SUBMITTED BY: Ravi Vaghanani

SUBMITTED TO: Prof. Malathi Sriram

SMAC CASE ANALYSIS

Discussion Points:

a. What is the social media tools role in interacting with employees and clients?

Employee advocacy” is a term used to describe the exposure that employees generate for

brands using their own online assets. While social media is often the main medium for

employee advocacy, these “online assets” include email, chat, forums, discussion boards and

more.

Two metrics that play a major role in employee advocacy:

1) Reach

The reach of a company’s employees combined can easily span beyond its brand reach,

and beyond the platforms they are currently on. While they are focusing their efforts on

Facebook and Twitter, their employees might already have a presence on other social

networks they haven’t explored yet, like Reddit, Tumblr, Path…the list goes on.

2) Influence

Influence goes beyond a Klout or Kred score; influence isn’t something that can be

gamified via a score or a sophisticated algorithm. Influence comes with authenticity,

trustworthiness and reach. Additionally, bear in mind that offline influence is rarely

counted into online algorithms like Klout: your employees may be influential with what

they do outside of social networks, sometimes more than they portray on social media.

b. How to manage the risks involved in the employees and clients social media

interactions?

While social media-related risks seem daunting, a company can mitigate such risks by

creating and enforcing a social media policy that is effective, yet flexible and responsive

to ever-changing social media content and platforms. Crafting an effective social media

policy is not a “one size fits all” endeavor. Organizations vary greatly in their policies

toward social media. A diverse team responsible for the development and execution of the

policy should be assembled and should include members of human resources, legal,

marketing and information technology groups. Once a policy is tailored to the company’s

needs, its employees must be effectively trained on the policy so that they understand its

parameters. It is critical to revisit the social media policy in response to changing trends in

social media and emerging social media platforms. The popular social media platform of

2015 may not even be in existence in 2014.

c. How to increase the employee and client’s participation in the social media platforms?

Following are a few steps a company can use to increase employee and client’s

participation on various social media platforms:

1) Use Facebook to highlight employees and reach out to fans

2) Connect personally on twitter with employees and clients

3) Use Google+ Circles, Communities and Hangouts to create valuable conversations

4) Participate in LinkedIn groups

5) Use Pinterest to invite others to pin on your boards

6) Create engagement on Foursquare

7) Use creative hashtags on Instagram

d. How to manage knowledge that is generated through the various social media

platforms?

To get genuine value out of social knowledge and sharing, a company must become a social

organization – E.g. Zappos. And this isn't as difficult as it may seem.

The first step is to define a purpose and then measure everything based off of that purpose.

Then, adding social media to the suite of technology tools is actually growing an arsenal

for powerful customer engagement. A firm can amplify its outreach to customers as well

as boost engagement and increase productivity within their organization and with partners

and clients.

e. What type platforms and infrastructure are to be created for the social media

interaction within the organization? ( Blogs, Wikis, forums, Face book, Linkedin,

intranets, etc)

Employees are disengaged at work, and organizations have been exploring how social and

digital technologies can address this problem. The key to success in business is to have a

connected, integrated and involved employee base. All over the world, enterprise-grade

intranet portals are currently used in the digital workplace to improve synchronization,

store corporate documents, policies and executive directives, and thus, bolster productivity.

While an enterprise-grade social intranet software can be made to cover a lot of ground in

terms of features and functionality, its ultimate success and justification lies in its ability

to accomplish some core needs as shown below.

1) Org-wide Communications:

Communication from the management to the employees can come in the form of

information, reports, memos and news snippets. Your company intranet should be

able to communicate these properly and on time to every single authorized

employee.

2) Socially Engaging Intranets:

The intranet should also present a layer of social collaboration by incorporating

features like blogs, wikis, social community forums, micro blogs, social profiles,

powerful search, and collaborative idea management

3) Knowledge Management:

The intranet should be able to house organization-wide knowledge base and

resources to help your employees do their jobs well. These can include details of

experts, checklists, process documents, ideas, industry trends and best practices.

4) Business Process Integration:

All your important business procedures like project management, customer

management and process management should be rigorously integrated into your

enterprise intranet.