Online Marketing Blog

On occasion we connect with smart people and ideas we think are worth sharing as a guest post here at Online Marketing Blog. Today, I’d like to introduce you to Heidi Ambler, Director of Social Business at IBM.  Heidi has over 20 years with IBM where she leads a team responsible for their enterprise social software business.

In a digital world where technology and  consumer behaviors are changing rapidly, Heidi makes the argument for better alignment between IT and marketing as a path towards greater success and competitive advantage.

According to recent survey results, 60 percent of marketers cite a lack of alignment with the company’s IT department as the biggest obstacle to reaching today’s digitally empowered and social savvy consumers.

Attributes of a Socially Optimized Business - Dachis Group

Add “social” to just about anything and you’ll boost interest in your topic by at least 50%. While many consultants appear to be employing that tactic to boost their interesting-ness, it’s not the case with the topic of social business.

As companies work to figure out what role social media will play with external marketing and communications, there’s a rapidly growing trend with progressive companies that are also viewing social media internally. By that I mean, they’re looking at social technologies as platforms to connect people within the company for the purposes of collaboration, tapping into the collective wisdom of the organization and bringing internal social media literacy to a level that enables external communications to scale.

[Note from Lee: Social Business is everybody's business when it comes to modern internet marketing. IBM's social business efforts are really at the forefront of this trend. Ben Edwards is the VP of Digital Strategy at IBM and leads the strategy, design and development of IBM's marketing and communications in the digital realm. Ben joins us today to share his insights into the journey of not only embracing the social web for external marketing, but to adapt and adopt social media tools internally to empower socialized marketing.]

Companies of all shapes and sizes, in every industry, are increasingly adopting social media strategies and technologies for their marketing efforts, using Facebook to reach out to customers or YouTube to demonstrate new products. These are good first steps, but there is so much more that “social” has to offer. The era of social business is here and it is becoming clear just how transformative it will be for B2B marketers.