How a Cross-Functional Team is Changing Social Engagement at EMC

Within the next 2-3 years, it’s my wish to see social media integrated into the day-to-day of each and every EMCer—just like email has come to be.

Some might understand and laud that goal, others will understandably balk and resist. I expect both… and that a lot more of you will fall somewhere in the middle. For many, social media is a vast unknown. A distraction. Or even a waste of time. For those who have not yet used social media for business purposes, or at all, I encourage you to get in the game. There are many ways to get into social… you can tweet, or start a blog, participate in discussions on sites like LinkedIn or Spiceworks and so on. If you’re not yet into social, no worries. It’s an excellent tool for both business and personal networking, and it grows with YOUR level of participation. Who knows… over time you might begin to be seen as an influencer amongst your social media peers, no matter where your preferred topic might lie.

It’s these influencers who add color to the social web, especially in the B2B technology space. Social media, for all intents and purposes, has become an extension of the support forums and knowledge bases of Web 1.0. One can easliy find relevant and targeted conversations around their chosen topic and within those topics identify influential voices with answers to their questions.

I share all this to tee-up an exciting project underway here at EMC. We’re building a targeted social media listening station which will enable the team to monitor all the social conversations happening—in real time—across the social web. This pilot project will serve as a model for future social media engagement efforts at EMC.

We’ve  gathered a cross-functional team of subject matter experts from across  EMC and our partners whose collective knowledge speaks to many, many  aspects of EMC’s influence and expertise in helping customers address  their requirements across their Microsoft environments, applications and  technologies. SMEs have been recruited to share their expertise on a host of topics at the front of mind for many IT admins and execs managing anything from Exchange running on VMware or Hyper-V to virtual desktop infrastructure. Many of these SMEs are also blogging independently about EMC and Microsoft.

We’re also extending this opportunity across our ecosystem of partners—including Microsoft—and these partners are excited about it.

Admittedly, having this pool of existing bloggers within the ranks of our cross-functional subject matter experts gives us a leg up on producing and curating great content. It doesn’t need to start with such robust resources. Such a listening program can start much smaller—and simpler.

With ease and simplicity at the core of our ask to these SMEs, a system was needed to enable participation at a variety of skill and interest levels. Since some SMEs are active and influential bloggers while others have expert opinion to share but aren’t active bloggers, the team crafted a solution where the most socially-engaged SMEs’ activities are woven into the system while also accounting for the varied participation levels for the rest of our experts.

At the heart of the system is a team blog coordinating the publication of original content while curating content  from our SMEs and a host of other sources inside (and outside) of EMC. Feeding this blog are half a dozen pre-existing blogs written by EMC’s Microsoft SMEs. Our non-blogging SMEs have the ability to share their expertise as guest bloggers when their commentary is most influential. Supplementing these subject matter experts are fellow EMC, VMware and Microsoft bloggers and authorities who can be tapped for excellent and original on-topic content. In the background, Karen, Dan and others are curating a couple hundred RSS feeds from a number of leading influential content sources from across the social web. These blogs, tweeps, commentators and other social voices provide direction and input from which EMC can develop some cutting edge thought leadership in this space. All of this activity will be funneled through a Twitter account to help spread word of EMC’s expertise and thought leadership with the goal of interacting and engaging with other influential voices.

The team is just now embarking on this journey. It’s gonna be fun and it’s setting an example for future social media engagement efforts bringing cross-functional resources together to tell EMC’s story.

Follow along for the ride at windowtotheprivatecloud.com