Chapter 8: Social Media Information Systems
- Introduction
- Do you have a social media strategy? Will using social media affect their bottom line?
- Q8-1: What is a social media information system (SMIS)?
- Social media (SM) - using IT to support the sharing of content among a network of users
- Communities (of practice) - groups of related people with a common interest
- Social media information system (SMIS) - the IT that supports content sharing among network of users
- Social Media is a convergence of disciplines: psychology, organization theory, marketing, MIS, computer science, and sociology
- Three SMIS Roles:
- Social media providers - platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. that enable the creation of social networks (compete for attention of users for associated advertising dollars)
- Attract & target certain demographic groups
- Social networks - social relationships for people with common interest
- Users - both individuals & organizations using SM sites to build relationships
- Organizations can be users / providers / both > hire staff to maintain SM presence, build relationships, promote products, and manage their image.
- Internal platforms = wikis, blogs, and discussion boards
- Communities
- formed based on mutual interests > transcend geographic, familial, and organizational boundaries
- Most people belong to several / many different communities
- How the SM site relates the communities depend on its goals
- Pure publicity = viral hook - inducement for passing communication along
- SMIS Components
- Hardware - mobile devices, laptops, desktops, etc. used to process SM sites
- Software - mobile applications for variety of platforms: iOS, Android, Windows / Provider: applications, NoSQL, DBMS, analytics
- Data
- Content data - responses to data / data, contributed by users
- Connection data - relationship data > like particular pages / relation to friends
- Procedures - designed to be easy to learn & use > informal, evolving, and socially oriented
- Organization procedures to create content, manage user responses, remove obsolete / objectionable content, and extract value
- People - goals and personalities influence what people do > key users, adaptive, can be irrational
- Q8-2: How do SMIS advance organizational strategy?
- Strategy determines value chain > business processes > information systems
- Social media is very dynamic by nature > cannot be designed or diagrammed
- Social Media and the Sales and Marketing Activity
- Social CRM - dynamic, CRM process that is SM-based
- As both organization & customers create and process content, emerge in dynamic process > each customers crafts own relationship with company
- Relationship emerge from joint activity so customers same control as organizations
- Organizations struggling to transition from controlled, structured, traditional CRM > wide-open, adaptive, dynamic social CRM processes
- Risk: loss of credibility and bad PR
- Social Media and Customer Service
- Product users willing to help each other solve problems, without pay
- Primary risk of peer-to-peer support = loss of control
- Social Media and Inbound & Outbound Logistics
- Benefits
- Numerous solution ideas and rapid evaluation
- Solutions to complex SupChain problems
- Facilitates user created content/feedback for problem solving
- Risk:
- Loss of Privacy
- Open discussion of problem definitions, causes, and solution constraints
- Social Media and Manufacturing & Operations
- Develop supplier relationships, and operational efficiencies
- Crowdsourcing - employing users to participate in product design or product redesign
- Business-to-consumer (B2C) - market products to end users
- Business-to-business (B2B) - promoting brand awareness and generating new leads to retailers
- Risk: loss of efficiency / effectiveness
- Socials Media and Human Resources
- SM used for finding employees, recruiting candidates, or for candidate evaluation
- Risk: error to form conclusions about employee & loss of credibility
- Q8-3: How do SMIS increase social capital?
- Capital - resources invested for future profit; physical = factories, machines, equipment, etc.
- Human capital - investing in human knowledge and skills for future profit
- Social capital - investing in social relations with expectation of returns in marketplace
- What is the value of social capital? > Relationships provide:
- Information - about opportunities, alternatives, problems, etc. that are important to business professionals
- Influence - opportunity to influence decision makers
- Social credentials - bask in glory with whom you are related
- Personal reinforcement - in professional's identity, image, and position
- Value of social capital - determined by number of relationships in social network
- How do social networks add value to businesses?
- Elements of social capital: number of relationships, strength of relationships, and resources controlled by "friends"
- Using social networking to increase the number of relationships
- Influencer - your opinion may force a change in others' beliefs and behaviors
- Express opinion by word-of-mouth to social network, SMIS allow scale of relationships
- Using social networks to increase the strength of relationships
- Strength of relationship - how likely the other entity (organization or person) in the relationship will do something that benefits the organization
- Using social networks to connect to those with more resources
- Social capital = number of relationships x relationship strength x entity resources
- Huge network of people with few resources = less valuable than a smaller network of people with substantial resources
- Resources MUST be relevant
- Q8-4: How do (some) companies earn revenue from social media?
- Hyper-social organization - transforms interactions with customers, employees, and partners into mutually satisfying relationships with them and their communities
- You are the product
- Monetize - free product to attract users, but how do they make money from their application, service, or content?
