View Point

Harnessing the Power of Social Media Shanmugam Periasamy

Abstract

The affirmative power of social media offers a transformational opportunity

for companies, making a significant impact in the way they do business. From

connecting directly with end customers and engaging with employees to

collaborating with partners, social media provides a significant value proposition

that companies ignore at their peril. As stakeholders increasingly adopt social

technologies, the potential of social media can help companies grow customer

loyalty, accelerate growth and unleash their potential. This paper provides insight

into how enterprises can effectively exploit social media technologies to build their

brand, increase sales and improve customer satisfaction.

August 2011

Introduction

Even as the flattening world creates new opportunities for

companies by opening up unexplored areas of growth, the

expansive reach and enormous potential of social media has

served to increase these opportunities exponentially. The flat

world is becoming social, where social media technologies are

enabling change and enterprises and consumers across the world

are adopting these technologies.

As pervasive technologies enable demanding customers to

become more networked, enterprises need to:

• Establish direct connect with their customers

• Drive awareness on their products and services

• Provide a platform for their end customers to seek support

and discuss issues

• Make their diverse employee base more productive and

drive innovation

• Monitor and maintain their brand value across the

blogosphere

Social media can be utilized by enterprises to address these

issues. Traditional mass media is limiting - users have content

pushed on to them, and their sphere of influence only extends

to consuming or ignoring the messaging. However, social

media gives control to the end users, where they can guide

choices, become engaged in providing feedback, participate in

discussions and collaborate with their peers.

Therefore, enterprises can leverage social media to mine the

collective intelligence of a community of users - be it their

employees, customers or partners. Outsourcing, as we have

known it, is legacy, and crowd-sourcing is the order of the

day. Social media enables user-generated content, community

formation, influence creation, and collaboration among

community users by means of various applications and tools.

Moreover, these technologies also endow enterprises with a

scalability advantage, allowing them to employ social media to

target any number of user bases. Thus, social media helps level

the playing field of the flattening world.

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Social media is abuzz with conversation about companies, their products and services, their branding, their capabilities, and their ability to meet customer expectations. Companies cannot stop or control these

Approach

for

Social Media

conversations. However, they can ensure that they become a part of these conversations, listen to consumer views, work to shape opinion, address issues, and foster customer loyalty.

Thus, Web 2.0 comes with a critical rider. With the emergence of user-generated content, enterprises must deal with the voluminous flow of reactions about services and products that hits them with an intensity and pace that they may be unable to handle. To realize the potential social media has unleashed, companies need to have a well-structured strategy - or they must pay a bigger price in terms of an adverse impact on their brand equity.

The 4C Approach to Building a Social Media Strategy Companies can leverage the advantages of social media

using the 4C strategy - Content, Communication,

Community, and Collaboration.

Content refers to both user-generated content and content

published by enterprises. Widely available tools and

technologies enable users to generate content - video, audio and

images - and facilitate the participative process. A

company‟s social media strategy must empower consumers and

employees to create content in a trouble-free manner. The

content can then be used by the company as a feedback

mechanism for social media initiatives.

Communication: Enterprises must have a clear strategy

on the varied channels through which they want to

communicate with their employees, partners and

consumers. Blogs are an effective means of communication

where enterprises can have key stakeholders register their

thoughts on some key issues and strategies. Direct internal

and external communication of key messages by the senior

management can have a significant impact on stakeholders. Area Purpose

Community is a powerful means of bringing together like-

minded people on a single platform where they can connect

with each other and collaborate on common themes.

Community establishes sense of belonging and engenders a

trust factor among members which helps in the sharing of

knowledge and enables co-creation.

Collaboration tools provide a means for diverse teams to

work together effectively to achieve a common goal. Wiki is a

classic example of the effectiveness of collaboration

where more than three million articles are created and

updated successfully by people from all around the world.

Effective utilization of collaboration tools improves team

productivity and enhances output quality.

What binds this strategy into an active endeavor culminating

in benefits for the enterprise is the Listen, Engage and Act

process. An ongoing process which helps enterprises

reach the end goal of their social media initiative, it entails

„listening‟ to stakeholders, „engaging‟ them in productive

conversations and taking visible „actions‟ on their feedback.

Social Media Tools/Technologies

Content

Communication

Community

Collaboration

Creation and distribution of quality content

Internal and external official communications

Bringing like-minded people together for a common purpose

Collaboration among employees and partners

Videos, Photos, Audio, Content Aggregation, Widgets, Mashups

Blogs, Micro blogging, Events, chats, Podcasts, RSS feeds

Community applications

Wiki, Discussion Forums, Ask and Answer, Review and Ratings, Social Bookmarking, Tagging

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Leve

l Le

vel

Leve

l

Social Media Maturity Model Enterprises are going wherever the customer is, to be part

of the conversation, to feel the pulse of the customer, and

to connect with stakeholders in an environment they find

comfortable. Beyond that, they are leveraging the power of

collaborative technologies for everything from community

building to product research and from marketing to

customer service.

