Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business, 2nd Edition

Chapter Sixteen

Case Studies

Often the best way to achieve success in the digital space is to review where others have failed or succeeded. With that, what follow are a few case studies that should prove helpful.

SafeNet Security Systems¹

B2B

Situation: SafeNet is the country's third largest supplier of security systems. One of the things it does is help put the “s” into “https://.”

Action: SafeNet started a group on LinkedIn to encourage discussions and idea sharing among those in the Information Security Community. (See Figure 16.1.)

Figure 16.1 SafeNet

Result: SafeNet's director of product marketing, Holger Schulze (@HolgerSchulze), started the LinkedIn group as his own experiment. In fact he started two groups; one that had SafeNet in the title of the group and one that was called the Information Security Community. The group with SafeNet in the group name didn't attract many members, so he turned it into something that could be used internally by the company.

Not deterred, he turned his attention to the Information Security Community. In a little over two years the group has grown to over 120,000 members. More importantly, the group is producing $1 million annually in additional revenue to SafeNet.

There are four members of SafeNet, from various divisions (marketing, systems, engineering, product management), each spending a few hours a week interacting with and managing ...