Social media guru Michael Green recently spent an evening with IICA members in Sydney enlightening them on the benefits – and avoiding the pitfalls – of social media.
The underlying message to the participants at the well-attended session was "ignore social media at your own peril."
Green runs Kinship Digital, a consultancy that develops its clients’ businesses in social media.
The inappropriate use of social media often grabs the headlines, but it can have a positive impact on a company's business.
A well-implemented social media strategy may deliver the benefits of:
- Deeper levels of engagement with the social customer through consistent and relevant content; ability to scale operatons globally.
- Ability to solve customer problems quickly and efficiently.
- Increased collaboration between sales professionals in the industry.
- Product and process innovation using the collective intellect of the community.
- Staffing and recruiting, employee engagement and empowerment.
- Bring products to market faster through increased collaboration with partners in the supply chain.
As a case in point, Green pointed to the technology company that was able to save a huge amount in tech support costs for one of its product lines.
Why? Because an active community member, who was also an expert user, would often wade into the discussions and answer a lot of the queries and concerns raised on the company's customer forums.
There is already a fair bit of activity by the global engineering community in the digital space (see below) and companies are being encouraged to participate.
A search of the terms 'Instrumentation' OR 'Control' OR 'Automation' shows the large number of converstions already underway as can be seen in the graphic below.
Since social media is all about engagement and relationships, Green urged the audience to fit social into their business – and not the other way around.
Green's presentation is available for download on the IICA website.