After all, the opportunity is clear. With most of their

customers online and connected, collaborative technology

becomes a critical facilitator in helping enterprises

differentiate themselves from the crowd and engage with

and satisfy customers.

However, before embarking on large-scale social media

initiatives, enterprises must analyze where they are in

the process of social media adoption. This helps them

understand their current status in the social media journey and

define a road map to reach the highest maturity level. The

following are indicative guidelines to understand the various

levels of maturity.

1

2 3

Reactive

Proactive

Predictive

• Lack of a consistent approach for social media initiatives across the organization

• Governance and processes do not exist for social media usage within and outside the enterprise •

Different technology and solutions used for various implementations across the enterprise • Absence of

buy-in and support from senior management on social media adoption and roll-out • No common

group identified for anchoring social media-related initiatives

• There is a centralized social media group responsible for all initiatives, but driving adoption is challenging

• Individual groups within the organization are convinced about social media; however, adoption is happening in silos

• Some products and technologies are standardized but still not consistent across the enterprise

• Governance and processes exist but are still in an evolving stage and not adopted completely by various departments

• No framework for measuring the success and ROI for different initiatives

• Organizational structure for driving and managing various social media programs is in place

• Well-defined social media strategy exists with governance and processes defined and enforced

• Technology, architecture and road map are in place and standardized for existing and new implementations

• Mechanism for measuring the ROI on various social media programs is available

• Approach for analysis of inputs and feedbacks from different social media programs is available and creates actionable initiatives

How Enterprises can Leverage Social Media

With growing competition, companies are continuously pushed to reduce costs, improve productivity and drive innovation. Social

media technologies help to achieve these goals by proper planning and without making huge investments. There are numerous

ways social media technologies can be leveraged within and outside the enterprise. The key to a successful social media roll-out is

not to do it as yet another initiative, but have a road map on where these technologies can be used. Moreover, the adoption needs to be

prioritized across various business scenarios. 4 | Infosys - View Point

At a high level, some focus areas where social media engagements can be initiated are:

Customer Connect: Empowered by the collaborative technology revolution, consumers are spending more time online,

interacting with each other even as the number of social media sites keeps increasing. So it is important for the enterprises to be part of

the conversation.

Employee Engagement: Companies need to be more transparent and provide a platform to the employees to promote a culture of

openness, collaboration, co-creation, passion and innovation to succeed in the current environment.

Sales and Marketing: Enterprises must focus on increasing the relevance and preference of their brands in the online social space.

Great brands do not tell their own stories but empower and enable the consumers who can tell great stories for and about them.

Connecting with Customers

... Young people are so convinced of the value of peer networks that they will

trust the advice of a total stranger over that of a professional marketer ...

Paul Gillin in „The New Influencers‟

Social media helps feel the pulse of the customer first-hand, an activity that has traditionally been carried out through surveys and polls

by a third-party.

Establishing a new relationship with customers, one that involves a hitherto unpracticed two-way communication, companies must

engage with them, utilizing the already present customer base and deploying social media for customer care. Enterprises must provide

a platform for their customers and enable them to discuss their products and services in social properties which can be monitored by

them. This transparency helps build trust with customers and strengthen the brand.

The social media strategy must ensure that consumers transform from being mere listeners who browse content to active

participators who become brand advocates providing recommendations to peers.

Customer Peer Support: Customer support communities enabled with relevant content and tools

Key

Scenarios

provides an easy way for customers to resolve their issues which helps in reducing customer service and

support calls. „Discussion forums‟ and „Ask and Answer‟ are excellent tools whereby active customers

can support each other, thereby reducing support cost to a great extent.

Idea Management: Idea management solutions can help directly invite suggestions and ideas from

consumers on improving their experience or getting inputs for a new product or service. This will create a

sense of ownership on the brand they like and enable them to participate in the improvement process.

Product Feedback: This involves using discussion forums and communities to get product suggestions

and feedbacks directly from the end consumers. These forums must be made transparent with active

participation from key stakeholders on the suggestions.

The HP Support forum, which won the Forrester Groundswell Award for 2010 in the support category, is a great example of how HP

used this community to improve customer satisfaction and reduce support costs.

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Engaging the Employees

Only 31% of employees are actively engaged in their jobs

Recent study

As companies grow in size and employ a geographically distributed and culturally diverse workforce, effective collaboration and

co-creation among employees become increasingly challenging. This is especially the case when, as usually happens,

information is generated and consumed in silos. This makes finding the right information at the right time a near impossibility, creating

a potent - though common - barrier to growth.

