Social Media in The Business World

After completing modules three and four on Hootsuite, I learned what it takes to develop and share effective content. To my surprise, there is a lot that goes into social media content. Without effective content that will engage your audience, social media is pointless. The first thing an organization should do is create a content strategy. This will make sure that what you are posting is relevant and entertaining to your audience’s interests and goals. It gives your content a purpose and tells a story about your organization. 

After you have a clear strategy, Hootsuite suggests creating a content calendar. This is a weekly/monthly calendar detailing what you will be posting, when you will be posting it, and what time it should be posted. This will keep everything organized, and it will allow you to observe how your content is doing. Here is an example of a weekly calendar I made for my client, Boomerang Backpacks, a non-profit organization geared towards feeding hungry school children.

Another point Hootsuite makes is to know your platform. In the third module is goes through trending social media platforms and describes what effective content looks like on that app specifically. For example, Instagram thrives off visuals, while Twitter is based on shorter statements. 

After completing modules 3 and 4 of Hootsuite, I learned how effective content can be developed and shared. Module 3 stressed the importance of aligning your social media strategy with your organizational goals. This is how organizations make sure that their social media content is effective. For example, the company I am working on is an accounting firm. Their organizational goals revolve around gaining more clients. In order for their social media content to be effective, they must attempt to accomplish this goal through their social media posts.

Along with aligning overall strategies, content strategies are also important. Following a content strategy helps the organization keep a cohesive story behind their brand. With every post following the same strategy, consumers won’t get mixed ideas about your brand. This also helps the company focus on their specific target market and understand what is performing well.

Content calendars are another tool for developing and sharing effective content. These calendars make sure that your company is consistent with their posting schedule on different platforms. It also makes sure that your posts are well thought out and intentional. A helpful aspect of a content calendar is that you can keep track of which posts performed well and which didn’t. This helps your company tailor their content to be more engaging with their followers. 

As I read through Chapters 4 and 5 of The Social Organization, I couldn't help but think of my own employer, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), and how I felt they would align with what I was reading. Our company president and CEO, Jim Pauley, has been very clear in his vision to move our 125-year-old codes and standards making organization into the digital age. Social media collaboration is a well-established, yet still growing, part of NFPA. Between our NFPA and NEC Facebook sites, we have well over 400 thousand followers. Bringing in our Latin American (LATAM) community stakeholders, the NFPA en Español Facebook page has nearly 200 thousand followers. Building codes and standards using the NFPA Standards Development Process for over 300 codes and standards takes collaboration on many levels and social media engagement is an absolute necessity for our organization. Looking the “People-Concerns-People” tool that was used by NASA in Chapter 4 of The Social Organization, I believe that NFPA does a great job of identifying concerns and needs and then connecting the internal and external audiences to gather input collectively. I would place NFPA in the “Forging” stage of the “Six F” model. The organization as a whole is becoming more interactive with our stakeholders and one another on social media. While much of this happens on public-facing social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, there is also much social interaction between our internal staff and stakeholders, as well as between stakeholders themselves on a members-only social platform we created called NFPA Xchange. While I am not involved in the community collaboration strategy for our organization, reading these two chapters really helped me to understand how it is being applied at NFPA.

After reading chapters 4 and 5 of The Social Organization, i learned that there are many effective principles to build online community through social media. In order to advance community collaboration, it is very important for an organization to link the community with their organizational goals. Community culture should help to influence where the company focuses its social media efforts, but is important to always make sure that you are staying true to the goals of the organization. 

The “Six F” Model of Attributes is important in determining how you would like to portray your company on social media. The six attitudes are folly, fearful, flippant, formulating, forging, and fusing. These organizational attitudes are key to determining how effective social media will be for your company. For example, if the leader of the company has a folly attitude, they will usually ignore social media and there will be no guidance about how employees should interact with customers on social media. On the opposite end, a fusing attitude treats community collaboration as an integral part of their business. This leads to a social organization that relies heavily on community collaboration.

After watching “The Legal Side of Big Data”, I have learned more about the damage that Big Data is capable of. Perhaps I live under a rock, but most of the information was news to me. I was unaware that such high-scale hackings were going on– I was so surprised to hear about them, especially the Blue Shield example. Knowing what I know now, it is evident that both businesses and consumers are at risk. While there is no real solution to this problem, there are a few preventative measures that can be taken. 

For consumers, unfortunately there is not much that can be done to avoid this. I suggest only opening cards with a company if it is absolutely necessary. Along with that, the cards should be closely monitored in case any hacking does occur. Once your information is out, there really is no way to know what the business is doing with it. As a consumer myself, I find this frightening. 

As for businesses, there are steps that must be taken to ensure as much protection as possible. First, the company should ask themselves: how likely are we to get hacked? From there, they should put together a security plan. These businesses must put aside money for data security. Businesses should protect themselves with Trade Secrets and by implementing confidentiality agreements to protect themselves and their consumers. Lastly, it is crucial that organizations have policies in place to monitor the data, an analytical officer would be ideal. It is important businesses are taking data breaches seriously as it can harm everyone involved. Taking these preventative steps is the only way to balance the threats and the opportunities that Big Data imposes. 

What I learned from “The Internet’s Original Sin”, Maciej Ceglowski’s talk, is that internet business models influence surveillance and data gathering on the internet. An example that he mentioned in his talk is that “Surveillance as a business model is the only thing that makes a site like Facebook possible.” The internet has come to be just full of advertisements and I think that’s due to the business model and data gathering. We are always being watched because we see things on the internet based on an algorithm. Data is being collected on us to find what to show next. Technology has changed the extent of what surveillance can do, and that can be worrisome, the advertisements from businesses are just another reason to hack into our privacy and collect data.

If I were to act as social media consultant to myself, there are a few things I could begin with to expand my professional presence online. The first thing I would do is create a LinkedIn profile for myself. I have not yet made one and I know I need to. A profile on LinkedIn could help me to make connections with future employers, so I should definitely make myself an account. 

As defined in the lecture, a consultant is “the creative application of knowledge to a specific problem or opportunity.” In my opinion, there are a handful of important qualities for a social media consultant to have. Those qualities being, knowledge of the industry in which you are consulting, a deep understanding of various social media platforms, and an ability to adapt to any problems that may arise.

Before watching the videos required this week, big data was something I had heard in a couple of my classes but I never thought anything of it past the extent that it was covered in class. After watching the videos, I have come to the realization that big data and algorithms have a massive impact on every day life. The dangers of the use and/or of big data and these algorithms is that there is little to no regulation to the extent of information they are taking from you and how they are in turn, using that information. As said in The Social Dilemma, the cell phone company are legally monitored; I believe that digital technologies need similar, if not, more extensive legal monitoring.