Content, Profits and Internal (Employee) Advocacy
Today I had the pleasure of talking with Susan Emerick from IBM. We chatted about content, employee advocates and to how balance marketing as both art and science. IBM has more internal employee bloggers/champions than any company around. How has IBM been able to scale relationships? It’s not just with technology. IBM has grown by being open, decentralizing content creation and trusting (and empowering) passionate employees to carry the torch.
Move Over, Marketing: There are New Content Sheriffs in Town
This breaks down the silos to great content that customers want. And what they often want are relationships with experts, not a mediated, controlled experience through ineffective marketing tactics.
Return on Relationship: Scaling ‘People’ is Good for The Bottom Line
You can’t scale the human element – relationships – by relying on marketing automation alone. You need both science (analytics, listening) and art (real-time human conversations). By unleashing employees, IBM has reached an interesting point in its trajectory. Susan mentioned that in a number of case studies with customers, the value of subject matter experts on the bottom line has been near 7X.
Amen, Susan.
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Follow Susan @sfemerick
