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- 1. Business Communication Today Fourteenth Edition, Global Edition Chapter 8 Social Media Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
- 2. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Learning Objectives (1 of 2) 8.1 Identify seven key points for using social media in business communication. 8.2 Describe the business communication applications of social networks. 8.3 Explain how information- and content-sharing sites are used in business communication.
- 3. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Learning Objectives (2 of 2) 8.4 Describe the role of blogging in business communication today, and explain how to adapt the three-step writing process to blogging. 8.5 Describe the business uses of Twitter and other microblogging systems. 8.6 Offer guidelines for becoming a valuable wiki contributor.
- 4. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Writing Strategies for Social Media • LO 8.1 Identify seven key points for using social media in business communication.
- 5. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Creating Successful Content (1 of 2) • Approach it as a Conversation • Write Informally But Not Carelessly • Create Concise, Specific, and Informative Headlines • Get Involved and Stay Involved • Social Networks
- 6. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Creating Successful Content (2 of 2) • Promote Indirectly • Be Transparent and Honest • Think Before You Post!
- 7. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Social Networks • LO 8.2 Describe the business communication applications of social networks.
- 8. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Categories of Social Networks Public, General- Purpose Public, Specialized Private Facebook and Google+ LinkedIn Internal Company-Built Network Regionally Focused Networks Focused- Audience Internal Collaborative Network
- 9. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Business Communication Uses of Social Networks (1 of 2) • Integrating Company Workforce • Fostering Collaboration • Building Communities • Socializing Brands and Companies • Understanding Target Markets
- 10. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Business Communication Uses of Social Networks (2 of 2) • Recruiting Employees and Business Partners • Connecting with Sales Prospects • Supporting Customers • Extending the Organization • Crowdspeaking
- 11. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Strategies for Business Communication on Social Networks (1 of 2) • Choose the Best Compositional Mode • Offer Valuable Content • Join Existing Conversations • Anchor Your Presence in Your Hub
- 12. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Strategies for Business Communication on Social Networks (2 of 2) • Facilitate Community Building • Restrict Promotions to Right Time and Place • Maintain a Consistent Personality
- 13. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Information- and Content-Sharing Sites • LO 8.3 Explain how information- and content-sharing sites are used in business communication.
- 14. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. User-Generated Content Sites Create Value Create a Space for Sharing High-Value Contributors Influence Consumer Behavior Allow For Voting, Endorsements, and Sharing Build Reputation with Positive Reviews Get Involved with Posters and Encourage and Participate in Information Exchanges
- 15. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Content Curation Sites • Guide Audiences to Relevant Content • Focus on Ease of Use • Can Create Value as an Industry Expert • Bring Community Together • Be Aware of Ethics and Legal Policies – Plagiarism, competency as an expert
- 16. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Community Q and A Sites • Build Personal Brand • Demonstrate Commitment to Customer Service • Counter Misinformation
- 17. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Blogging • LO 8.4 Describe the role of blogging in business communication today, and explain how to adapt the three- step writing process to blogging.
- 18. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Strategies for Business Communication on Social Networks • Use Personal Style, Authentic Voice • Deliver New Information Quickly • Choose Topics of Peak Interest • Encourage Audiences to Join Conversation
- 19. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Understanding the Business Aspects of Blogging (1 of 3) • Anchor for Social Media Presence • Project Management and Team Communication • Internal Company News • Customer Support • Public and Media Relations
- 20. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Understanding the Business Aspects of Blogging (2 of 3) • Recruiting • Policy and Issue Discussions • Crisis Communication • Market Research • Brainstorming
- 21. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Understanding the Business Aspects of Blogging (3 of 3) • Employee Engagement • Customer Education • Word-of-mouth Marketing • Influencing Media News Coverage • Community Building
- 22. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Adapting the Three-Step Process for Successful Blogging Plan Write Complete Audience Continue Planning With Each Message Evaluate Purpose Comfortable, Personal Style Proofread Scope Know Your Subject and Provide Links Post
- 23. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Microblogging • LO 8.5 Describe the business uses of Twitter and other microblogging systems.
