Amazing Social Media Quotes from SXSW 2014

It never fails. At SWSX in Austin, you’re always exposed to new ideas. And memorable quotes. Here are some of the more remarkable things said about social media at the 2014 event, from corporate marketing leaders. (Reported by Mark Schaefer in his blog “{grow}.”)

“Social media does not change your culture. It reveals it.”

“In just 200 tweets, we can assess and identify 52 different personality traits of a customer. We ran an analysis over 500,000 people, and we really nailed this. Think of providing this powerful insight to a retailer.”—Sandy Carter, GM Ecosystems and Social Business at IBM

“If you have the leadership team be social, it will set an example for others. It can’t flow from the ground up. To get the middle managers involved, it has to be demonstrated from the top.”

“Data is a political tool. If you put data on the table, it can adjust the way you manage, the way you lead.”—Mike Stenberg, VP Web & Infrastructure at Siemens

“To drive employee adoption, you need to give them a message to rally around. Something to inspire and create pride. And then you need to take down the internal rules that stifle engagement and creativity. Curating and sharing something meaningful, driving participation—that’s where we need to go. Once we stopped shouting and started creating targeted, meaningful communication, we saw a 400% increase in engagement.”—Andrew Bowins, SVP External Communications at MasterCard