2:10 – Andy introduces Molly Schonthal — head of social media communications for Nokia’s North American team.
2:10 – Molly: Nokia believes in a world where everybody can be connected. It’s easy to participate, but I think it’s harder to participate without being defensive.
2:11 – Molly references Tara Hunt’s book, The Whuffie Factor.
2:14 – Molly: What is relevant to your audience will change over time.
2:15 – Molly: Social media is hard to place within an organization. It involves sales, marketing, and PR. It requires cross-collaboration throughout the enterprise.
2:17 – Nokia’s BlogHub: Aggregates all internal blog content in one place and gives employees access to what people inside the company are talking about.
2:18 – Nokia’s internal VideoHub: Works much like their BlogHub.
2:19 – Nokia uses its external blog to highlight issues that don’t get a lot of publicity, or to clarify issues that are being highly publicized.
2:21 – Nokia set up a stand at SXSW called “The Doctor is In” — helped to reach a Twitter audience of about 300,000.
2:22 – Nokia found a lot of bloggers and influencers were interested in how they test their phones. Instead of creating a topic, they found one people were already interested in. They invited bloggers and influencers to their test centers, resulting in a lot of publicity and conversation.
2:24 – Nokia’s view on social media: 1. Fosters integration; 2. Enables flexible goals and a strategy that can evolve; 3. Promotes consistent monitoring and dialogue; 4. Increases productivity and knowledge sharing; 5. Increases commitment to Nokia goals; 6. Increases customer satisfaction.
2:25 – Q&A
Q: What types of measurement do you use? Do they ultimately come back down to sales?
A: It’s very hard to measure conversations back to sales. We do some monitoring to watch when and how the conversation comes up. You can look at the conversations about you on tools like Twitter, and measure the influence of the people talking about you there.
Q: If there wasn’t the hard link to clicks-to-sales, how did you convince the company it was OK?
A: I believe I’m lucky to work at company that understands the value of social media. Also, we’re still measuring and monitoring the success we’re having.
Q: What was the hardest thing that you’ve done?
A: One of the hardest things is to listen well, all of the time. A lot of what I’m doing can be overwhelming and all consuming. It’s hard to listen effectively, constantly, and I always have to challenge myself to be good at it. Like Nestor [of Microsoft] said, the expectation is to hear all of the community’s concerns and see that they’re resolved.
Q: The social web is full of a lot of bloggers out there, where people can say what they want to say. When you bring people in to your company, is there any concern for what they say, because as a big company, you can be responsible?
A: While we have very honest conversations, we don’t disclose private things or things that haven’t been released. Of course, the concern is there that the more casual I get with a blogger, it could somehow come back at me. I try to be smart about it — it’s the best that I can offer, and I work with folks in an honest way. A lot of people recognize that there are certain things I can’t say or disclose. I haven’t been hindered by fear yet.
Q: How do you handle comments on all of your property? On YouTube, on Twitter, etc.?
A: Just a few weeks ago, I got a call from someone saying “Did you see what he said?” I asked, “Is it true?” And he said, “Well yeah, but that’s not what we wanted.” The reason we engage is for people to be open and honest, and we can’t pick and choose what we want. We will engage if we identify something inaccurate, and we’ll do our best to clarify it. If someone says something out there that is real, I feel everyone is entitled to express their opinion.
Q: What is the difference between your social media release and a press release?
A: A press release is usually a few paragraphs long, while a social media release usually comes along with a video of a demo or of someone talking about the news. We’ll usually include a bunch of pictures and videos that people can download along with the story, as well as text that is easier to incorporate into a blog as opposed to the language that is generally associated with a traditional press release.
Q: Do you see any value in targeting more blogs but with smaller reach?
A: Absolutely. I don’t think one approach is it. We do have other events with blogs that have smaller reach or are more specialized. I think both can be effective.
Q: Can you talk more about what you’re doing with internal tools?
A: It’s very easy to start blogs and forums inside a company, but to get them used and understood internally is so much harder. The way that we’ve been doing it is with sort of high-touch, social media 101 sessions. We’ve also put out guidelines and policies — not because we need to control things — but because when people start out with these things, they like to know what is recommended to do and what isn’t.
Q: Follow up to the question on comments: What strategy does your team employ on commenting on blogs you see talking about Nokia?
A: When we see something, the first decision is: Is this something we need to respond to? This is based on the blog itself: Is this widely read? The second decision is: Disclosure. Anytime we do comment on something, we identify ourselves as being from Nokia. We also ask that if it’s something highly inflammatory or speculative in nature, does commenting on it sort of validate it in some way? If so, then no, we probably won’t comment.
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