Social media is a catalyst for collaboration, enabling effective co-creation, and efficient knowledge management. It helps integrate

innovative insights in real time to help ensure that companies meet their requirements in designing products and services that reach

the market faster. This facilitates innovation and improves the overall productivity of the workforce.

Workforce Collaboration: Using email as the primary collaboration tool within the enterprise

Key

Scenarios

is no longer the productive approach. Social media tools and technologies provide a means for the employees to

get to know each other and collaborate effectively which helps increase workplace productivity.

Knowledge Management: Information silos and the inability to contact the right people at the right time

are among the bigger challenges facing enterprises today. Wikis, communities, and Folksonomies help

create and structure the content collaboratively and enable employees to find the right information quickly.

Drive Innovation: Social media tools provide an ecosystem where employees can come and share their

ideas and suggestions for a product or process, discuss and debate about them and eventually make

them actionable.

Dell is one of the pioneers in using collaboration technologies for employee engagement. Their Employee Storm internal

community has made a significant difference in connecting their 80,000+ strong workforce and driving innovation.

Sales and Marketing Engagement

40% of Nike community members become converts to the company’s shoes

Trevor Edwards, VP of Global Brand Management

The customer is demanding exemplary service, low-cost tailored products and a positive experience across multiple product

channels. Social media has given enterprises another channel with which they must satisfy customers even as it presents another

opportunity with which they can engage with them for sales and marketing.

As consumers rely more on social networks to find out about products and services, enterprises need to look away from

traditional top-down marketing strategies. Connecting with customers by joining them in their space on their terms, they

foster a holistic relationship of opportunity that gives returns to both parties in influence and investment. This is critical in a

dynamic marketplace, where due to increasing costs and growing competition, companies are forced to reduce their marketing

spends. Social media has a comprehensive reach, allowing enterprises to connect to an ever-growing online audience without

having to make huge investments unlike with the traditional TV and print media. Thus, social media-enabled marketing helps

achieve more with less.

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Brand Building: Companies need to be more transparent with their customers in terms of communication

Key

Scenarios

and responses for building their brand. With the increasing popularity of social media, shaping brands is

more in the hands of the customers rather than the brand itself.

New Product Launch: Social media is a great platform for creating the right buzz before launching a

new product or service. The marketing team can invite the SMEs to write blogs or publish their video

interviews on the products to create awareness and generate interest.

Marketing Campaigns: Running periodic marketing campaigns can be planned and executed effectively

through various social media avenues. The key difference with social media campaigns is that they

encourage end-user participation which is a more inclusive approach and pays greater bigger dividends

through increased sales.

Young & Free Alberta is a great example of how a credit union successfully connected with its young target audience of between

17 and 25 years by creating a community and providing a platform to connect and discuss their issues. This resulted in $4M increase

in new deposits from 2000+ new accounts.

Social Media Concerns and Challenges

Even as it brings a world of opportunity, social media comes

with its own set of challenges for companies where security,

privacy, information sharing and controlling are of utmost

importance. Before embarking on a large-scale social media

implementation, enterprises need to have a strategy in place

to address some of these issues in a proactive manner.

Some of the key challenges while implementing social

media include:

• Need for tight information security controls to ensure

that only correct and consistent information is shared

with the outside world across multiple channels

• Define and rollout comprehensive social media policies

and guidelines and make sure awareness is created both

internally and externally

• Strategy must be constantly revisited and updated in a

fast-changing technology landscape

• Provide an integrated and consistent social media

experience, rather than using point solutions for various

social media initiatives

• There is no proven way of measuring the ROI in social

media initiatives and enterprises need to develop their

own model based on experience

• Need to seamlessly integrate an enterprise‟s social

channels with third-party sites such as Facebook,

YouTube, Twitter, etc.

References

• Infosys Social Edge Platform (http://www.infosys.com/

socialedge)

• “The new Influencers” by Paul Gillin

• Young & Free Alberta http://www.youngfreealberta.com/

• http://www.forrester.com/groundswell/talking/common_

welath_credit_union.html

• http://Forrester.typepad.com/groundwell •

http://www.thesocialworkplace.com/featured/1558 •

http://www.blessingwhite.com/eee_report.asp

About the Author

Shanmugam Periasamy is Group Project Manager with the Business Platform Group of Infosys. He has more than 16 years of IT industry experience, providing and implementing business solutions for global customers.

His area of expertise includes customer delivery, program management, solution development, and implementation leveraging the global delivery model. He has successfully managed several large-scale social media implementations for various customers under the SaaS model using the Infosys SocialEdge Platform.

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