2:10 — Andy Sernovitz introduces Suraya Bliss, Sr. Director of Corporate Web Properties and Digital Technologies, and Dave Tovar, Sr. Director of Digital Communications and PR.
2:12 — Suraya: One of the challenges we all face is how to make social media relevant to leadership and decision makers. What we did at Walmart was create a narrative of what challenges we faced, and what opportunities social media represented.
2:13 — Dave: 78% of our associates want to connect in some way online.
2:13 — Suraya: Another number that’s pretty relevant to us is that 22% of Americans know someone that works at Walmart or Sam’s Club — that’s more than 65 million people. That’s a huge reach.
2:14 — Dave talks about the latest Edelman Trust Barometer and how it showed that traditional media “trust” is on the decline, and the only category that’s increasing is “people like me.”
2:15 — Dave shares a couple of quotes from Walmart founder Sam Walton on how their brand is built on working together and keeping up on change.
2:17 — Suraya: We look at everything we do through that “purpose filter.”
2:20 — Dave explains how many touch points the company is focused on online: Blogs, Twitter, their corporate website… and how there are 100’s more.
2:21 — Suraya describes how Walmart is focused on delivering a consistent brand experience and message, every time.
2:22 — Suray: On July of 2007, Walmart.com launched their sharing and review components to their site. Since launch, they’ve gotten over a million reviews and comments, and more than 10,000 people that have submitted more than 20 reviews.
2:24 — Dave describes Walmart’s Check Out blog and how today they have 16 experts that share their experiences in buying things such as wine, videogames, etc. for Walmart.
2:27 — Suraya describes how Walmart is engaging journalists, investors and stakeholders by using social media to share live updates of their shareholder’s meetings.
2:28 — Dave: We are looking at Twitter, but one of the questions we always ask is: “What’s the point?” Dave shares an example of musician Chris Daughtry tweeting the brand, and while they think it’s great, they’re still working to define the value of engaging in that channel.
2:30 — Suraya explains “mywalmart” — their internal community to communicate with associates. They began with forums, the ability to friend people, “sharing your story,” and chatting capabilities. The site launched in April, and they’ve found that 90% of associates are returning to the site every 10 days.
2:31 — Suraya shares an example of press releases and how they’re working to share those in plain English for associates. To do so, they’ve found success posting the release as a forum topic and simply letting associates comment and share thoughts — all without pre-editing the comments.
Q&A
Q: Are you reaching out to moms online?
A: Clearly it’s an important audience we’re looking to reach out to. We just had a big presence at BlogHer. But we’re still looking on where to go with those relationships.
Q: Did your employee website replace anything existing, such as a newsletter or magazine?
A: We have a corporate magazine, which is still in existence. We have editorial meetings to ensure the content is very consistent. There was another website that existed — walmartbenefits.com — we partnered with that team to create one URL to clearly tell associates ‘this is the place to go’ to get everything they needed about their company.
Q: How do competitors’ activities play in your strategies?
A: Obviously we follow our competitors. I think Best Buy is doing some interesting things. We pay attention to that, but we have a different business model, and different customers we’re trying to reach out to. For each category we have, we only have specific competitors we follow.
Q: Do you have any unique data that you collect on your most active users?
A: I don’t have the answer to that question, but we do have a team that follows our community and measures how active members are.
We’re bringing our series BlogWell: How Big Brands Use Social Media to the Big Apple on March 29.
