Read Aneta's Podcast Transcript here.

This blog post is co-posted with StevenGroves.com.

Social media in the enterprise is creating a huge shift in many companies, but what happens when a 90 year old company decides to invest in a process of listening to their customers and actually letting them talk to one another?

As part of the series around the ROI of Social Media, and leading up to the 2010 MeasureUp Conference in Chicago next month, we interview Aneta Hall, the Emerging Media Manager at Pitney Bowes. She is a presenter at the 2010 MeasureUp Conference in Chicago, where her topic is “From Fear to Trust – Employee Engagement in Social Media”.

Aneta introduces us to the processes Pitney Bowes (PB), as a 90 year old company, has adopted using social media to connect with prospects, customers, employees and stakeholders around their mail and information needs. The changes have driven real change in the various business units, particularly as in the last 10 years they have acquired a variety of businesses. PB now provides a broad range of solutions to the market, not only in mail instruments and document management, but also location intelligence, traffic pattern analysis, predictive intelligence, and relationship marketing. Aneta shares how sees social media technology supporting the ability to tell the PB story to the market.

The role of the Emerging Media Manger at Pitney Bowes is to help the organization understand and constantly analyze the evolving landscape of social media. In her role, Aneta teaches other how to use the technology and she often presents the model outlined in Chris Brogans’ awesome book, ‘Trust Agents’. She also maintains the strategic roadmap for PB and is often glued to the PB Radian6 console, because of the value she places on listening to the conversation in social media versus trying to use social media as just another channel to broadcast the same messages used in traditional media.

Pitney Bowes is using the information Aneta manages for several of their business units. As you might expect, some are more advanced than others in their use, but most are looking to up their social media investment in 2010 and take advantage of what social media can provide.

The major topic she finds herself discussing with business unit leaders is in the sustainability of the social media effort. Aneta sees covering this issue as a key component of her work and that means the units find they need to invest in training, guidelines, tools and tactics that support users, and providing a ‘loose governance’ structure that does not stifle the conversation between PB and it’s audience.