Social Networking Conference Wrap: Michael Brito on Big Brand Loyalty

Michael Brito, Intel: Social Networking Brand Loyalty: View from a Fortune 100 Firm

Michael is Intel’s chief consumer evangelist. He engages people across all relevant social networks, and he’s involved with creating significant content as the editor of a blog, scoop.intel.com.

• Michael is the consumer marketing face of Intel, and his mission is to build brand loyalty within social networks. He is a former yahoo and evangelist for HP.
• Brands have to be believable (because there’s a lot of skepticism); don’t rush in and try to make a statement; begin by observing and listening. Ask yourself what is the environment like, what is important to people?
• Don’t be too focused on monetizing (your social network activity). Yahoo is too focused on monetization.
• Enterprises are not human, so they need to learn to approach social networks as people first, and business later.
• Be conversational; don’t look at social networks as “outlets for your message.” Ask people questions, and respond to their tweets. Scott Monty is a friend who’s doing this right.
• Twitter is fantastic for news. Dell has 50 people on Twitter. richard@dell.com is one community guy.
• Michael likes Forrester’s Ladder of Participation. Don’t treat social media as exclusive, let anyone participate after they’ve gone through some training. Create your own social media guidelines.
• Intel thinks of itself as an “ingredient brand,” so Michael is trying to get people excited about their processors to drive demand.
• Michael edits scoop.intel.com. They also have communities.intel.com, which is similar to Dell’s Ideastorm, and wepc.com.
• A big success has been the Digital Drag Race promotion, which was created for Intel by Razorfish. It engaged developers in highend video development (that requires ultrafast processing power). It won significant attention worldwide from influencers.

The Social Networking Conference took place June 24-26 in Beverly Hills. Between leading the pre-conference workshop on Enterprise Social Networking and leading the final panel, I scribbled these notes.

Enjoy and watch for the final report within a few days!