Podcast 5 - Social media

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A full transcript of this podcast is reproduced below.

This is Scott Monty from Ford Motor Company. I hold the title of Digital & Multimedia Communications Manager, and essentially it means I am the head of social media, globally, for Ford Motor Company.

Social media is basically, boiled down, people having online conversations and the reason we think it’s so important at Ford Motor Company is, well let’s face it, everyone has a car story. Everyone has some sort of interaction with a vehicle at some point in their lives: whether it’s the first car they purchased, a family road trip they took at some point, perhaps their daily commuting vehicle, everyone’s got something relating to transport in their lives.

Traditionally the way that people have related their stories is in person, over the dinner table, perhaps in a pub, maybe over the garden fence, but now more of these conversations are taking place online. People have the ability to create content and to share their own experiences very easily online through sites like Facebook, or their own blogs, or even microsharing sites like Twitter, and it gives us an unprecedented opportunity to actually observe what’s going on and in some cases actually participate in the conversation - not in a Big Brother type of way but in a natural conversation way.

Part of the way we’re trying to make that work for the company is to breakdown the notion of Ford as simply the blue oval and to get people to think of us as a company of people; people who are completely passionate and talented and very thoughtful about where this company is going and the products that we produce. Our vision is a green, global high tech global company that is improving people’s lives, and this is an opportunity for us to actually prove this on a daily basis by engaging in conversation with people, understanding what they like, what they don’t like, what they might like to see improved and to let them know we’re listening.

I think one of the biggest parts, or one of the biggest opportunities that many companies have is to simply demonstrate that they’re listening to what their customers and what other consumers are saying. For too long, companies have been going about marketing and communications from a one-way perspective, talking at people, and here’s an opportunity for us to listen first and respond and actually understand what people are looking for and to be able to learn and improve our business as a result.

I think social media is giving us an opportunity to do that in a variety of ways, not just in communications & marketing, but we’re putting it to use in HR, our IT organisation, product development, customer service - it’s got a lot of different impacts and uses in various departments across the company.

Now, if I do my job well, hopefully this is a notion, a practice that will be democratised across the entire company and we’ll see people using it more freely as part of their day to day jobs, much like they do the telephone and email. This is just another form on communications, another way for us to connect externally to humanise the company, and to connect internally, to humanise the company within ourselves and to be able to share knowledge and hopefully become a more effective productive workplace

You know I think social media can be put to use by nearly any organisation. First you need to look as a company what you’re looking to accomplish, and where the people are you’re trying to reach. If they’re not using these tools then obviously it’s not sensible to use them, but in this day and age, from the mobile phone to the internet, a vast majority of people are online and easy to reach.

Everyone needs to understand the mindset of who they’re looking to engage with and to listen first. Any company that is interested in getting into social media can do well by simply showing up on some of these social platforms and listening. Whether it’s Facebook or Twitter, just using Google alerts to notify you when you’re company is mentioned, and to see how people are interacting and what they’re saying about you. You can learn an awful lot that way.

To me, most of this is common sense, it’s understanding how to relate to people. I think in some ways we’ve forgotten how to speak with our customers and we’re learning that all over again, just in a slightly different way.

My advice for anyone that’s looking to get into this would be to listen, listen, listen, and to understand really what your constituencies are doing, where they’re engaging and decide how you wish to engage with them.

So that is the vision at Ford Motor Company, it’s going to be a long road but I think we’re on a good track right now, we're certainly doing well in the marketplace, and this give us a lot of opportunity to leverage this from a truly global perspective

Scott Monty is the Global Digital & Multimedia Communications Manager at Ford Motor Company, where he is the company's strategic advisor on all social media activities, from blogger relations, to marketing support, customer service and internal communications. He is an active blogger and podcaster, has been featured in numerous news and business publications, on national television and frequently speaks at social media industry events.He has a Masters degree in Medical Science from Boston University School of Medicine and an MBA from Boston University Graduate School of Management. He also coined the term "tweetup."

www.thefordstory.com
twitter.com/ford
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