6 ways to make social media count
Use tech tools to target communities.
February 28, 2011
Businesses that make strides with social media are those who know how to use it to examine and prompt group behaviour. Finding–and using–ways to use collective behaviour creates a valuable link between social media and business value, the technology consultant’s analysts conclude in a new report.
“Social media technologies are tools and, like any technology, it is how people use those tools that delivers enterprise results,” says Anthony Bradley, group vice president at Gartner.
How can your business build value? By looking for patterns, key information and using new tech tools to target communities, the report, Employing Social Media Patterns for Business Impact, concludes. The analysts advise organizations to:
1. Collaborate
Comments on a Facebook page or public tweets about your product or industry aren’t just one-offs–they add up to create a valuable pool of knowledge for an organization, especially when it comes to customer service. “Enterprises looking to improve internal operational effectiveness, especially around product delivery, customer service and creation of a corporate memory, should examine employing blogs and wikis,” the analysts suggest.
2. Find expertise
That collective knowledge often includes specific expertise that can help shape specific local sales, service and product efforts, they point out.
3. Get insight
Business plans can gain from what the Gartner analysts call “emergent structures”–insight into behaviour or needs in the community that can help shape communications. “Once enterprises understand the value of social media and experience some initial success, then emergent structures become more appealing, and the chances for success are higher,” they note.
4. Create a quick response
Social media can mobilize people around marketing campaigns, a significant company event or launch the same way it does for emergency situations. “Gartner believes that by effectively employing mass coordination, enterprises can more rapidly marshal a powerful response to an important occurrence.”
5. Create communities within communities
Your consumers may have your organization in common, but finding sub-communities among them–creating social media groups according to their interests and concerns–can help sales, the analysts advise, noting that, “Gartner has found that enterprises that have successfully facilitated interest cultivation have experienced stronger customer loyalty and increased customer engagement, leading to better brand awareness, increased customer feedback and increased sales.”
6. Leverage relationships
One-on-one relationships are valuable, but relationships with groups can be, too, according to the report, which points to better brand awareness and sales for those companies that make the most of social media customer engagement opportunities. “Enterprises that understand the importance of harnessing the power of collective behaviors to drive positive business change will be the ultimate winners with social media,” Bradley said in a bulletin outlining the report highlights.
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