For this blog assignment I will answer the first question. Now one of the key issues here is that at least in my opinion the use of social media or the ways social media is used depends on the industry. To see an extreme example of what I am saying, just look at B2B companies: A B2B company would just be wasting its time meddling with traditional social media like Facebook. That of course doesn’t mean that they should not use social media, just a different version.
For example there is a B2B company called National Instruments; this firm creates software for engineering and research. National Instruments has incorporated some of the principles of social media to make their products better. Even though their clients are technically other companies, it is people who use their software to do their work. National Instruments started by creating a forum for engineers and scientists to ask how to do certain things with the software, but more than that this forum allows other scientists and engineers who do not work at all for National Instruments to answer their queries. This improved customer experience tremendously because before the forum existed National Instruments had problems solving their customer’s problems. Imagine having to answer the questions of a nuclear physicist trying to measure radioactive half-life and the next day the questions of an engineer building a bobsled cart; it is impossible for the firm to hire experts in all the fields its software is used. What it is possible though is connect the bobsled cart engineer with another engineer who already worked on a project involving aerodynamics and similar problems.
Furthermore, National Instruments expanded their social media efforts and started to incorporate the engineers and scientists who hanged out at the forum into their product development process by having them interact with National Instrument employees and allowing them to suggest new features for the software. Other users can comment and vote on which of the proposed features they like best. This way National Instruments has managed not only to improve their product but also found a great way of gaining marketing insights from their user base.
Could this approach be replicated by other companies? Maybe; it completely depends on the type of product and even the type of customers a company has. In my thinking every industry is different, every market is different and maybe even every brand and product are different and require each a unique approach with social media. This makes it hard for me to come up with general recommendations for businesses to use social media, unless of course you count “Make sure this works for you before you do it” as a recommendation.
For example, National Instrument’s approach of creating their own forum works for them because what they wanted to accomplish needed functionality that is not available in Facebook. Other companies with different goals might find more value in using Facebook than creating their own social media space from scratch. Also, National Instruments didn’t want nor needed everybody talking about their products, just some of the highly specialized and trained scientists and engineers who already use their product.
Even among B2C companies, the social media strategies should be tailored to the unique properties and goals of each product or service. There is a very interesting digital comic book reading app that allows readers to comment on the comic book they are reading, but not in a regular comments section, but on the comic itself. You can comment on a single panel or line of dialogue and everyone who uses that app and is reading the comic can read your comments and chat with you through the comic. Personally I think this improves the comments feature enormously because you can focus your comments on specific pictures or dialogue and makes it more immediate to the people reading them. This is a social media feature that can only work with comics, and maybe books. Again, what makes it genius is that it was tailored to the product. Sadly this app was a failure because the company behind it never managed to convince any of the big comic companies to back it.
It would be impossible to cover every industry in my write up of this assignment and write what would make social media successful in each one, but I think I have made my point that there is no catch all strategy or method. The best way is to look at the product, look at its users and look at the goals you are trying to achieve; after that take it all and make something that works with that.