- 24. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Approaches to Composition • Severe Length Limits • Short Summaries with Links • Social Aspects • Promotions and Teasers
- 25. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Roles of Microblogging in Business • Customer Service • Social Networking and Crowdsourcing • Integration with Other Social Media • Encourage Spontaneous Communication • Integral Part of Overall Communication Strategy
- 26. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Wikis • LO 8.6 Offer guidelines for becoming a valuable wiki contributor.
- 27. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Understanding the Wiki Philosophy • Let Go of Traditional Expectations • Encourage Team Members to Improve Each Other’s Work • Use Templates and Formatting Options • Use Appropriate Editing and Commenting Tools • Take Advantage of the “Sandbox”
- 28. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Adapting the Three-Step Process for Successful Wiki Writing • Plan Carefully for a New Wiki • Ensure That New Content Fits with Existing Wiki • Evaluate Content if Revising or Updating Existing Content
Editor's Notes
- If this PowerPoint presentation contains mathematical equations, you may need to check that your computer has the following installed: 1) MathType Plugin 2) Math Player (free versions available) 3) NVDA Reader (free versions available)
- No matter what media or compositional mode you are using for a particular message, writing for social media requires a different approach than for traditional media. Social media have changed the relationship between sender and receiver, so the nature of the messages needs to change as well.
- Whether you’re writing a blog or posting a product demonstration video to YouTube, consider these tips for creating successful content for social media: ●● Remember that it’s a conversation, not a lecture or a sales pitch. One of the great appeals of social media is the feeling of conversation, of people talking with one another instead of one person talking at everyone else (see Figure 8.1). For all their technological sophistication, in an important sense social media provide a new spin on the age-old practice of word-of-mouth communication. As more and more people gain a voice in the marketplace, companies that try to maintain the old “we talk, you listen” mindset are likely to be ignored in the social media landscape. People generally join social networks for the chance to interact, and you can help stimulate conversations by asking followers for their ideas, options, and feedback. ●● Write informally but not carelessly. Write as a human being, not as a cog in a faceless corporate machine. At the same time, don’t get sloppy; no one wants to slog through misspelled words and half-baked sentences to find the message. ●● Create concise, specific, and informative headlines. Avoid the temptation to engage in clever wordplay with headlines. This advice applies to all forms of business communication, of course, but it is essential for social media. Readers don’t want to spend time and energy figuring out what your witty headlines mean. Search engines won’t know what they mean, either, so fewer people will find your content. ●● Get involved and stay involved. Social media understandably make some businesspeople nervous because they don’t permit a high level of control over messages. However, don’t hide from criticism—it can be valuable feedback. Take the opportunity to correct misinformation or explain how mistakes will be fixed.
- ●● If you need to promote something, do so indirectly. Just as you shouldn’t impose on people with a sales pitch during an informal social gathering, refrain from blatant promotional efforts in social media. ●● Be transparent and honest. Honesty is always essential, of course, but a particular issue that has recently tripped up a few companies is hiding behind an online persona—either a fictitious character whose writing is actually done by a corporate marketing specialist or a real person who fails to disclose an affiliation with a corporate sponsor. ●● Think before you post! Individuals and companies have been sued because of careless Twitter updates, employees have been fired for inappropriate Facebook posts, vital company secrets have been leaked, and business and personal relationships have been strained. To be safe, assume that every message you post will be read by people far beyond your original audience.
- Social networks, online services that help people and organizations form connections and share information, have recently become a major force in both internal and external business communication. In addition to Facebook, a variety of public and private social networks are used by businesses and professionals.
- ●● Public, general-purpose networks. Facebook and Google+ are the largest and best known of these networks. Additionally, regionally focused networks have significant user bases in some countries, such as China’s Renren and Kaixin001. ●● Public, specialized networks. Whereas Facebook and Google+ serve a wide variety of personal and professional needs, other networks focus on a particular function or a particular audience. The most widely known is LinkedIn, with its emphasis on career and sales-related networking. Other networks address the needs of entrepreneurs, small-business owners, specific professions, product enthusiasts, and other narrower audiences. ●● Private networks. Some companies have built private social networks for internal use, either as standalone systems or as part of broader collaboration and communication systems (such as Cemex’s Shift, profiled in Chapter 2). The Red Robin restaurant chain, for example, uses the Yammer social network to share information across the organization nationwide and up and down the corporate ladder. While many companies have found success with internal social networks, a recurring problem is getting enough people in an organization to use them. When top executives are visible participants and use the networks to share vital information, employees are more likely to stay active on them as well. Regardless of the purpose and audience, social networks are most beneficial when all participants give and receive information, advice, support, and introductions—just as in offline interactions. The following two sections describe how social networks are used in business communication and offer advice on using these platforms successfully.
