Intel's Social Media Story - just the beginning

posted by Bryan Rhoads on April 07, 2009

We introduced Intel’s blog program 2 years ago this month. I’d like to use this Intel anniversary as an opportunity to reflect and look back at some of our social media efforts over the past decade.

Its not possible to go into every project and program in one blog post. Nor can I properly speak to all of the hard work from our various social media teams. So, I look to others to help fill in those gaps, but here’s a high-level overview of just some of the activities to date at Intel.

We created Blogs@Intel as a new business tool for our customers and employees to directly communicate and collaborate from keyboard to keyboard. We launched the blogs on April 10th 2007.

Yet in fact, our social media story started much earlier. 8 months prior, we launched our IT@Intel pilot blog. It was a big success, so we launched more blogs, including this one. Moreover, the Intel Software Network started our popular developer blogs and wikis for software collaboration back in May of 2006.

Internally, grassroots employee blogging started as early as 2003 consisting mainly of self-maintained servers under desks. These internal employee blogs gained a tremendous following. Intel CEO Paul Otellini launched his employee blog in 2004. Other top execs and leaders followed throughout 2005 culminating in a fully IT-supported platform that same year.

Team-based wiki collaboration started in 2004, culminating in our enterprise-wide “Intelpedia” created by Josh Bancroft in November of 2005. Today, Intelpedia contains over 15K articles from Intel employees defining, collaborating and documenting their part of the vast Intel workplace. Intelpedia was founded in the spirit of open information sharing and community moderation of content, much like the very popular Wikipedia.

We created all of these social spaces to foster dialogue and make important contributions to a widening range of issues relevant to our customers, to our employees and to the future of technology.

Since then, we were the first to offer a corporate blog in the People’s Republic of China with Blogs@Intel China (ok, Dell may have beaten us by a few days in May ‘07, but I’ll need to exchange notes with Lionel about that). We soon followed with Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese and English blogs on topics ranging from corporate social responsibility and research to jobs and customer support. Intel’s on-domain social media offering now totals over 35 blogs and vibrant communities.

Our social media guidelines are public in over 25 languages. And our strategy is simple:

• Build community
• Engage others
• Empower employees
• Expand the conversation
• Strengthen relationships through active listening
• Be social media leaders
• Amplify Intel and our brand

Today, we’re scaling our participation even further. Since last December, Intel launched a global initiative and training program (Digital IQ) that is open to all employees to become active participants in all forms of social media. We built this framework to ensure employees are successful, to protect their own privacy online and to engage in ways that are consistent with our ethical and corporate standards.

We want employees to get involved online - engage, comment and participate in the areas where they’re most passionate. We encourage them to engage in conversations on competitive topics but in those cases where the topic is part of pending or existing legal or litigation matters, we ask that employees contact our legal department before proceeding, as there could be risk to the employee and to the company.

Within 12-weeks, over 700 Intel employees have “raised their hands” and volunteered to tell their story, lend their experience and share their knowledge directly on places like Twitter, Facebook, technology websites, BBSs in China and support forums throughout the planet. We’re reaching out by engaging in technology conversations in existing communities where our knowledge is welcome and when participation is appropriate.

And, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

As a part of the Intel Social Media Center of Excellence and on behalf of my colleagues, we appreciate your continued feedback and participation. My hope is that this participation empowers us all and that we continue to discuss technology that defines tomorrow.

In follow-up posts, I’ll be talking more specifically around some of our challenges, successes, and disappointments. What we’ve learned and the common struggles we share.

Until then, follow me on Twitter @bryanrhoads

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