After repeatedly hearing how executive buy-in is critical to social media success, I decided to sit down with April Harned, the Director of Communications at Progress DataDirect to see what was her magic formula. My podcast with April will tell you how a B2B company embraced social media and started reaping the results of a successful blog, Data Connections. Yes, the podcast is a little long but trust me if you are still on the fence with corporate blogging, you want to take 10 minutes to either listen or read the transcribed version below.
Priya Ramesh: Thank you April for joining us today. We’re very excited to speak to you about how Progress DataDirect has embraced social media and share your experience in making social media a part of your overall PR process. Could you please give us a brief intro to yourself and Progress DataDirect?
April Harned: Sure. I’m April Harned, the director of communications for Progress DataDirect, formally known as DataDirect Technologies. We are the world’s leader in data connectivity and mainframe integration. Some say that we’re the industry standard for standards based data access. Progress DataDirect is now the data infrastructure division of Progress Software, which is a leading provider of software to enable enterprises to be operationally receptive.
Priya Ramesh:Excellent! April, do you want to tell us what was the defining moment when you said, “Okay, I think it’s time for us to start leveraging the power of social media.” And walk us through your decision making process in implementing social media at Progress DataDirect?
April Harned: Well having been a ten year veteran of the PR agency world and keeping up on latest trends impacting our industry, I noticed that more and more people were embracing social media tools and tactics. I knew that was the future of a successful PR program. So we made initial efforts to research third party firms that could help us educate our internal audiences and decision makers on the importance of social media and help us create a foundation to get started, and then build upon.
Priya Ramesh: Could you tell us more about what were some of the initial steps you took in implementing a social media program? Where you focused on a blog as a first step, creating a thought leadership position using a blog, and then eventually taking your brand to Facebook and Twitter. Tell us how you went about selecting what media to choose.
April Harned: Well the problem we had faced initially was that several internal thought leaders had maintained their own blogs separately. So we knew we wanted to bring those blogs together under one corporate umbrella where we could more easily manage traffic, as well as topics that were being addressed, etc. So that was initiative number one. Secondly, we knew that we also needed to embrace other tools that were becoming very popular by not only our customer and prospects, but the software community at large. By that we mean, not only blogging but the growing presence of Facebook at the time and the importance of being on LinkedIn, and at the time, the new phenomenon was Twitter that more and more people seem to be embracing.
The blog was definitely our first concern; its not only bringing all of those under one umbrella, but then to encourage other internal resources and thought leaders to be more active within the blogosphere and to demonstrate the value that the blog would bring to our marketing and sales efforts.
Priya Ramesh: That’s great. We’ve seen from an agency perspective, that’s pretty much the first step that a lot of the B2B companies take, start off with a corporate blog and start aggregating industry leading topics and eventually take that content to Facebook and Twitter. So I think you guys were very smart to start off with Data Connections and see such increased traffic through your blog to your main corporate Website. Well done there.
April, one of the things that keeps repeating when we talk to communication professionals, people like you, is the fact that there is this huge roadblock when you have to get your executives and top management to say, “Yes, let’s do social media.” Because with social media comes that loosing some control over messaging, and loosing a little control over your brand, and opening that door to your community online and having a conversation, which is two way. Did you save any organizational challenges as you got started to implementing social media at Progress DataDirect? And, if yes, could you share with us how you overcame some of those challenges? I think that would be very beneficial to some of our listeners and companies out there still kind of struggling to overcome that roadblock.
April Harned: Well first and foremost, I think that our real problem wasn’t necessarily their concern about not being able to control the message, but rather the time commitment that was involved. Just a misunderstanding or misconceptions of how much of their time might be needed for participating in the blogosphere. How we overcame that was – I could tout day and night why we needed to be more active in the blogosphere and with social media tools, but it just seemed to be falling on deaf ears, and maybe because I’m an internal resource – we felt the best strategy to convince the leadership team was by the importance that we needed to be out there and needed to be active, not only to communicate with our communities, but to drive sales. In an effort to do that we thought it was very important to have a third party, unbiased expert come in via an agency. So that was definitely the route that we looked to take.
Again, even to this day, I don’t ever hear any real concern about controlling the message. I think that if you’re out in the blogosphere, and I think our participation there is pretty well maintained, I work closely with all of the bloggers to ensure that they’re not going out there with something that we as an organization don’t feel comfortable with or that might get us into some legal hot water. We’re very conscientious about what we put out there, but at the same time we want to answer our community’s most pressing questions. We listen and we respond accordingly.
Priya Ramesh: That’s fantastic. That leads us to our next question: Progress DataDirect has done an excellent job of getting some of your senior executive team members to take that time that you just talked about and, not just that they’re actually very active, they’re actually very passionate about Data Connections; they want to talk about some of the hot topics that matter the most to your audience online, and having worked from an agency perspective on Data Connections for you, we’re just so happy to be talking to some of your senior like Gregg Willhoit who’s a thought leader in the IT space, taking the time with his busy schedule to actively blog and talk about key industry topics on Data Connections. Any tips, advice that you can share with our listeners today on how you manage to get your senior staff to embrace social media?
April Harned: I would say that, that was definitely our biggest hurdle, and an ongoing challenge. The way that we overcame it was giving them a taste of the success that can be achieved through social media. While they were reluctant, and when kicking and screaming, once they had a taste of how it could be used effectively they were sold. For instance, with Gregg Willhoit, from the get go he was concerned about the time commitment of actually sitting down and writing blog posts – he just didn’t see that happening throughout the course of his day. So what CRT/tanaka advised, and I think it has been quite successful, is doing once a month a one hour podcast where we go through and ask him in a Q&A type format various questions that relate to product news or industry trends that we’re seeing, or competitive news. And he goes into great detail about each of those topics, and then we edit those podcasts and get it on the blog with transcription services provided as well. So that has been a great tool to get the content we need up on the blog, but at the same time not spend too much of Gregg’s time throughout the course of the month – only one hour. So he’s definitely bought in there.
