Key Messages
The Impact of Social Media on Business: How to Leverage the Consumer’s Power in Social Age
Social media offers you a huge opportunity to tap into a gigantic pool of potential customers.
With over two billion people active on online networks, you have the ability to reach more people than ever before.
A World Gone Social by Christopher Barger and Kyle Lacy will help you understand how to use social media to engage with your customers and make the most of this opportunity.
You’ll learn how the immense power of today’s consumer can be used to reach thousands of people in just a few short moments.
You’ll also discover why encouraging your employees to complain about their workplace can be helpful, as well as techniques and marketing strategies such as selling shoes on Twitter, or avoiding automessages at all costs.
This book is essential for any business owner looking to make use of social media platforms and maximize their exposure – don’t miss out!
How Social Media is Transforming Business and Revolutionizing the Way We Live
The age of social media has brought about a dramatic shift in how businesses operate.
Gone are the days where the bottom line was all that mattered – companies now need to prioritize the human side, too.
The social media environment has made it necessary for companies to create appealing workplaces that can attract top-notch talent.
Thanks to sites like Glassdoor, potential applicants can consult current and former employees and find out what it’s really like to work at a company before they even apply.
And if employees are unhappy with their current job, they can easily post their experience and opinions online, significantly damaging the company’s appeal and ability to recruit top-notch staff.
Social media has also changed the way products and services are marketed by allowing marketers to focus on each product’s impact on consumers’ lives, instead of simply focusing on expanding their brand name in order to reach more people.
All sorts of digital influencers have become important voices when it comes to pop music or any other products – small enterprises like start-ups and freelancers have been gaining great power in this new digital marketing landscape.
The Power of One: How Social Media Amplifies a Single Voice and Shakes up the Customer-Firm Relationship
It’s no secret that social media has the power to amplify one person’s opinion, even if they are not an influencer.
This means that a single person can cause a lot of damage to a company if their experience goes viral.
Take the example of Dave Carroll and United Airlines – he saw baggage handlers throwing his precious guitar around on the tarmac and approached customer service agents for assistance but was completely ignored.
In response, he created “United Breaks Guitars” – a video which went viral, gaining 14 million views and making him famous in the process – all while damaging United Airlines’ reputation irreparably.
This just shows how one person’s experience can be magnified so much more online, potentially costing companies millions of dollars in lost marketing efforts.
Even non-viral messages have the ability to reach enough people to have an impact on purchasing decisions due to each user existing within a network of other users influencing each other.
Therefore, it is important for companies to take customer service seriously as it can heavily impact their public image in ways they may never have expected or imagined.
How Companies Can Avoid a Public Relations Disaster by Investing in Employee Well-Being and Engaging with Customers Through Social Media
Engaging with your employees and customers on social media is essential for any business that wants to truly excel.
It not only helps companies build their brand and attract customers, but it can also help foster a better working environment, leading to higher productivity, sales growth, profits, and customer satisfaction.
At the end of the day, if you want to create an engaged culture within your company, it needs to come from the top down.
Leaders need to be actively engaging with their employees via in-person communication or social media like Twitter or Facebook in order for them to feel welcome and appreciated – which will then have a positive effect on their attitude towards work.
You also need to extend this same kind of engagement towards your customers through social media as well.
Just look at what happened with Topo Athletics: after tweeting out a question about buying shoes, an intern at Topo responded directly; they then provided samples of shoes — leading one customer to declare she would never buy any other brand again!
It’s word-of-mouth marketing like this that can build amazing buzz around your products and services while simultaneously creating loyal customers.
The Benefits of Thinking Small: How Nano Corps and Growth Hacking can Lead to Faster Innovation
Smaller companies have an advantage over large ones when it comes to adapting quickly to new markets.
With less bureaucratic layers and a greater focus on innovation, these companies are able to respond rapidly to changes in the market.
Take Growth Hacking TV for example.
This start-up was founded by three tech entrepreneurs who specialize in low-cost alternatives to traditional marketing.
In just seven weeks of launching, their webseries was ready – with their monthly break-even point at only $1,000!
On the other hand, television networks and media sites tend to take a much more traditional approach – which involves setting up a team around each project and spending significant amounts of money.
Another important factor here is nano corps – teams that come together for one project, complete it and then disband.
Companies need these small but efficient teams that are highly-specialized in order to achieve the best possible product.
