Comments on: Monsanto: Turning Heads with Social Media

By: Quick’n’Dirty Social Media Podcast: Episode 1 Recap « Mediaphyter – A Communications Cocktail

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 04:52:49 +0000

[...] Case Study: Monsanto and social media. Aaron shared his experience hearing Glynn Young from the agri-business goliath present about how the company has used social media to turn some of its negative perceptions into opportunity. Aaron has a full recap of the case study here. [...]

By: Michael Flint

Michael Flint — Mon, 18 May 2009 23:23:57 +0000

I too love to hear about B2B social media case studies like this one.

I strongly believe that customer engagement will be expected from all businesses in short time and social media will be the primary vehicle for that. It’s good to see progress.

I wonder though, how well “flying under the radar” will work for most companies, including the future of Monsanto’s social media engagement. I would think as long as the legal department is engaged, and communications can be moderated, then this could be successful for a larger corporation. I would love to see their presentation.

By: Aaron Strout

Aaron Strout — Mon, 18 May 2009 22:22:59 +0000

-Juliann, thanks for stopping by. And I agree, it’s not easy to stand up in the open and take your lumps but Monsanto seems to be doing a decent job of it (nice work on the “lemons to lemonade” analogy.”

-Kyle, nice that you’ve heard similar things about Monsanto. It will interesting to see how they fair when things do get ugly. But so far, I’m impressed with how their social team is conducting themselves.

By: Kyle Flaherty

Kyle Flaherty — Mon, 18 May 2009 21:35:43 +0000

While speaking at the National Agri-Marketing Association (NAMA) Conference in Atlanta last month about social media many folks brought up Monsanto in the same way you are in this post. Having seen some of their presentations and followed them a bit in researching for my panel I’ve been impressed that they are embracing some of these communication paths. They obviously have several challenges ahead of them in terms of transparency, but I think their ability to start a dialog should help them in communicating with the public and ultimately it is a much needed step.

The issue will arise however when they are asked to detail the actual truths to some of those “rumors” that are actually fact. Will they be able to be completely open about all of that when the time comes? It will be interesting to watch.

/kff

By: Juliann Grant

Juliann Grant — Mon, 18 May 2009 21:22:25 +0000

Thanks for sharing this story, I missed your live tweets last Thursday. It’s always good to see companies like Monsanto use social media in spite their criticisms, and are standing tall. I like that approach, it brings a new respect to a difficult situation. It’s always better to stand in plain sight vs. take cover and make people guess what is happening or wonder what a company’s response is to bad press or negative situation. And we need more good B2B examples like Monsanto where they took lemons and made lemonade. Good communication always prevails, even when the stuff hits the fan. Thanks, Aaron.