 Live from Las Vegas, Nevada, it's the Cube at IBM Interconnect 2015 brought to you by headline sponsor IBM. Hey, this is Arianna Grado here at Arianna Grado and I'm here in Las Vegas, Nevada at IBM Interconnect here with Brian Fonzo. Hey Brian, how are you doing? Good, how are you doing? Good, thanks. We're here talking about social media for business and the benefits. So you're here as a VIP influencer and can you tell me a little bit about what you're doing, how you became a VIP influencer and an influencer on social media? Sure, so I work with IBM on multiple different projects, not only with different teams, the cloud and the social business team, but my passion and focus has always been employee advocacy. So I've been working on as an influencer for a little over a year now with IBM. So I've been at a lot of IBM events, third one of this year actually. So no, it's nice, I get to really evangelize not only what they're doing but focusing on this, I really love the tagline of the new way to work. So on how cloud, mobile, social, kind of integrate in the entire solution. So those are really my passions to begin with, the social media is kind of the outlet and really connecting that to my community. Awesome. So what are some new ways you're working with social media? So I really think it's connecting that conversation. So really it's focused much more on a conversation than what it used to be really like a one-way marketing stream. And now it's really, what can we do to relate with the community? How can we leverage tools so that we have more time to engage? And so I really like to focus a lot on automate so you can have more time to engage instead of what people kind of look at technology and say, we're using technology just for technology's sake and they think it's an easy button and they don't have to be social on social and that's kind of where I focus. Awesome. So what are some ways you're automating social, you use that word, can you tell me a little bit more about that? So everything from social listening to, so for me like tracking hashtags, tracking different competitors, using things from Twitter lists to understand who's talking about what, what the common trends are. I mean really a lot of things like with the crowd chat platform where you have the back end analytics to give you the data that no one's really spitting out. I like to focus on not only what my content's being shared but if this person's getting a lot of their content shared, why is their community care about it and kind of figuring out those conversations? As well as I leverage Buffer to schedule things at the time where my community can optimally kind of engage and events are perfect because there's no better time for active engagement around a hashtag than really an event. Yeah, yeah we definitely see a lot of engagement around the hashtag IBM Interconnect here, a new way to work, you know, different hashtags. What are some hashtags you're seeing trending right now? No, I think the new way to work one's interesting and I think IBM Verse is kind of a fun conversation because I think they've taken that from email being a message platform which email is not going away as much as any of us might want it to go away but I think the idea that now it's more focusing on the conversation, not the message, so it's really people integrating social data, you know, for me I use like the Refesh IO app so every meeting I have it pops up and tells me the last time I engaged them, their birthday, I had one that popped up the other day I was like hey make sure to congratulate them on their new promotion, you know, and it gives you that social data that's already public so that when I am engaging I can personalize and have those conversations. So I think IBM Verse is going to do a great job of really focusing on conversations and people less than just a random message which is, you know, part of the problem with email across the board. Awesome. So you mentioned that phrase, engage the community, you know, join this conversation. How are some methods that you're using social media to like really build a community around you and your brand? Get the word out. So Twitter chats have been a big impact on my life mainly because I was using them to educate and find active people. Like I gave an ignite talk the other day here and for me really Twitter is finding ways to tell your story but you want to engage in conversations and it's hard, you know, there's so much data, so much information and being able to find Twitter chats that really people are actively engaging, they're focused around a common and shared purpose instead of like hey I have to follow all these people. So we use that, I do Google Hangouts on my chats, I run two chats on that side and then my podcast, we actually when we launched the podcast we did it with a hashtag as our name so it's MacTalk but stands for social, mobile, analytics and cloud but we use the hashtag because we want to be able to add to the conversation so we have our listeners will actually say, hey I'd love for you to talk about millennials approach to cloud computing and so because they're engaging with us we're kind of driving that conversation around the hashtag rather than driving in saying you have to follow me or I want more followers and it kind of filters the noise it's been really successful. Awesome, yeah it sounds like it. So what's your background? How did you get into social media? So I'm a tech cloud person to begin with so I did computer science and worked for Department of Defense and cyber for nine years and then kind of left that and did data center and cloud side so that's why I've been a friend of the cube for a long while I think 2012 I was on at VMworld or so but for me I was always at the tech backside but I always felt that for me I was really good at translating geek speak so I could work with my team tell people what they're doing and how I'm leveraging social and my focus now is really on how can I help other people leverage social to tell their story build their brand and really it's less about building their brand and more about getting their voice out because I think there's really no excuse today to not leverage the tools we have so everybody knows our own value proposition and there's really nobody better to tell our story than ourselves and I mean even the dev community that just doesn't really like why should I be tweeting why should I be on there and when you kind of get into the storytelling aspect you say hey you can connect with other developers around a hashtag or the open stack community is a great example of a tech community embracing the power of each other because I mean we is definitely greater than me across the board when it comes to that so I love that aspect of it so I'm a tech guy at heart I love the tech side I mean I'm at these events geeking out with the dev but a lot of what I'm doing is focusing on how they can leverage and utilize social media. Awesome that should be your new hashtag geek speak. Yeah it's good I think I might use that one. Yeah definitely so anything else you want to tell the audience some stuff you're working on. So I think right now it's interesting I think IBM is kind of pushing the boundary when it comes to influencers and how they're connecting influencers with content but also connecting with employees like I was able I just said down had lunch with Lisa DeLuca who's going to give the afternoon keynote today and I was sitting down having lunch with her what one of the you know one of the problems inspiring people that I've met I think it's really telling and I think telling the IBM story through my eyes is really focusing on hey how can other brands how can other companies do what they're doing and I think it's really connecting their employees and I think the future is on turning your employees into rock stars because they're your greatest asset so I'm excited on that side that's where we leverage our podcast so you can see all of my media all that stuff on millennialCEO.com is the home of our hub. Awesome well thank you so much it was great having you on here again Ryan Fonzo and I'm Ariana Grotto and you're watching The Cube.