Question

Social media is the use of information technology to support the sharing of content among networks of users. It is dynamic by its very nature, and so social media’s effects on business processes will also be dynamic.

Answer 1

Marketing: The 2012 Social Business Study indicates that small and mid-sized businesses use social media primarily for marketing - at various levels. Comparing strategic and informal users, strategic users were 25% more likely to have integrated marketing and social than "informals." The unique advantage of using social media strategically for marketing is that it can allow a small business to scale marketing efforts without significant increased investment by tapping into "external" marketers. That is, a business has the opportunity through social media to increase its marketing reach by cultivating and communicating with customer advocates who do unsolicited word-of-mouth marketing of a product or service via their own social networks.

Sales and service: According to the study, strategic users were 67% more likely to have integrated sales processes with social. Furthermore, strategic users were also 79% more likely to integrate customer service with social. Tellingly, compared to 2011, integration with CRM applications jumped dramatically with both strategic and ad hoc users (38% vs. 24%), with year-over-year growth of 375% and 243% respectively.

Product development: An area where strategic users are way ahead is in connecting social with product development, where they are 3.5 times more likely to already have integrated than informal users (28% vs. 8%). This higher level of product development integration coincides with strategic users having a 50% higher level of satisfaction with social, and based on these numbers, it probably comes as no surprise that those directly involved with product development are more than four times more likely to be involved with social media as their counterparts at organizations employing an ad hoc approach (18% vs. 4%).