Organization (IBM Company) Business-To-Business Is a Communication

¶ … Organization (IBM Company)

Business-to-Business is a communication theory that aims at enhancing the effectiveness of the selling process. For the past decades, the cost of hiring skilled professionals has been on the rise than the cost of media, advertising, or price index of consumers. Collaborations conducted online have the potential to change how employees in a business work with clients and their colleagues. Looking at IBM, employees are often encouraged to explore how online collaborations via social media can empower them as citizens, innovators, and global professionals. Employees of IBM interact in a way that represents a new model of business rather than a mass communication: this model is based on masses teams of communicators (Turban, Kohli, Cheung & Lai, 2006).

Through such discourse of employee-client interactions and employee-employee interactions, the company has been able to share employee expertise amongst their clients, surrounding communities and shareholders. The company has a long history of sharing their social media networks outside and within the walls of IBM. From early 1990s, IBM has been using Internet resources through active recommendations to their employees; a time most companies sought to restrict workers from accessing the Internet. In early 2000, IBM embraced a strategic decision of adopting the use of Blogs and motivating workers to participate in blogging. The company is increasingly encouraging its employees to be responsible by involving themselves in the rapidly growing sphere of learning, collaboration and business relationships (Egan, 2007).

Employees of IBM have acquired pride and a feeling of public expression through centennial and service celebration. As the service advances, bloggers have managed to upload more than 2,000 photos on IBM's social interactive site. In accordance, the company experienced a dramatic movement in its online buzz tone, which shifted from a predominant neutral theme to a single toned conversation. The worldwide presence of IBM dominated with vibrant social involvement from employees and clients of IBM across the world. The Centennial programs offered by IBM reflected critical topics of conversation demonstrating the point that people involved in global social conversations embraced and understood them (Hutt & Speh, 2013).

IBM used the strategy of social media to attract clients' interactions through social media. One of them is the Twitter marketing strategy, which is a hub of social media that reflect a single landing framework engaging bloggers to engage in the live stream discussions. Employees upload conference videos while clients engage in twitter comments, which have led to over 40 million IBM impressions on social networks. Employees are encouraged to use the search engine capabilities by sites like LinkedIn. They can access details of potential employers who have been difficult to contact using traditional modes of communication such as email and telephone. Through such platforms, employees have been able to identify appropriate contacts. In addition, IBM has managed to initiate contacts with service providers through searches on LinkedIn. Customers, who have never heard about services offered by IBM, were able to arrange for calls, which in most cases have resulted in signed contracts (Halpin et al. 2009). The B2B model used by IBM entails:

I. Thinkers engaging expertise and experts in enhancing global businesses

II. Designing digital systems that develop trust speeding value creation

III. Embracing iteration in all business activities

IBM has created robust initiatives of social media that focus on enabling their clientele to be active participants in social media. The company has designed an internal site of social business founded on social, educational, and interactive programs. These programs have proven to be critical to socio-business details of IBM. This resource educates clients of IBM about various social initiatives and social media that take place on the international scene prompting them to be active participants. The company provides a host of modules, which provides clients with knowledge on how to use social websites. IBMers have been able to apply tactics of social media computing in fostering collaborations, developing networks, forging closer relations, building credibility and consuming and disseminating news. This leads to more prepared and informed IBMers as they take actions (Mentzer & Moon, 2005).

IBM has made this information and tools available thus changing the way their clients approach social media and their culture. The public gets information about IBM through researchers, sales people, speakers, and consultants. Within the borders of IBM, there exists a huge base of expertise based on millions of doctors and expertise from various fields. Human resource is the most vital asset of this company. IBM seeks to identify their expertise and strength and link them to potential partners, clients and the public in pursuit of knowledge visiting the website of IBM. During the early times of Internet discovery, IBM adopted internal social tools to facilitating collaborations between employees. This was done simultaneously with sending employees to the website to obtain information on what clients and potential clients have commented about the company. This culture has enabled the company to monitor their social media (Egan, 2007).