BlackRock — the largest investment-management firm in the world — faced a challenge companies of all sizes face: How to get valuable information to staff who need it, and efficiently.
At BlackRock, this problem was especially affecting their sales team. Everyone was trying to feed them information. That’s when Jonathan Haley and his team turned to social tools to solve the disconnect.
So far, they’ve seen a measurable decrease in support calls, increased conversion rates and an increased perception of their sales team as advisers. This internal success has led to big things externally, too.
At our recent BlogWell event, Haley shared the details of how they pulled it off. A few of his big ideas:
- Getting familiar with social tools takes less time than you think. Haley’s team started blogging internally and externally and became social media users. They used a “speed research” format, where they tried to learn something new in 15 minutes per week, and this began to build momentum.
- Find the common enemy that social media can overcome. At BlackRock, the firm’s villain was defined as “The Big PDF” — an inaccessible and one-way piece of communication. Their social solution was to create accessible content that was comment-friendly, shareable, searchable and added value to the discussions.
- Your users benchmark you against the Web as a whole, not just your competitors. If you’re only looking at your direct competitors to define how well you’re doing in social media, you’re missing the bigger picture.
Watch the case study:
Slides from this presentation are available here.
And if you like this presentation, be sure to check out our upcoming BlogWell events in New York and Washington, D.C.