- With their ability to reach virtually unlimited numbers of people through a variety of digital formats, social networks are a great fit for many business communication needs. Here are some of the key applications of social networks for internal and external business communication: ●● Integrating company workforces. Just as public networks can bring friends and families together, internal social networks can help companies grow closer. ●● Fostering collaboration. Networks can play a major role in collaboration. ●● Building communities. Social networks are a natural tool for bringing together communities of practice, people who engage in similar work, and communities of interest, people who share enthusiasm for a particular product or activity. Large and geographically dispersed companies can benefit greatly from communities of practice that connect experts who may work in different divisions or different countries. ●● Socializing brands and companies. According to one survey of company executives, socialization now accounts for more than half of a company’s or brand’s global reputation. ●● Understanding target markets. With hundreds of millions of people expressing themselves via social media, you can be sure that smart companies are listening. ●● Recruiting employees and business partners. Companies use social networks to find potential employees, short-term contractors, subject-matter experts, product and service suppliers, and business partners. A key advantage here is that these introductions are made via trusted connections in a professional network. On LinkedIn, for example, members can recommend each other based on current or past business relationships, which helps remove the uncertainty of initiating business relationships with strangers.
- ●● Recruiting employees and business partners. Companies use social networks to find potential employees, short-term contractors, subject-matter experts, product and service suppliers, and business partners. A key advantage here is that these introductions are made via trusted connections in a professional network. On LinkedIn, for example, members can recommend each other based on current or past business relationships, which helps remove the uncertainty of initiating business relationships with strangers. ●● Connecting with sales prospects. Salespeople on networks such as LinkedIn can use their network connections to identify potential buyers and then ask for introductions through those shared connections. Sales networking can reduce cold calling, telephoning potential customers out of the blue—a practice that few people on either end of the conversation find pleasant. ●● Supporting customers. Customer service is another one of the fundamental areas of business communication that have been revolutionized by social media. Social customer service involves using social networks and other social media tools to give customers a more convenient way to get help from the company and to help each other. ●● Extending the organization. Social networking is also fueling the growth of networked organizations, sometimes known as virtual organizations, where companies supplement the talents of their employees with services from one or more external partners, such as a design lab, a manufacturing firm, or a sales and distribution company. ●● Crowdspeaking. Companies, nonprofits, musicians, authors, and others can use crowdspeaking to “boost a signal.” Crowdspeaking services such as Thunderclap and HeadTalker work in much the same manner as Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites. Someone with a message to spread sets a campaign goal, such as recruiting 100 supporters to help share the message. If that goal is reached, the message is “triggered” and automatically sent to all the followers in all those supporters’ social networks. By taking advantage of the social reach of their supporters, communicators can reach hundreds or thousands of times as many people as they could on their own.
- Social networks offer attractive opportunities for business communication, but they must be used with the same care as other professional media. Follow these guidelines to make the most of social networks for both personal branding and company communication: ●● Choose the best compositional mode for each message, purpose, and network. As you visit various social networks, take some time to observe the variety of message types you see in different parts of each website. For example, the informal status update mode works well for Facebook posts but would be less effective for company overviews and mission statements. ●● Offer valuable content to members of your online communities. People don’t join social networks to be sales targets. They join looking for connections and information. Content marketing is the practice of providing free information that is valuable to community members but that also helps a company build closer ties with current and potential customers. ●● Join existing conversations. Search for online conversations that are already taking place. Answer questions, solve problems, and respond to rumors and misinformation. ●● Anchor your online presence in your hub. Although it’s important to join those conversations and be visible where your stakeholders are active, it’s equally important to anchor your presence at your own central hub—a web presence you own and control. (Control is important because trying to use Facebook, Twitter, or another service as a hub leaves you at the mercy of changes in design, terms of service, and other variables.) The hub can be a conventional website or a combination of a website, a blog, and a company-sponsored online community, for example. Use the hub to connect the various pieces of your online “self” (as an individual or a company) to make it easier for people to find and follow you. For example, you can link to your blog from your LinkedIn profile or automatically announce new blog posts on Twitter.
