Social Media Training at Intel

What does it take to help a company become a social business? It takes the support of management and employees, and that requires education and enablement. Which is why Intel launched their Digital IQ social media training program.  Because they knew that without the buy-in of Intel’s 100,000 employees, social marketing would never be truly effective.
 
But where do you start?  You can’t boil the ocean. So Intel focused on training marketers first, before rolling the program out broadly. 
 
Rather than launch a social media center of excellence, they opted to build a social business at all levels of the enterprise. Their objective was to tap the power of an internal advocacy program that enabled everyone to help prospects and customers via social networks.
 
The Digital IQ program at Intel is organized like a higher education program with 60 classes organized into 4-tiers or levels of training. Some course are required, others are elective.  Entry level courses were digital so everyone had access on-demand. Intermediate courses were focused on enabling social media practitioners with live training. And advanced were very high-touch, one-on-one, interactive training sessions targeted to executives and SMEs.
 
How did they decide what was basic, and what was advanced?  Basic trainings were focused on answering the question of why.  Intermediate classes answered who and how.  And advanced classes really dug deeper into how at an even deeper level.
 
In this podcast, Eric Schwartzman (@ericschwartzman), founder and CEO of social media training provider Comply Socially talks to former Intel social media strategist Ekaterina Walter (@ekaterina).  Ekaterina was a member of the team that spearheaded the development of Digital IQ University at Intel.
 
 
Topics Addressed:
 

Strategies for organizing tiered social media training programs
Inside the different courses in the Digital IQ program
How to design high-level, advanced social media training programs
Social media crisis communications training
Social media training programs by Comply Socially
Benefits of classroom social media training vs. online social media training
Biggest challenges associated with live social media training programs
The biggest challenge of social media training programs
Recommended lengths for online social media training courses

Ekaterina is the best-selling author of Think like Zuck, The Five Business Secrets of Facebook's Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg, which details why purpose, people, process and partnerships are the keys to success in the modern age.
 
Ekaterina Walters is Partner and CMO at Branderati. which provides software as a service to manage online advocacy programs though influencers relations.

 
About the Podcaster:
Eric Schwartzman specializes in social media training. His company Comply Socially, provides employers with blended social media training programs that help manage risk and scale engagement.  You can follow Eric Schwartzman on Twitter @ericschwartzman and also on Google+.