Tyson: "How Tyson Foods Uses Social Media to Build Community Around the Issue of Hunger" — Live from BlogWell

3:50 – Andy introduces Ed Nicholson — Director of Community Relations at Tyson Foods

3:51 – Ed: I thought I had the best job in the world until I met Ferg Devins [of Molson] – he gets to give away beer.

3:51 – Ed: This [Hunger Relief program] is more than a campaign for us. We’ve been doing this for more than eight years. And the more we give, the more we get back.

3:52 – Tyson found there was a community already out there focused on ending hunger. And because many of them weren’t connected online, Tyson saw an opportunity to help make that happen.

3:54 – Ed: When we got out there, we found some great stories of people working selflessly on this issue. There are people who devote their entire lives to this, so we created hungerrelief.tyson.com to help share these stories.

3:55 – Tyson live-blogged RAGBRAI — a large bike ride across Iowa — for Hunger Relief.

3:56 – Tyson utilizes guest bloggers, including food bank directors and social media for social good influencers.

3:57 – Tyson uses commonly available free tools like Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube

3:57 – Ed Nicholson identifies himself on Tyson’s Hunger Relief Twitter account.

3:58 – Tyson partnered with MediaSauce to donate 35 lbs. of food for anyone who got involved the Hunger Pledge program, resulting in nearly 4,000 participants and four truckloads of food for those in need.

4:01 – Ed: Relationships and reputations transcend and survive technology changes. There’s continuity in the community.

4:04 – Ed: I’m of the opinion that agencies can’t develop communities for us — we have to be part of that process. If your agency people aren’t participating as thought leaders in this space, my question is: Should they be advising you? Bear in mind, [creating community] takes time. We can throw sponsorship dollars, but that doesn’t develop community.

4:05 – Q&A

Q: You talked about having 104,000 employees and trying to reach 2% of them with your cause, how do you see this rolling out across the company?

A: There are a number of programs we’re doing that people are getting involved in, including the RAGBRAI event across Iowa. Some of the engagement is passive. Employees see what the company has done and are proud of it.

Q: Do you educate your employees about social media, do you have rules of engagement?

A: We’re getting to that point. One of the challenges we face is the multitude of brands we have. What we’re trying to sort through now is, how do we manage that? Because in traditional media space, you had departments who handled certain things. One of the things we’re doing is creating a set of policies and guidelines for our people, not only for what is right, but also for what is legal. Personally, I don’t put any content online that is material related to shareholder value.

Q: You gave examples of organizations you worked with across the Iowa, Austin, and Boston — did you purposely approach these programs with a local focus?

A: Yes, we purposely worked with local beneficiaries. Obviously, Austin and Boston are big social media communities, so it wasn’t too hard to decide to go there. But what we’ve found is even though we started with a local focus, it broadened out. People were supportive of what we were doing, even though we weren’t in their community.

Q: How do you manage the personal vs. business role in social media?

A: The Twitter account is something the company owns. I was tweeting a lot about what we were doing at Tyson, and there was a huge interest. I realized we probably needed to stake this territory for our brand. When and if I leave the company, I’m quite confident somebody else will be tweeting from this account. But you see it done successfully both ways.

Q: You’re doing a lot of external stuff; what’s the company doing internally to ensure all these businesses within Tyson are collaborating in the right way?

A: We have a social media working group that would involve anyone who has a stake in the matter — legal, IT, etc. We’re hopeful this will help us move along a path of continuity. We do a lot of internal communication about our work against hunger, but we’re like a lot of companies in that we’re just starting to look at how we use tools internally.

Q: What do you look for in an ideal partnership with an agency or a partner charity?

A: Obviously, food is a good fit for us. I think the willingness to work collaboratively is important. Especially if you’re talking about using social media tools, look at what they’re doing in that space. What we try to do is take the resources that we have and leverage them.