- ●● Facilitate community building. Make it easy for customers and other audiences to connect with the company and with each other. For instance, you can use the group feature on Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networks to create and foster special interest communities within your networks. Groups are a great way to connect people who are interested in specific topics, such as owners of a particular product. ●● Restrict conventional promotional efforts to the right time and right place. Persuasive communication efforts are still valid for specific communication tasks, such as regular advertising and the product information pages on a website, but efforts to inject blatant “salespeak” into social networking conversations are usually not welcome. ●● Maintain a consistent personality. Each social network is a unique environment with particular norms of communication. As a strictly business-oriented network, for example, LinkedIn has a more formal “vibe” than Facebook and Google+, which cater to both consumers and businesses. While adapting to the expectations of each network, however, be sure to maintain a consistent personality across all the networks in which you are active.
- Social networks allow members to share information and media as part of the networking experience, but a variety of systems have been designed specifically for sharing content. Though the field is diverse and still evolving, the possibilities can be divided into user-generated content sites, content curation sites, and community Q&A sites.
- YouTube, Flickr, Yelp, and other user-generated content (UGC) sites, in which users, rather than website owners, contribute most or all of the content, have become serious business tools. On YouTube, for example, companies post everything from product demonstrations and TV commercials to company profiles and technical support explanations. Moreover, the business communication value of sites such as YouTube goes beyond the mere ability to deliver content. The social aspects of these sites, including the ability to vote for, comment on, and share material, encourage enthusiasts to spread the word about the companies and products they endorse. Companies can also encourage UGC submissions on their own websites or through other social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook. Burberry, Starbucks, and Belkin are among the companies that generated thousands of responses when they invited customers to submit photos and other media. As one example of the way these sites are changing business communication, Yelp has become a major and sometimes controversial influence on consumer behavior at a local level by aggregating millions of reviews of stores, restaurants, and other businesses across the United States. With the voice of the crowd affecting consumer behavior, businesses need to (1) focus on performing at a high level so that customers reward them with positive reviews and (2) get involved on Yelp (the site encourages business owners to tell potential customers about themselves as well). These efforts could pay off much more handsomely than advertising and other conventional communication efforts.
- In many fields of business, so much original content is already available that sometimes the biggest value a communicator can offer audiences is guiding them to the best of what’s out there, rather than creating new content. Similar to what museum curators do when they decide which pieces in their collection to display, business communicators can find and share valuable material with the audiences through content curation. At its simplest, content curation can involve sharing links to useful articles or video via blogs or social media accounts. Companies can also set up dedicated websites that publish links to original content in a variety of topic categories. The authors’ Business Communication Headline News (bchn.businesscommunicationnetwork.com), for instance, is one of the earliest examples of content curation in the field of business communication. As an alternative, a number of websites offer ready-made content curation solutions. Pinterest and Scoop.it, for example, make it easy to assemble attractive online magazines or portfolios on specific topics. Curating content for a target audience can be a great way to add value and stand out as an expert in your field. Not only can you save readers the time it would take to find material on their own, but you can use your knowledge to locate and present the most useful articles, videos, and other media on a given topic. All content curators need to be aware of two key ethical concerns. First, you must not plagiarize, which is presenting someone else’s content as your own. Second, you are promoting yourself as an expert when you curate content, and people will expect you to do a competent job of finding and filtering materials. As with any communication task, make sure you understand the needs of your target audience so that you can provide the best material possible to meet their needs.
- Community Q&A sites, on which visitors answer questions posted by other visitors, are a contemporary twist on the early ethos of computer networking, which was people helping each other. (Groups of like-minded people connected online long before the World Wide Web was even created.) Community Q&A sites include dedicated customer support communities such as those hosted on Get Satisfaction and public sites such as Quora and Yahoo! Answers. