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Q & A: Nortel’s Social Media Strategy
By Mark Evans | May 29, 2008
For anyone who closely follows Nortel, you may have noticed that the company has been enthusiastically embracing social media with a growing number of blogs as well as the use of podcasts and streaming video.
It got me thinking, why is Nortel using social media and what’s the big-picture strategy? So, I fired off an e-mail to Bo Gowan, one of Nortel’s PR people who co-writes the Nortel Buzzboard blog. He was good enough to arrange an interview with Ronald Alepian, VP, corporate communications. It’s a fairly long Q&A so, it has been split into two parts with part I going today and part II tomorrow.
Why has Nortel been so enthusiastic about embracing social media?
Depending on the audience you are speaking to, social media is emerging as having more influence than traditional media or even some of the direct one on one communications. Customers and other influential stakeholders in the online space are looking at product and services, thinking about sharing knowledge, kicking the tires, and you have to be present in that conversion.
The game is going on. You can choose to sit and watch or participate. There are risks in participating but not participating is a mistake. That is where stakeholders and people who are important to us are, and we want to be part of the conversation, debate and part of the dialogue.
Do you feel like Nortel is on the forefront when it comes to large companies using social media?
I am not trying to set a record. What I am trying to do is participate in a conversation that will take place with or without us, and engage our audiences more and more. You can throw a lot of budget against these kinds of things. There are some companies that spend seven figure budgets and try to buy mind share. To me, it is about engagement. Are we being aggressive about it? No, I think are doing what we need to do and be a part of the community we want to play it. It is about engaging people in a meaningful dialogue. We are shifting from company that sells boxes on a network to one more about services, solutions and applications. This type of dialogue is important because when you engage, you get educated.
Was there any resistance internally in this social media strategy?
I wouldn’t say there was resistance to doing it, unless you talk to our lawyers. But they understand what we are doing and why. I don’t think there was resistance in doing it but an educational effort was required to explain to people why we are doing it. When you have people such as industrial scientists and R&D leaders and some business unit leaders, it took a little bit of explaining about what’s going on. Once we got the education level up, it became almost instinctive for the company to endorse what we are doing.
What has Nortel learned so far from its social media initiatives?
I don’t think there is anything that surprised or shocked us by what took place. What was interesting to watch is the speed with which that world works, and we have to change our ability to move and give people like Bo and others a lot more flexibility than an official corporate spokesperson in the traditional world. The reality in a very viral world can turn into an entire conversation can turn literally overnight.
Can you talk about what happened at Interop after Nortel made it Energy Efficient Calculator?
What too place in additional to buzz on trade show floor was a bunch of people starting blogging about it and talking about it online. It created almost overnight a buzz that started hitting the mainstream world. We were able to handle it because of Bo and others injected ourselves into the conversation the second, it broke. Had we had not had capability, the conversation would have happened with or without us. We were right there smack in the middle of the conversation and over a two-week period.
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