IBM Social Media Boot Camp Alumni Update

Helping Build Your Social Authority August 8, 2012

Kick-Start Your Content Marketing Program

Content marketing is all the rage these days, but what exactly is it and how do you manage a content marketing program? At IBM Midsize Business, we've had a successful content marketing program in place for more than a year. We publish new articles of interest to midmarket professionals every day. These keyword-optimized stories are designed to attract search engines, and since our Midsize Insider site was added to Google News, traffic has exploded! Content marketing is all about attracting customers to your website with information that interests them. In July, we recorded a webinar that showcases the IBM influencer program focused on the essentials of content marketing and how we apply them at IBM midsize businesses. The webinar is free, and I invite you to watch and learn what's working for us. Then apply these techniques to your own content marketing program. Here's a link to the webinar. Let me know what you think!

Best, Leslie Reiser

Embeddable Videos for Your

Blog Employees want to bring their own devices into the workplace, but many haven't considered security challenges these devices create. IBM has been a leader in raising awareness about mobile security trends and helping midsize businesses balance the need to satisfy employee demands with the need to protect information. This three-minute video highlights some of the most significant security threats that have emerged on mobile platforms. Embed it in your blog when you communicate about this important topic. Here's another embeddable video you can use. "Smarter Commerce and the Value Chain" is about putting customers at the center of your business and serving them on their terms. It gives examples of how real customers have reinvented themselves by creating real-time visibility into their businesses. Use it as a building block for your own thoughts on this important area.

Tweeting Thought Leadership

Here's a good way to use Twitter to promote content assets: Pull out interesting data points and tweet them individually. For example, this IBM/Frost & Sullivan white paper on new approaches to CRM talks about how mobility is changing customer behavior. While that topic may not generate a lot of excitement on Twitter, some of the statistics contained within the white paper are fascinating. For example, here are some factoids that can be posted on Twitter to promote the white paper:

• 12% of the US population refers to social media before making a purchase. #IBMCRM http://ibm.co/MsrPOf

• Up to 85% of data is unstructured. How do you try to capture it? #IBMCRM http://ibm.co/MsrPOf

• On average, 23% of an organization's data is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date. #IBMCRM http://ibm.co/MsrPOf

The secret of Twitter is to arouse people's interest. Factoids are an excellent way to do that.

Making the Case for

Mobile Apps Grab Customers When

They're Away from the Desktop

Mobile computing is growing by leaps and bounds, and mobile apps are one of the best ways to capture the attention of customers when they're out of the office. IBM has two apps that demonstrate the company's thought leadership and technology innovation in areas that are top-of-mind for technology professionals. The IBM THINK app for kids, innovators and forward thinkers captures the best of the 2011 NYC THINK exhibit, where visitors were immersed in a film and interactive experience across 40 oversized digital screens that displayed how technology can improve our daily lives. The app provides an illustrated timeline documenting our quest to measure the world and shows how maps help us to explore new ways to organize information. Available for both iPad and Android platforms, it's a free download that stimulates the imagination while reinforcing IBM's creativity. Learn more here. The IBM Cloud for Midsize Businesses iPad app is full of case studies, videos, white

Managed Services Andy Monshaw has a bylined article on Huffington Post that could provide some good fodder for your own customer outreach. Andy makes the case that small retailers today can get an advantage over their larger competitors by anticipating what customers need before they specifically ask. "All small retailers have to do is take a step back, look around and gain a little analytic insight to see the next big trend around the corner that will attract the individual consumer," he writes. One way to do this is through the use of managed service providers, which can deliver the best technology quickly via the cloud. If cloud services are part of your growth plan, then link to this article and embed the accompanying video to build on Andy's proposition.

Featured Alum: Wirehead Technology

We like to keep an eye on what our Boot Camp alumni have been doing to build social capital, and we've been particularly impressed by the work of Wirehead Technology. Wirehead is a small, Chicago-based IT service provider that specializes in the mobility, healthcare, retail, real estate and education markets. It doesn't have a big staff or budget, but you wouldn't know that from its big social footprint.

We particularly like the Wirehead Mobility Blog, which is a curated collection of thematic articles drawn mostly from other sources on the Web. Wirehead CIO Howard Lee (left) updates the

blog at least three times a week, with Monday's post devoted to mobile and social media

papers and other resources about cloud solutions for midsize companies. It includes comprehensive content from third-party analysts, IBM, our Business Partners and other experts. Learn more here. You can use these apps in your own social channels by building content around ideas presented in them and by tweeting details that are relevant to your audience. Promote these apps to your customers as part of your own content marketing efforts.

Tip of the Week: Curate

Factoids There's no shortage of remarkable information about the growth of social media, and the folks at Wikibon have done a nice job of assembling some of the more notable statistics into this aggregation of facts. This is a tactic you can use in your own content marketing programs. When you come across statistics that validate the importance of your marketing services, bookmark them and

marketing, Wednesday's to wireless industry news and Friday's to healthcare, mobile health and security. Nearly all of the content is summaries and links to articles on other websites. This technique is called "curation," and it's one of the most cost-efficient ways to generate material for your blog. Content creators appreciate the link from Wirehead, and the topic selection helps establish the company's expertise in target markets. Readers appreciate the way the blog keeps them up to date on developments in their industry. Howard started the blog about 18 months ago and maintains it rigorously. He explained to us that social media drives most new business at Wirehead."Nearly all of our clients have come in because they see the blog and get in touch with us," he said. As a result, Wirehead doesn't have to do any advertising. "This is all about information, which is more important than advertising," Howard said. It doesn't stop there. You can also find Wirehead on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google+ and even Pinterest. And did we mention its 14 Facebook pages? That's a topic for another article.

assemble them into a single page. Then tweet individual statistics and link back to your master collection. Be sure to include a source link for each bit of information as a way of thanking the originator. If you're really ambitious, steal a page from Wikibon and create a big infographic. People love to share these visual summaries on Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit and Digg, and the traffic they can generate is nothing short of amazing.

This collection of 72 Fascinating Social Media Marketing Facts and Statistics for 2012 is another example of how you can aggregate relevant content to build your own social capital.