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Social Media today in management consulting

• Overview of Social Media use in consulting • Thought leadership examples • Executives on Twitter • Influencers on Twitter • Celerant Consulting – case study• Social Media comparison of consulting companies • GM’s & Shell’s use of SM, resources

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Webinar

• April 25, 2012: The Impact of Social Media on the Consulting Profession sponsored by Consulting Magazine

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"Thought leadership is the professional currency of the future"

• "Thought leadership is the professional currency of the future," says Don Bulmer (Vice President of Communication Strategy at Royal Dutch Shell) in an updated report. Bulmer points out that executives typically participate in one or two large networks (Twitter and LinkedIn, for example) and one or two niche communities specific to an industry or geography.

• There is no shortage of advice for CEOs easing into social media. Jason Seiden (CEO of Ajax Social Media) has written a series of blogs on social media for CEOs, showing how a chief executive can participate in social media and why it's a good idea. Generally, though, it's not the advice that's persuasive; it's the evidence. CEOs are seeing how they can recruit talented people through LinkedIn, stay current with business and technology trends in Twitter, and make better decisions in social contexts.

• Word is getting around. In 30 Key Findings on How The CEO Engages With Social Media, Jeff Bullas shows that CEOs are learning to trust what they're hearing through social media channels. Further, he offers evidence on the effectiveness of social media for the companies and for the CEOs themselves.

• Those success stories, not the advice from pundits and bloggers, are what matter.

• Credits: As an independent consultant, Karl Hakkarainen works with organizations and professionals in healthcare, law, education, and social services for whom marketing is a novel and somewhat suspect venture. He applies his 30+ years of connected communications to help them tell their stories in ways that fit within their traditions and the laws of their professions. Karl is a graduate of Amherst College.

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Thought Leadership Rewired: How Consulting Firms are Using Social Media to Market Their Ideas

• Social media is at the center of marketing discussions in a growing number of consulting firms, both large and small. Taking the lead from clients who have been blogging, forming LinkedIn and Facebook groups, Tweeting, and launching online communities, many consulting firms are following suit. They are feverishly exploring the latest wave of online techniques for attracting clients, prospects and key market influencers such as journalists, investors, and market analysts. A solid and growing number of consulting firms has gone far beyond the exploration stage and taken the plunge.

• Their interest in social media appears to be matched only by their fears. On the surface, social media seems to be a far less expensive, less onerous and much faster way to attract clients than publishing articles in management journals, writing white papers, producing books, running seminars and activities that increasingly fall under the moniker of “thought leadership marketing.” But social media, of course, can have a downside: Readers can and do talk back to what you post – to you and their peers. Negative reviews of an article, study or presentation can go public in minutes and around the world.

The Bloom Group is viewed as the pioneer of thought leadership marketing. Such recognition comes from helping Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Microsoft, Marakon Associates, Forum Corp., Unisys and other firms publish Harvard Business Review and Sloan Management Review articles, create bestselling books, secure columns in the Financial Times and numerous trade publications, and publish their own research studies and articles. http://www.bloomgroup.com/about (see next page for partial list of clients)

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Partial list of Bloom Group’s clients

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Executives On Twitter • Berkshire Hathaway | Warren Buffet | 1 tweets | 62,404 Followers | Following 1 |• Costco Wholesale | James Sinegal | 1 tweets | 27 Followers | Following 7 |• Dell Inc. | Michael Dell | 553 tweets | 18,005 Followers | Following 515 |• Best Buy | Brian Dunn | 916 tweets | 9,859 Followers | Following 1,140 |• Supervalu | Craig Herkert | 15 tweets | 73 Followers | Following 17 |• Aetna | Mark Bertolini | 46 tweets | 279 Followers | Following 38 |• Motorola | Gregory Brown | 55 tweets | 162 Followers | Following 18 |• eBay | John Donahoe | 23 tweets | 2,514 Followers | Following 55 |• Campbell Soup | Douglas Conant | 51 tweets | 522 Followers | Following 604 |• Fiserv | Jeffery Yabuki | 18 tweets | 191 Followers | Following 5 |• American Family Insurance Group | Jack Salzwedel*** | 789 tweets | 754 Followers | Following 29 |• Medtronic | Omar Ishrak***** | 3 tweets | 538 followers | following14 |• General Electric | Jeffrey Immelt• Ford Motor | Alan Mulally• Verizon | Ivan Seidenberg• PepsiCo | Indra Nooyi • Macy’s | Terry Lundgren• Symantec | Enrique Salem• Medco Health Solutions | David Snow• ITT | Steve Loranger• Qualcomm | Paul Jacobs• Chesapeake Energy | Aubrey McClendon• General Motors* | Edward Whitacre

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Influencers on Twitter

• Manufacturing Executive - @MfgExecutive (6,464 followers) • Chief Executive Magazine - @ChiefExeGrp (1,610 followers)• Gartner - @Gartner_inc (86,000 followers) • Forbes - @Forbes (711,710 followers) • Supply Chain Management News - @SupplyChainMgt (5,825 followers)• Wall St Journal Deals - @WSJDeals (11,760 followers) • Harvard Business Review - @HarvardBiz (710,000 followers) • Chemical Week - @ChemicalWeek (3,650 followers)

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Celerant Consulting – case study

• In mid-Q1 2011 I assumed responsibility for Social Media strategy at Celerant as Social Media Manager. At the time we had 65 followers on Twitter and 350 connections on the Celerant Consulting LinkedIn group.

• The strategy used to increase brand recognition on Twitter via organic growth was via Tweets, RTs, @mentions from corporations, individuals, influencers. Additionally we used imbedded social media tags in all our email marketing via Act-On Software to help gain followers.

• When I left (approx 9 months later) we had approximately 1,120 followers on Twitter and 740 connections on Celerant group. (see next slide for snapshot of some of the followers)

Results leading to increased brand recognition • Growth in Twitter followers – 15 fold (65 to 1,120) • Growth in LinkedIn connections – 110% (350 to 740)

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Social Media comparison Management Consulting Company

Twitter Handle Twitter Followers

Tweets Tweet Frequency In Days

Facebook Likes

Klout Score

Indexed By Search Engines

Links To Company Public Website

Celerant CelerantConsult 1150 3152 1 75 20 377 153

Proudfoot ProudFootTweets 487 72 10 13 13 1040 194

Highland HighlandGlobal 64 18 12 0 14 355 14

AlixPartners AlixPartnersLLP 379 993 1 185 42 1200 483

Marshall Teichert None 0 0 0 2 0 174 20

MainePointe MainePointe 22 6 100 16 0 147 15

ATKearney ATKearney 4577 560 1 110140 39 3000 2638

McKinsey McKQuarterly 226894 1498 1 160,638 61 10400 10800

Bain BainAlerts 13127 1278 0.3 2963 48 9850 2626

Accenture Accenture 43063 3646 0.1 105625 57 47300 18683

BCG BCG_Consultant 5143 260 2 20754 41 11100 4550

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Social media example & resources

Example of social media use at GMhttp://bit.ly/HAPNE0

Example of social media use at Shell “Back to the Future” http://socialmediatoday.com/don-bulmer/500748/back-future-social-media-shell

What is Klout? http://klout.com/corp/kscore

What are hashtags? http://bit.ly/maEPoU

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Thank you!

Bruce PeckExecutive Recruiter, Social Media consultant LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/h84wliTwitter: https://twitter.com/brucepeckT: 781 923 1180C: 617 835 2905