And then in terms of his conversion, from a skeptic to a fan, has really been with some recent competitive events that we’ve been able to get our positioning quickly up on the blog and not have to go through the legal, corporate, bureaucratic channels to get our position up and quickly, and then point media to how we differ from this other particular competitor in the space has really done wonders. So there is a lot of confusion out there on how the DataDirect Shadow product differs from Neon zPrime, and through the blog we’re able to constantly answer and clarify those concerns by the market place. So we’re often pointing people to the blog in order for people to get that quick fix, both from prospects that are unclear, as well as media that have some confusion on how our product differs from another competitor.
Priya Ramesh: April, I think you hit a key point in how a company can use blogs as that extended platform to communicate different things that you may or may not be able to do on your Website or through a press release or some of the traditional modes of communication. It just gives you that much more ability to clarify things or be able to comment on some industry topics or even on some of your competitors. I think that’s a great way on how you have taken Data Connections as that extended medium to engage in more meaningful conversations and leverage to get beyond the traditional modes. So that’s great.
April Harned: In that respect, too, we’ve found some of our blog posts being included in extra articles in the mainframe space. So that’s exciting to see.
Priya Ramesh: From a PR perspective, and April we know how metric driven you are and that’s great because one of the challenges of the PR profession is always being able to explain ROI, the tangible benefits of your PR efforts. So with social media, would you mind sharing some of your ROI and some of the tangible benefits you have realized?
April Harned: Just from a traditional PR standpoint, obviously, I’ll address how we use blog posts to pitch the media as well. So I think it offers us real time information sharing that is so difficult. In terms of metrics, it is very difficult to measure the success of PR programs through traditional media. You can say, we had ten hits, but you really aren’t sure if those hits in traditional media outlets are driving traffic to your Website, or helping with sales. You might hear some anecdotal stories here and there, but just a very difficult activity to measure.
With social media, there’s so many tools in place, through Google Analytics and our own analytics program, Omniture where you can easily track how certain blog posts have fared, what the traffic has been, how much of the traffic is moving from your blog to the DataDirect.com as well as our rankings within search engine optimization. I know recently that when you type in mainframe middleware we’re the third term, right below IBM. That’s a big success measure that resonates within internal audiences as well. So it’s always about keeping them happy, and keeping them in the know. They might not understand all that goes on under the covers, but they certainly understand when you can say that you’re third, behind IBM, on Google. I think that’s been a huge success for us, and just the volume of traffic that’s coming to the blog now verses what it was 6 months ago on the three various blogs. That’s up from a few hundred to now a few thousand a month.
Priya Ramesh: And I know we’ve noted visitors being directed to your main Website, DataDirect.com, which is a huge metric that we’ve accomplished through social media. Now that we’re in the last quarter of 2009, and all of us are putting together the budgets for 2010, as a PR professional, as someone who has embraced social media, do you think that it is here to stay? It is probably a no brainer question, but what are your thoughts on the future of social media? And more and more companies, especially in the IT industry such as Progress DataDirect embracing it and taking it to the next level.
April Harned: I think that PR as a profession will no longer exist. I think traditional media will still have its place, but I think social media in the years to come is really where the profession is heading. So companies that want to get their name out there, and that are accustomed to and have bought into PR programs much embrace social media or they will be left behind. So I think that it’s critical, and I think that corporate blogs are going to be kind of taking on more and more. Almost becoming their own news room, if you will. I think that traditional media outlets are going to become thinner and thinner, and companies are going to go directly to the source, verses the third party media outlets.
Priya Ramesh: That’s a fair statement to make, definitely. With that I want to wrap up with some advice from you, any lessons learned. Every company has to go through a process when they implement something new. I’m sure with the social media implementation there are some lessons that you learned or the marketing team at Progress DataDirect went through. So any advice to other companies that are just getting started would be very helpful.
April Harned: I would say be prepared for change. I think that I wasn’t as prepared – I didn’t prepare myself for the time that it was going to take to not only help manage expectations internally, but insure that myself and that those that were involved in the program were educated, and that we continue to educate ourselves because I feel like there’s new tools and new techniques available, almost on a daily basis that I need to get up to speed on in order to be successful. And to insure that we are using the best tools available to us. Those that make the most sense for our organization and our corporate culture. I would advise people to read up on what’s available, and definitely ask the expertise of their firm to help them guide through the processes.
Priya Ramesh: That’s a great point: Flexibility is key to social media. Facebook and Twitter are here to stay, but then every day we see a new trend or a new tool out there.
April Harned: And they enhance those staples.
Priya Ramesh: And at the end of the day I think it’s not just about tools, it’s about making the connections with your audience online. I see a lot of people get a little bogged down by let’s have a Facebook campaign or a Twitter campaign without thinking through, why is it that you want to be on Facebook or Twitter? What kind of conversations would you like to have with your target audience? Definitely, flexibility is key, and having that open mind to social media definitely drives success at the end of the day.
Thank you so much, April, for taking the time to speak with CRT/tanaka and sharing some of your experiences with social media. And we only look forward to continued success for DataDirect.
April Harned: Thank you for all of your efforts. It’s been a hectic six months, but a very successful one. I’m very proud.
Priya Ramesh: We have enjoyed working with you. Thank you.
Image Source: http://morning-breath.com/Flexibility.jpg
Very insightful interview – thanks much for sharing your experiences with Social Media. We have similar challenges with getting internal folks to contribute to our Blogs – I love the idea of interviewing busy individuals in the organization and posting transcripts from the interview on the Blog – makes it a lot easier!