Hollywood actually relies on this approach when producing films; after watching the end credits of any movie you’ll realize how essential these smaller teams are.
With no huge hierarchies or cumbersome organization structures slowing them down, nano corps are able to remain agile so that a business can better respond to demands from customers and keep ahead of the competition.
The Benefits of Flat Hierarchies: How Companies Without Authority Figures Find Success
Flat hierarchies are increasingly becoming the norm in the business world, and companies like Valve are reaping the rewards.
Without traditional managers, employees have more responsibility over their work, they become more actively engaged with their tasks and they invest a greater sense of ownership into the company.
At Valve, each one of the 400 employees is accountable for their own actions – that means if an employee makes a mistake, it’s up to them to catch and fix it.
This allows for a greater sense of value within the team and results in better work quality overall.
Plus, it also helps keep profitability high as each employee generates around $1 million annually in revenue – and that far exceeds what some of tech giants like Microsoft, Apple and Google generate!
The result? Companies that adopt flat hierarchies – ultimately eliminating managers – are handsomely rewarded with better engagement from their employees, resulting in higher revenue on a per-employee basis.
The Power of Crowdsourcing: How Social Media Networks Help Harness the Wisdom of the Crowd
Social media networks have opened up a whole world of possibilities when it comes to sharing knowledge.
By tapping into the expertise and experience of others, a group of people with relatively little knowledge or experience in a given field can come together to form an extraordinary network of knowledge.
For example, consider the concept of crowdsourcing.
This is where businesses tap into social media networks to find solutions to their problems at minimal cost by encouraging users to submit ideas and solutions to competitions they host.
Take InnoCentive for example, who create tailor-made contests that invite entrants to come up with innovative solutions for their clients.
One InnoCentive challenge asked participants about the future of laundry and received more than 600 submissions – all resulting in huge cost savings for the client.
It’s clear that when it comes to combining knowledge from different sources, social media networks are an invaluable tool – allowing ordinary people with many different backgrounds and levels of expertise come together and create something extraordinary.
How Social Media Gives Businesses an Edge: Tangerine’s CEO Proves That Online Engagement Can Lead to Customer Loyalty and Improved Company Policy
Do you still think that social media isn’t relevant to traditional business? Well, you’re wrong!
Companies of all sizes can benefit from embracing social media.
With over two billion people engaging on platforms like Twitter and Facebook, there are countless potential customers for businesses to reach.
Being a social leader is no longer just an option – it’s a necessity for companies who want to stay competitive in today’s market.
Take the example of Tangerine bank: when a customer raised an issue with the bank by tweeting at them, their CEO Peter Aceto was able to respond immediately, addressing the issue within 90 minutes.
Without social media, it would have been much more difficult for this customer to get the resolution they sought – if not impossible.
But being active on social media isn’t just beneficial for direct customer success stories – it also enables businesses to assess what’s happening internally and make improvements based on employee feedback.
At Tangerine bank, they have an internal collaboration tool where employees can communicate and even give complaints in a safe space called The Right To B*@#h.
Thanks to this feedback system, they were able to recognize issues such as unnecessary paper waste within the company and take measures to alleviate the problem swiftly.
How to Maintain an Effective Social Media Presence for Your Business
Being a successful leader on social media means that you need to take steps to preserve your reputation.
One way to do this is to periodically conduct social media audits.
This will help you identify any issues or discrepancies with your profiles and presence.
When you do an audit, make sure you check that your company is presented properly across all platforms.
Your logo, fonts, text and branding should be consistent everywhere you have a presence.
Additionally, ensure that your niche is clearly defined so that potential customers or job seekers know exactly what expertise you bring to the table.
During an audit, you should also look for opportunities within any challenges or complaints received.
Respond quickly and show that you are engaged in addressing the problem (both privately and publicly).
A quick response will demonstrate real engagement and help preserve trust between yourself and your followers.
Wrap Up
A World Gone Social provides a comprehensive summary of how social media has shifted the power balance between companies and customers, and provides actionable advice to help businesses take advantage of these opportunities.
By tapping into your social network for new employees instead of using traditional HR resources, companies can save time (and paperwork).
It’s also important to post socially optimized job descriptions across various social media accounts, and then encouraging followers to share it with their networks.
Doing so will help ensure that the ideal candidate is not only socially engaged but also part of a larger network.
In conclusion, embracing the power of social media is the first step on the road to building a great company in this fast-paced digital age.
