Interview with Matt West, 'Social Media Manager' from SolidWorks

First of all, my most important responsibility is the presence of our brand in all websites social actively used by our clients. Make sure that we are active on Twitter, YouTube or FaceBook; that we are actively speaking, holding conversations with our customers, answering questions, solving problems, providing contenidos… Secondly, monitoring social sites in terms of 'reputation management'. It's knowing what is said about us, predict potential emergencies in public relations, timely detect possible problems and act on them. Third, use social channels such as a feedback mechanism extra. In addition to direct visits customers, online surveys, telephone conversations, social networks allow us to have a way to collect information of interest to all departments of our. People talk about design, engineering. People talk about SolidWorks. And all this generates much information which may be useful to our teams of product development, to our marketing department, of our customer service... A part of my responsibility is to collect and summarize all these data, and direct them to the departments to which can be useful.

Actually, no… only to a certain extent. I do not believe that social media, as such, can be managed. What you do direct is your strategy and your approach. As mark, as a corporation which is our philosophy?, how we want to show us?, what we intend to achieve? Deciding it is also part of my job. This is the part that you can actually control. You can also decide which individuals are which will be devoted to the subject. As for what to say our clients, of course, you can not do anything. The only possibility is to ensure that answer it, you interaccionas with them. Probably a better name would be contare 'Ambassador' or something but I was not I who decided the name of the post.

As much as we can. 80% Of the time that our users speak, communicate, via Twitter, make it to solve real problems. Obviously much of this information is available, but it is necessary to compile it, organize it and filter her. We use various tools and services to add this information. Obviously, I have no time throughout the day to read everything that happens. One of our sources of information is the form of consultations of our own website. Our development department devotes more and more time to study our users queries.

We use this channel of additive form, 'plus', all other traditional forms of collection of information and research. Sometimes confirms something we already knew and then serves as a validation tool. Sometimes we detect a trend, and we try to confirm it by other means to ensure that it is not a mere exception. We must be aware that many of our clients do not use social networks. To be completely honest, those who use them are a minority. Therefore, we must ensure that this minority which is heard through the social networking really is representative of all users.

I think that people have a tendency to be a bit more honest.

If one of our heads of product comes to visit you throughout a day's work, probably will not you see check your bank accounts online, or call your wife to discuss who makes dinner. But what would you do if there is none. We find people writing on the web "SolidWorks has been the worst thing that could happen"... and then we have the opportunity to get in touch with them and find out what the problems are really [with our product].

When you do a survey on many occasions you are looking for specific answers. You are limiting the possible answers to a 'yes' or 'No'. On the other hand, when someone writes without that what you have requested, you can understand a little better what are the problems that can 'really' have.

It is often the case. Many times someone is angry, and when write you offering our help us respond simply by saying that "it wasn't anything that was 'mosqueado' at the time". Not only that, more than once someone writes "SolidWorks hatred", and when I am writing to ask what the problem really is, respond me that the problem was not exactly with SolidWorks, but with one of his colleagues who had just make a model that is wrong.

Social networks are added to the rest. The television did not disappear the radio, but made her change. The radio serials no longer exist. Many people wondered what the role of journalists when everyone is writing blogs. All this content generated by consumers, users, offers a point of view more. If you are a user of SolidWorks and a particular problem occurs to you, you know that there are other users who have possibly written something on the topic in a blog or a forum. They have a broad perspective, but a much more specific and concrete. Journalists have a broader perspective: know where placing each company in the landscape of an industry. Users provide other information, more information. Perhaps to the point of information overload.

At the moment many Internet companies are leading in that direction. To some extent we are returning to old practices, to search for things using the methods we used to use. People has been using Google which has forgotten to ask his friends so much. One of the virtues of these tools is that you can put a question to a limited group of people, you know, but that is something broader than that of the five friends and 15 co-workers with whom you speak often. You can keep in touch with your friend who has gone to work at Germany, and ask what television recommends. It is something you can do on Facebook, something that Google intends to do with the 'social search'.

This is one of the sections which need a software solution. Some companies offer a service in this regard, in mode SaaS ('software as to service': software as a service). Configure these tools requires a certain time until you get to do what you want: at the end is to compile and filter. There is no easy answer. In SolidWorks, despite having a million licenses (a lot), the number of active users on social networks is relatively small. Think in terms of Nokia or Coca Cola. They have many people working on the issue. Are the new public relations? He begins to have applications that detect a user asking for the price of SolidWorks on Twitter and make it a potential client in a CRM.

We use Nielsen Online. Nielsen bought BuzzMetrics makes a couple of years. I've been using the service for one year. He has saved me busy counting how many new videos there are on YouTube about SolidWorks.

The main ones that we use are Twitter and YouTube. Both generate many conversations. And our users, especially students, consume much video. Our training Department is creating more and more videos for students: tutorials, case studies, instructions,... We have a presence on Facebook, but without an extremely active presence, but to disseminate some relevant news as new versions of our programs, or SolidWorks World. There is also a group on LinkedIn, originally launched by a user.

In addition, we are still different blogs, including those generated internally. This includes international blogs, in different languages. In some areas, as in Asia, are most used tools that we are developing to social networks.

Would I not so call social network, but a way of facilitating communication between members of a team, without having to launch another program. They are likely to be carried out at the level of Dassault Systèmes, and tools that are the same for all programs of the group. There must be something better than e-mail or Twitter or Instant Messaging. The technology is already there, just need to integrate it.

It really is all very speculative. Everyone talks about the semantic web. I believe that it will be easier to communicate regardless of the platform. And the ways to search for things will change.