Jumping on the Social Media Bandwagon

Social media not only touches individual consumers, but companies are now participating in the social foray. As a former strategy consultant, it seemed that every client was curious and talking about social media. While many companies are using social media in marketing and customer engagement, others are developing analytics and mining capabilities to understand consumer sentiment, while others have not yet determined how to best incorporate social media into business operations. While incorporating social media sentiment into marketing campaigns is the first step, social media networks can be used for even greater customer insights, and can even drive innovation, design, and tailored customer experiences.

Social networks have become the norm for communication and human interaction. A fundamental shift towards social communication has impacted individual decision-making. Individuals are connected to a large network, and information is disseminated, shared, and viewed at a faster rate than ever before. Relationships and connections previously limited are now expanding into large networks. The impact of these networks has exponentially increased, and large groups of individuals can be influenced towards action. With this impact comes a wealth of information on consumer behavior that was not previously readily attainable.

Utilizing social networks to understand this information can lead to deep customer insights on individual, group, and other behavioral dynamics. These insights can not only shape marketing campaigns, but can provide richer understanding of individuals, customer needs, perception of products and experiences, and other data points that can drive customer-centric design. Businesses can understand these segment and individual differences on a larger scale than ever before. This can motivate and drive R&D focus, product development, and even improve a company’s innovation process through open-sources.

In the next few weeks, I will be exploring this topic further and writing an academic exploration of recent trends and case examples of a few select companies that are starting to integrate this into other areas besides marketing. Although there is surprisingly little research on this topic, a few recent articles have been written that may prove useful in my research:

•     The Revolution Will be Shared: Social Media and Innovation (Research-Technology Management, January – February 2011, pg. 64-66) and Big Data: The Next Big Thing in Innovation by MaryAnne M. Gobble (Resources, Research Technology & Management, January-February 2013, pg. 64-66) provide examples on some companies such as GE, P&G, and others who are actually incorporating social media networks into the innovation process itself.
• ·      Measuring the Effectiveness of Social Media on the Innovation Process by Lester J. Holtzblatt and Mary Lou Tierny (CHI 2011: Session: Innovation & Design, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, May 7-12, 2011) highlights a case study of using online innovation platforms and its impact on business strategy.
• ·      TweetSpiration: Leveraging Social Media for Design Inspiration by Herring, Poon, Balasi, and Bailey (CHI 2011: Session: Innovation & Design, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, May 7-12, 2011) introduces a web application called TweetSpiration that uses web search and twitter to influence the design process and provide product and customer inspiration.
• ·      Design, Influence, and Social Technologies: Techniques, Impacts, and Ethics by Introne, Goggins, Levy, Manson, Wash, and Aragon (Workshop Summary, February 11-15, Seattle, Washington, USA, CSCW) introduces ideas on how designers can utilize social networks to influence customer behavior as well as influence the designer. The article also highlights the rationale for, as well as challenges associated with using a customer value design approach, including individual and aggregate dynamics.
• ·      A case study from the U.K. as written by Greenwood, Rashid, and Walkerdine in  UDesignIt: Towards Social Media for Community-Driven Design (Lancaster University, Lancaster, U.K., ICSE: New Ideas and Emerging Results, 2012) highlights companies that directly engages users of social networks to co-create systems and initiatives

These are just a few recent academic articles that already have been written on the topic. New articles emerge every day with examples of companies seeking to implement social media beyond traditional marketing. I look forward to exploring these and sharing the results with you very soon.