- Make users the product
- Revenue Models for Social Media
- Advertising
- Pay-per-click - advertisers display ads to potential customers for free and pay only when the customer clicks
- Use increases value - the more people using a site, the more value it has > the more people will visit
- Freemium - offering users basic service for free and then charges premium for upgrades or advanced features (revenue model)
- Ad-blocking software - filter out advertising content, rarely see internet ads
- Does mobility reduce online ad revenue?
- Average click-through rate of smartphones is 4.12% but just 2.39% on PC
- Ads take up so much more space on mobile devices than on PC, sometimes accidental click
- Paid search, display, or banner ads, mobile ads, classifieds, or digital video ads
- Conversion rate - measures frequency that someone who clicks on ad, makes a purchase
- Q8-5: How do organizations develop an effective SMIS?
- Organizations should focus strategy to: being cost leader OR differentiate their products from competition
- Social Media Plan Development:
- Define your goals
- Brand awareness, conversion rates, web site traffic, and user engagement
- Identify success metrics
- Success metrics / key performance indicators (KPI) - metrics that will indicate when you have achieved your goals
- Metrics - measurements used to track performance
- Identify target audience
- Define your value
- Competitive analysis - identify strengths and weaknesses in competitors' use of SM > what they're doing right and wrong > use to see how you can add value
- Make personal connections
- Gather and analyze data
- Q8-6: What is an enterprise social network (ESN)?
- Enterprise social network (ESN) - using social media through a software platform to facilitate cooperative work of people within an organization
- Improve communication, collaboration, knowledge sharing, problem solving, and decision making
- Enterprise 2.0
- Web 2.0 - dynamic, user-generated content systems
- Enterprise 2.0 - inside companies, use of emergent social software platforms
- SLATES - search, links, authoring, tags, extensions, and signals
- Folksonomy - content structure emerging from processing of use tags
- Changing communication
- Communication channels - way of delivering messages
- Using ESNs, employees can bypass managers and post ideas directly for CEO
- Quickly identify internal experts to solve unforeseen problems
- Deploying successful enterprise social networks
- Best practices - ensuring successful implementation of ESN through methods that have been proven to produce successful results in prior implementations
- Strategy, sponsorship, support, and success
- Develop strategic plan for using SM internally via same process as used for external social media use
- Q8-7: How can organizations address SMIS security concerns?
- Managing the risk of employee communication
- Social media policy - develop and publicize a statement, delineating employees' rights and responsibilities
- Intel Corporation:
- Disclose - be transparent, truthful, & be yourself
- Protect - don't tell secrets, slam competition, or overshare
- Use common sense - add value, keep it cool, and admit mistakes
- Managing the risk of inappropriate content
- User-generated content (UGC) - content contributed by users on your SM site
- Problems from external sources:
- Junk contributions
- Inappropriate content
- Unfavorable reviews
- Mutinous movements
- Responding to social networking problems:
- Leave it
- Respond to it
- Delete it
- Internal risks from social media
- Affect ability to secure information resources / threats to info security > unintentional leak of information
- Employees using SM could inadvertently increase corporate liability
- Increase SM use may lead to decreased employee productivity
- Q8-8: 2026?
- New mobile devices with innovative mobile-device UX, coupled with dynamic and agile IS based on cloud computing and dynamic virtualization
- BYOD - bring your own device
- Non routine cognitive skills more important
- Digital is Forever >> Transmitting personal info using internet can make victim, impossible to delete, stored on numerous servers / server farms > Digital Zombie
- Companies analyze everything you digitally say or do
- Big Data = Big Money >> personal data illegally accessed or sold on black market
- Legally accessed by companies and sold to others
- Steps to mask / remove digital footprints > Clear cookies, encrypt emails, avoid using real name, VN mask internet Protocol
- Develop your personal brand (understand importance and value)
- Social media presence one component of a professional brand
- Traditional sources of personal branding like personal networks f2f relationships, important
What are some of the direct benefits of defining an organization's target market?
Identifying a target market allows marketers to focus on those most likely to purchase the product. Limiting the population funnels research and budgets to the customers with the highest profit potential.
Why does it make sense to categorize data and procedures together as social media information system SMIS components more than one answer may be correct?
Why does it make sense to categorize data and procedures together as social media information system (SMIS) components? More than one answer may be correct. Data and procedures are required to keep SMISs functioning. Procedures help providers properly collect, direct, protect, and regulate the use of data.
Which of the following is the first step in developing a social media information system SMIS )? Group of answer choices?
The first step in developing an SMIS (social media information system) for an organization is to identify the target audience.
What was a benefit of Square Inc that differentiated it from the other POS systems that were available at the time it first launched more than one answer may be correct?
that differentiated it from the other POS systems that were available at the time it first launched? More than one answer may be correct. Smaller companies and individual vendors were able to accept credit and debit cards for payment since they didn't need to invest in expensive servers or infrastructure.