We decided to use social media for both internal and external communications on Day 1, in addition to other channels. You might remember that “Day 1” is the way we call the day when the acquisition will be formally announced.
We use SocialCast, internally. VMWare SocialCast is a social network and collaboration tool for the enterprises. Few days ago I have created a group – it works like the LinkedIn groups – to answer all questions from employees and to post news about the acquisition/integration process.
Externally, we have created a full comms plan as you can expect from acquisitions of this magnitude (we agreed to be acquired for £3.4b). We will use social media as well, to communicate to customers, partners and external stakeholders. Joint plans (= from both companies) are already in place to secure consistency with the message and to align the communication streams on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook.
More to come.