Manage the team at Jive Software responsible for
• Social intranet
• Customer community
• Social media marketing
• Corporate blogging
WHO AM I?
© Jive confidential
An IPO is not just one of the most important events in a
company’s history.
It’s also one of the biggest test of a company’s ability to
orchestrate and manage internal and external
communications.
Career Milestone: Help $JIVE Go Public
STRATEGIC CONCERNS
INVESTOR SENSITIVITES
LEGAL REQUIREMENTS
OPEN CULTURE
EAGER PUBLIC
REAL-TIME NEWS
Tricky Balance
Phase 1: Quiet Period 1
Phase 2: Listing Day
Phase 3: Quiet Period 2
Phase 4: Public Company
4 Social Phases of an IPO Different Social Rules in Each
This is a made-to-order case for Social Business
1. Sync up internally
2. Manage external communications
3. Celebrate customers
• IPO requires tight teamwork among executives in multiple departments,
from finance and legal to marketing and PR, as well as outside partners and
contractors.
• Our internal employee community served as a hub
• collaboration on documents and plans
• critical decisions in online discussions
• real-time status updates in activity stream
• quickly locate experts to answer pressing questions via
search
• Community allowed for strict privacy controls and permissions, ensuring that
sensitive information was shared only with authorized individuals.
1. Sync Up Internally
Executive blogs kept all worldwide employees simultaneously updated and
allowed for a quick Q&A that would be hard via non-social channels
• Subject to a variety of SEC rules on internal policies and external communications
• Essential that employees “get the memo.”
• Our social intranet made it easy to
• disseminate policies
• hold company-wide conversations
• collectively train our workforce on messaging and practices
• Internal alignment enabled us to communicate consistently with external audiences, including press, financial analysts, and potential investors.
2. Manage External Communications
Invested effort in acknowledging customers since they
helped build the company to this point and were interested in
progress. • Corporate blog with updates
• Online Q&A about the IPO
• Streamed the opening ceremony
• Invited key advocates to NASDAQ for toast and video testimonials
3. Celebrate Customers
Celebrating, socially
An IPO is incredibly hard work, and when a
company makes it to the finish line,
celebrations are in order.
Since not everybody could be present in
New York on listing day, I decided to bring
the event to them in a novel way.
I created a unique Twitter hashtag –
#jiveipo – and invited folks to join the
online conversation. Then we gathered and
displayed the tweets on the 7-story
NASDAQ building in Times Square as the
exchange opened with the new JIVE
symbol on the ticker. We also streamed a
video feed so people could watch
themselves appear in Times Square.
It was a NASDAQ first, and a fun finale to a
process that was social from beginning to
end.
I’m always available!
Find me at:
about.me/deirdrewalsh
Have questions? Want to connect?