What are social networks?
Social media are online platforms where content is posted and interacted with by users. Unlike traditional websites, there is little or no editorial control over the content placed. Visitors often share their experiences, news, photos, and videos with their network through social networks. Many social media platforms offer participants the opportunity to ask questions, discuss, leave comments and share tips. With social networks, everything is about interaction and initiative, and the leaders are the users. One consequence for organizations is that there is growing consumer power. Other characteristics of social networks are current issues, speed, and brief and concise communication. Examples of social networks include weblogs, forums, network sites like for example, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter.
Social network applications
The rise of social networks has significant consequences. Organizations can use social media for many purposes. Most of all it is essential to remember that popularity is critical. You can read more about popularity on Instagram by clicking on the link. Below are some crucial areas of application.
Commercialization
Within the field of marketing, the applications of social networks have become indispensable. Social networks are increasingly used. The use of social networks for marketing is done in areas such as marketing strategy, contact with the customer and communication and sales. The interaction with customers has increased enormously due to new media. They develop new products and services with clients in co-creation. How does successful co-creation work? The explanations in this article provide the necessary support.
The influence of social networks is already seen as a kind of revolution in marketing. In particular, dealing with customer reactions and the shift from “sending” interaction and co-creation seems to be drastic.
Claims management
More and more organizations use social networks to identify and resolve customer complaints. The so-called web care teams monitor the coverage of the organization and its brands in various social networks. As soon as a claim or negative statement appears, the web care team responds by approaching the interested person (online or offline). This approach has several advantages. First of all, it avoids that some complaints lead to mass publicity or worse to an exaggeration. Also, claims can be resolved effectively through this route and, ultimately, lead to satisfied customers (who can also post messages through social networks).
Change management
Due to their interactive nature, social media can also play a role in the processes of change in organizations. For example, you can think of:
- Online discussions about the usefulness and necessity of the changes.
- Online interaction instead of sending newsletters unilaterally.
- Stimulating an ‘outside’ appearance by allowing employees to follow specific topics, organizations, and trends in the market through social networks for some time.
- Make the network of people in the organization visible and take advantage of this.
- Reduce power differences through social networks. After all, anyone can participate in online initiatives.
- The use of videos to present different opinions and creative perspectives and to feed the discussion.
Recruitment
Getting in touch with new employees is also possible through social networks. Increasingly, recruiters and organizations are using the possibilities of social networks to recruit new people. For example, websites can be used to find interesting candidates or to spread vacancies. But this can also be done through professional communities, discussion forums or weblogs. Many jobs are being posted through Twitter, after which the candidates respond through the same channel. Also, the videos can be used by organizations or candidates to present themselves. In general, people communicate more and more through social networks about vacancies and positions of both recruiters and job seekers.
Personal brand
Use wikis for the collaborative development of objective information. Where blogs are perfect to talk to each other, wikis are ideal to make explicit the knowledge and experience gained. An illustrative example is a software company that, during the development of a new software system, registered more than 300 articles in a Wiki in 2 months, and then it was relatively easy to extract the manual and the documentation. Most of the work was devoted to making the information print correctly. Wikis can be started quickly and for free on, for example, etouch.net, pbwiki.com or socialtext.com.
With microblogs like Yammer (a service that looks like Twitter, where you can send short messages), the emphasis is on the internal function of the social network. At the same time, it can also serve as an addition to the internal network, offer space for social bookmarking, and maintain progress in project groups.
Social networks and change management
The interaction culture that can be created with social networks has characteristics that support the processes of change. Think about communicating across departmental boundaries and about issues that involve various departments. Some ideas:
Use an online discussion for the process to hear how employees see the need for change and, therefore, form a core team. Invite people who have a heart for the business, or people with different ideas, to play a role in the core team that closely follows the organizational change. In this way, it configures a central group based on ideas, participation, and intrinsic motivation, instead of depending on the function. Where a good representation of all departments in the core team is still relevant.
Go for online interaction instead of newsletters during a change process. Often, a printed or online newsletter is published to keep everyone up to date. With social networks, you can do this much more interactively and get in touch with everyone’s real opinion. A manager decided to be available on an internal Yammer channel every Friday. Everyone in the organization was allowed to ask questions, and he also responded. This led to a completely different dialogue than the people were used to.
Encourage a look through the boards of social networks. Many organizations suffer from a culture of “looking inward.” People are kept busy, so there is little space to look outside. Allow employees to summarize what they notice in the reactions to their organization and what this means to the organization. Or let different departments follow certain trends and people for several weeks on Twitter. What do you learn from this?
Posts by SpeakBindas Editorial Team.