The Implementation of the Social Media Technology Strategy

The implementation of social media technology within a business requires a social media strategy and adequate research that defines the reasons for that implementation. Whether the reasons include increasing employee collaboration, or brand awareness the organization must have a plan to implement social media technology within the organization effectively. Many organizations decide to use two phases when implementing the social media platform to include the experimental phase (Phase 1) viewed as the implementation of social media to correlate information, and the business transformation phase (Phase 2) being the integration of social media with the organization's existing data management systems. This paper will examine these two phases.

Phase 1: Experimental Phase/Implementation of Social Media to Correlate Information

The experimental phase focuses on social media tools to include blogs, discussion forums, and product ratings. Much information from social media technology is pertinent to customer service. The first phase of social media technology can enable the ability of the organization to equip their employees with the intelligence needed to engage the customers. An organization can enhance their social strategy to leverage both social insights and existing private data thereby creating outreach efforts, new products, and campaigns grounded in real-time, repeatable, automated, and scalable analysis (Oracle, 2012). The identification of positive and negative comments allows the organization to make needed changes quickly thereby enabling customer satisfaction aiding in the increase of revenue for the organization. This information allows the organization to measure the benefits of the implementation of social media technology while also understanding what is working successfully and how to incorporate needed changes.

Phase 2: Business Integration: The Integration of Social Media with the Organization's Existing Data Management Systems

All organizations have data management systems of some type including management information systems. These systems collect data by transaction processing systems creating reports for managers concerning basic business decisions in response to problems. There are expert systems known as knowledge-based systems designed to analyze data and produce recommendations, diagnosis, and decisions that are controlled (Mindmeister). Phase 2 of the social media strategy involves the business transformation phase focusing on linking or more importantly, integrating social media technology with the organization's core and legacy information systems.

Information gained via social media technology can be folded into existing data management tools to conduct ad hoc reporting, optimize business processes, and improve business intelligence. Social media implementation blends social insight with more traditional data including private conversation data from surveys, transactional behavior, and Web analytics. This phase can use social media analytics to conduct open-ended analysis to validate more traditional market research (Oracle). The integration of social media enhances the relationship between the organization, employees, and customers and aids the organization in improving customer service while gaining customers through content marketing via social media.

References

5 Types of Information Systems. (2017). Academic Thesis. MindMeister.

Social Media Research and Business Intelligence: Creating the Integrated Customer Hub. (2012). Oracle.