B2B Social Media Success: Raytheon’s “Clutter-Busting Content Strategy”
In the age of millenials, many agree that social media plays a large role in an organization’s communications efforts. It helps us listen to what our consumers want and need, and to interact and and connect with them in ways that were not possible just a few years ago. Despite the benefits of social media, we have frequently heard this refrain from non-believers: Social media, specifically Twitter, is for B2C. It is pointless for B2B, because they have no audience.
Well, to all those naysayers, Corrine Kovalsky, director of digital media at Raytheon, tells us that we all have an audience — and she has the proof to back it up. To find your social media audience, she suggests that we research, “break through the clutter” and act like a news organization.
Kovalsky thinks of her defense, technology and aviation company as an “owned media conglomerate” and treats it as such. She hired an Associated Press reporter as a company journalist to find interesting, quirky ways to tell stories and recruited a former NASA employee to serve as her chief listening officer.
At the recent Social Media Summit in New York, Kovalsky described a number of Raytheon’s social communities, including math students and educators (see video).
This past Friday, July 13, another group of Raytheon fans — hardcore aviation aficionados, who are commonly labeled “avgeeks” — paid for their own roundtrip airfare and accommodations to travel to England to a VIP Raytheon tweetup at the Farnborough Air Show, said Kovalsky. 
This ongoing conversation — both online and offline — with fans, friends and followers has enabled the defense contractor to see themselves as more than a business-to-government organization.
Aside from assembling a team to listen and create journalist-quality owned media content at Raytheon, the technology and workflow supporting Kovalsky’s department are supported by a number of innovative service providers, said Kovalsky. Awareness, Inc. is used for publishing and workflow, Traackr provides data on influencers, and Hashtracking allows for analytics surrounding tags.
Watch the video below of Kovalsky’s entire presentation on Raytheon’s “clutter-busting strategy” at the PR News Social Media Summit. How are you using social media to break through the clutter?
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