Imagine that …in just 2 hours!

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Engagement and Reach

Posted on December 19, 2006 by Lee White

I am trying to make the case for why social media should be used within an organizational setting.In my last post I considered aspects of defining benefits as as way to tell an effective story. Now I want to take a stab at a different approach. This time I am going to be a little more graphical a là Kathy Sierra.
Socialmedia_chart_1

I want to find some set of indices that show the value social media brings when compared to traditional communication channels. With this chart I am trying to show that social media has the ability to create engagement similar to one on one conversation but with the potential to reach a much larger audience. Does this make any sense? Or is there a better set of indices to show the value better. (Note: The size of the circles is supposed to have some relationship to cost, but I am not sure it works very well.)

Update: the graphics did not show up as well as I hoped. I guess I am not providing a great user experience. Translation: Upper Left – Face to Face, moving down and to the right, email, speakers, and finally Traditional DTC in the lower right corner. Social media in Orange.

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What are the benefits?

Posted on December 15, 2006 by Lee White

One of Kathy Sierra’s main themes is about getting to the root of what it is that "users" want. This is more commonly referred to as benefits to the user. Most people/organizations that have a product or service to sell, have a tendency to define the benefit with respect to the product or service it self.

…2GHZ processor and 100 G of storage…

…0 grams of transfat…

Kathy’s point is that users don’t really care about the product or service itself, they care about what the product or service can enable them to do.

…easily upload my pictures to flickr…

…eat as much as I want without feeling guilty…

Right now I am facing a situation where I need to define the benefits of something. I need to keep Kathy’s perspective in mind.  Here is the situation…

I am a huge advocate of using social media within an organizational setting. I have spent much of the last year talking about it whenever the opportunity arises. I finally became inspired to try and create a position that is 100% focused on social media. Subjectively I know this type of position would provide a great benefit to the organization. My problem is that I am having trouble objectively defining the benefits. Almost everyone I talk to asks the same question, "What are the benefits to the company?" I reply with the usual talking points,

Internally social media supports innovation, breaking down of silos, …

Externally, social media can get us closer to the customer, allow us to become part of the community…

The typical response is "but show me the benefit." As I read Kathy’s post this morning, I began to wonder if I have fallen into the trap of defining the benefit in terms of the subject (social media) instead of the object (the user).

So it is off to find a new windmill, how to show the benefit of social media in terms that clearly point to the benefit of the user, as opposed to meeting my own need of finding a problem for my solution.

Filed under: Corporate Social Media, siem | Leave a comment »

Social Media is about The Rest of Us

Posted on December 13, 2006 by Lee White

On Monday I attended Healthcare Blogging Summit in Washington DC. This was a sub-conference of the Consumer Health World conference. The keynote speaker was Steve Rubel from Edelman. Steve gave a great presentation defining "Social Media". I took some notes and picked up some new ideas. One of the main points I picked up was his metaphor for social media as a "universe" that is populated by "galaxies" (centers of gravity such as mySpace, YouTube), "stars" (the A-List Celebrities), "planets" (the B&C list), "shooting stars" (flash-in-the-pan: Diet Coke and Mentos), and "comets" (recurring themes: authencity, transparency). It is a good image and I will probably use it.

The next thing he talked about was how to effectively operate in the social media space. Four simple points:

  • Find
  • Listen
  • Engage
  • Empower

The first three were to me straightforward and part of the story I try to tell others. The last point, Empowerment, was a light bulb. I had never carried the thought process to the next logical step. Empowerment is really the fundamental element of social media. To be honest, the light bulb did not really turn on until today (sometimes I process rather slowly).

My new mantra is:

Social Media is anything that empowers the rest of us.

Up until now, whenever I have been asked "What is social media?", I would usually list a string of technology terms. "It’s blogs & wikis & RSS & social networks & …" Not a very satisfying or compelling answer.

Now I have something to say.

Steve, thanks for the spark. I think that sometimes it takes listening to the words for a long time before you really hear the meaning.

Filed under: Community, Corporate Social Media, HBS2006, Healthcare blogging summit | Leave a comment »

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