Exclusive Interview with Yann Gourvennec, Head of social media at Orange B., on E-reputation

Yann, as the head of Internet and digital media Orange Business Services, what is your job exactly?

Well my job is actually twofold: on the one hand I am in charge of all the communications websites for Orange Business Services worldwide, that is approximately 45 to 50 of websites depending how many microsites we have up and running; and on the other hand I am in charge of everything regarding social media and blogs at Orange Business Services. My job is actually to devise a strategy for these media, to implement the changes and spread the word around about Orange Business. Needless to say that Internet reputation is at the heart of this job both from an Internet point of view and a web 2.0 point of view.


Over the past two years, Orange Business Services has significantly increased its online presence through the orange business blogging and orange business TV. What is the ROI in terms of business leads and reputation?

The ROI is tremendous. In fact I don't really like that term ROI, I would rather we talked about ROE (return on engagement). There are more than many ways in which you can measure the ROI of a social media strategy. As you say it's brand awareness and visibility, I think we definitely got that. Also in terms of content production, we saved approximately, according to my reckoning, something like €300,000 worth of content delivery. Besides, the content that was produced through user generated content mechanisms is umpteen times better than the one which we would get through third party because it comes from us, it is true content. Last but not least, the ROI of our social media strategy is measured in terms of feedback that we get from our clients, mainly on the security blog, in which some of them interact with us to help us improve our own products using some of the articles that we have produced. Any well thought-out criticism about a service that we have devised and which can actually help improve the service for the benefit of the entire community has a tremendous and white as you may imagine.

how would you define online reputation?

Online reputation is about letting people know who you are on the first hand, is a bit like brand awareness on the web, plus there is an image function as well. To a certain extent it is not very different from the main ingredients of advertising: awareness and image. This is both applicable to individuals and companies and brands. To an extent when you have a brand, both individual online reputation (i.e. that of each individual working for your brand) and brand online reputation go hand-in-hand together.

You recently launched media-aces, following the example of the American social media business Council, what are the goals and who joined the association so far?

Well first and foremost, I would like to say that we're not treading on the toes of the social media business Council. We have created a smaller version of the smbc in France with a very different sets of rules and guidelines. Media-aces is only meant for Europe, and UK is the next country on which we are working. We do not aim at competing with the social media business Council, and I remain a full – and proud – member of that organisation. Yet, there is no way that the social media business Council can look after French companies, mainly when they are small. Similarly for the UK. Media aces looks after the small companies and regional European companies and tries to put together the heads of social media – or whoever looks after social media in these companies - so that they can exchange information and advise and help each other. It's very much a peer-to-peer type club, and will be using extensively the Internet and its media-aces.org blog and chapter blogs (http://france.media-aces.org, http://uk.media-aces.org etc.) to spread the word about what we're doing, including publications, online and off-line. Many large accounts have joined us such as Danone, Yoplait, Dassault Systèmes, EDF, RATP, Poweo and many small others, the names of which may not be known to non European readers. The proportion is about 50% large and 50% small companies. The next chapter to get started is the UK, in a similar fashion, and we have just managed to enrol Barclaycard into our non profit media-aces organization. Other UK customers will follow suite.

5.10% of twitter users do 90% of tweeting (Harvard Business) and 20% of tweets mention brands products (Penn State research), but what is the implication for businesses?

We have been active on Twitter as a brand since February 2009 but we are far from seeing all the implications of the moment. We are slowly but surely learning as we are going along. Trial and error is always the motto with social media. Now we have more than 5600 followers (@orangebusiness), and we are on the heels of the likes of Accenture. Indeed, we are using twitter extensively to spread the word around about the content that we are creating and we are strictly avoiding to talk about ourselves in a selfish way; we consider we have been sort of tolerated to work on social media platforms and therefore we have to ask permission (as in permission marketing) and I do not think that brands should brag about being in twitter and other such like Web 2.0 tools. It's a matter of getting used to it and getting other users used to the fact that we – brands – are using it too. Besides, we have to do it on very nicely and transparently and this is in my eyes the reason why we have so many followers: we are not selling anything to them, we are using social media to create links, share information and initiate discussions. That’s all, but it’s very important to us.

Would you recommend to us 2 to 3 people to follow on twitter?
This is a difficult question. I am following nearly 2000 people (@ygourven) and I am mostly in touch with my counterparts from all areas and countries, consultants and experts. Apart from those people – who are very numerous – I would definitely recommend you follow Bob Pearson and Andy Sernovitz from SMBC, and David Armano and Tara Hunt and Guy Kawasaki (if you don’t get overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of his tweets!). With a special thought for Media Aces too of course.