One of the common complaints about social media and WOM case studies is that they're mostly consumer focused. This session was design to address that topic. Kathryn Collins, Director, Corporate Communications, Texas Instrument talked about brining WOM to the business-to-business space. Kathryn was joined by Jeff Beringer, Senior Vice President, Digital Practice Lead, GolinHarris.
Yes B2B can benefit from WOM. In TI's case, they're a unique brand. They're an 80-year-old technology firm. How can you be old and hip at the same time?
Texas Instruments invented the integrated circuit and have continued to drive innovation. A recent well-known product is DLP, the power behind the latest projectors and theater systems.
They're trying to target design engineers. They're the folks that design the products we use. However, they need to get to the engineers early though, while they're doing the initial development work to make sure they use TI products.
TI has created an Engineer to Engineer (E2E) platform. But it was built on some standard foundations.
Listen: They need to listen like engineers though. This can be surveys, behavioral research, word processes and of course analyze online conversations about TI.
They have to base their process on the standard engineering process. Planning -> Design -> Prototyping & Testing -> Production.
The internet has changed from a library to a social place. Engineers could find the information in the planning phase, but when it came to later phases, they needed interaction. Social media and WOMM now provides that platform.
Who do engineers listen to? Peers, industry media, TI employees, analysts and academia. This lets TI know who they need to influence and engage with.
Engineers are not communicators. How do you activate their own experts? TI has a conversation agent training program. They've created a cadre of on-call experts. However it's often an additional duty.
How do they use WOM? They used to do technical white papers, but that model is gone. It's more about conversation. TI looks to help shape dialogue, participate in existing conversation and drive new discussions.
To claim their place as an innovator, they often need to tell their own story. Their doing this with VOIP and power & energy. They're allowing their engineers to talk about the projects they're working on and new ideas they may have.
The next step is to find out where engineers are going and follow them there. Twitter is obviously an emerging channel. What's promising is to see their customers creating their own communities.
How do they measure success? Uptick in discussion volume about TI, accuracy of online discourse and organic search visibility.
