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Social Media Thought Leader -Intel's Ekaterina Walter [Part 2]

This article is more than 10 years old.

[NOTE.  This is the second and final part of my profile on Intel's Ekaterina Walter,  You should read this earlier part first. It is part of my continuing series on social media thought leaders.]

Intel’s social media strategy is part of a wider business objective. The company designs, manufactures and markets extremely sophisticated electronic componentry. These go inside of other company products. It's not like Dell, or Apple, Coke or Ford Motors. You and I don't go shopping and opt to buy a nice shiny new Intel microprocessor.

Yet the companies has spent tens of millions of dollars over more than 20 years establishing its brand in the perceptions of consumers, making us feel more confident when we see the little swoosh that assures us there's Intel inside?

What is the business reason to have Ekaterina Walter, and other mid-level employees, running around meeting people such as Kelly Olexa and Jacqui Chew; speaking at her immigrant roots at conferences, tweeting comments of support to struggling entrepreneurs and serving up tips for using Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest on her column at American Express Open Forum, a community for small business operators?

What does it all have to do with the world's biggest chip maker?

Disneylandesque Booth

In fact, Intel has been consumerizing its brand since Walter was still growing up in South Russia.  In 1991, it built the first million-dollar exhibit booth for the Consumer Electronics Show [CES] in Las Vegas. It was a Disneylandesque creation that let people conduct a walking tour of an Intel microprocessor. This launched the  Intel Inside, campaign that endured for nearly 20 years.

It made Intel a household name and the company spent scores of millions of dollars to achieve that recognition. But why? As so many business thinkers have asked about social media, where is the ROI in getting shopkeepers and housewives, gamers and entrepreneurs to know the Intel brand?

“If you want to make a change; if you want to build a world where people have more connectivity, then you need to reach out and touch everyone. We are imagining a future world with our customers and then we make technology that makes our customer dreams come true. It’s why we bother. It makes absolute business sense,” Walter told me.

And the personal and social networking is fundamental to the belief set as well as any implementation strategy. “I believe the only way to make a change is to share what we know, to help others” she said."

That thinking is the business justification for her conference appearances; championing of entrepreneurial women and immigrants; her editorial contributions, webinars and hanging out listening to people at industry meet ups.

“There are so many big and small  businesses that struggle. It is our responsibility to share what knowledge we have to empower those who do not know.  I am personally trying to do as much as I can to empower others,” she said.

From that perspective, helping Olexa find the courage to start her own business, and sharing her personal story at a TEDx conference so that other immigrants such as Chew will be inspired and motivated makes perfect business sense.

From my perspective, Walter's efforts represent a faster, better, less expensive way for Intel to get closer with its business customers as well as the people who consume Intel powered products. It probably has a more enduring quality than n imaginary tour through a giant microprocessor. What Walter does is win minds by sharing knowledge. It costs a lot less than sending  messages through more traditional, less personal traditional marketing channels.

Vision &  Glue

Vision is half the Walter Intel story. The other half is about glue. Ekaterina has played a pivotal role in adding structure to how social media is used by any of the company’s 100,000 employees, all over the world. She has also been a flagship mover in getting marketing, branding and the various Intel departments to not only buy in to social media, but to participate in it.

By 2006, Intel realized that social media was more than the passing fad that so many other conventional enterprise thinkers considered it to be. Instead, Intel understood that the fast-emerging conversational technologies were about to have transformational impact on the modern enterprise.

While Intel was active in social all the way up to CEO Otellini, no one had stepped back to take a long view, to tie social media into business strategies. To explore what was being done and what needed to be done, a five-person task force was established and would be assigned to investigate and report for a year, then be disbanded.

Walter volunteered.

In 2008, instead of dissolving, the task force was made permanent and renamed the Intel Social Media Center for Excellence, it has since grown to seven fulltime members. Along with Walter, is Bryan Rhoads who is also a senior social media strategist based in Portland. He is also well-known and respected in social media circles and  enjoys the nickname ‘The Blogfather.’

While Rhoads focuses on consumer audiences, Walter focuses on social platforms (such as Facebook and YouTube) and companywide enablement. They work together often and well. Said Rhoads, “Ekaterina or ‘E’ – as we all call her - is an amazing project manager, with great attention to detail. She’s a great connector and prominent voice for Intel’s social media efforts. You always know where you stand with ‘E.’ She’s always direct, straightforward and can whip almost anything into shape. I’m amazed at the amount of stuff she can get done.”

In this light, Walter surprised me. I had not previously met anyone who seemed equaly passionate on organizational structure and  helping others. Additionally, while many enterprise-based social media professionals try to avoid marketing departments, Walter sees herself primarily as an integrated marketing professional with social media being the power tools of her profession.

She seems fascinated with the magnitude and complexity of transforming an established global entity into a modern conversational corporation. “It keeps evolving,” she said. “You go from grassroots and evangelism to adoption and program management. You need guidelines and policy and buy in, then you need to leave space for people to do what they want.”

“It just can’t be drive-by thinking.  You need to think through how this effects a brand of a 100,000-person company. Then you put a structure in place. It accommodates people across the globe with a strategy that works for everybody. “ Then you change again. “Every year we redefine our approach and priorities and adapt our strategies.”

Arrows in the back

She also conceded that converting Intel into a social company was not a case of everyone joining hands and singing Kumbaya in harmony. There has been resistance; sometimes formidable. “How do you know who the pioneers are? They’re the ones in front of you with the arrows in their backs," she quipped.

To reduce barriers, Walter collects as many case studies as she possibly can. Like most social media professionals she finds measurement to be challenging yet extremely important. “We are pretty advanced in how we think about analytics. We know how to measure paid media, but how do we extend that to social? For each touchpoint, we look at available metrics. Then we develop our own internal dashboards to look at reach, engagement, advocacy and other metrics. It’s all new. There’s not much benchmarking available just yet,” she said.

A final key point that she sees is the scalability of social media for customer feedback.  “In the old days we went to computer clubs to hear what the most passionate people thought. That got us to see and hear 50 people at a time. Now engage on Facebook and touch 10 million people at a time. It’s a different way to connect with customer and an amazing way to build relationships,” she said.

Walter emphasized the contributions of others at Intel repeatedly during my talks with her. “One can never reach any meaningful level of success alone.” In her comments she was heavily focused on the power of both internal and external networks, which seemed particularly fitting for a representative of a company that powers most of the world’s networks. But she sees networks in far more human terms than I once perceived Intel to think, and thus she has contributed greatly to the humanization of a behemoth technology entity.

[Know someone who should be a social media thought leader? Please email me.]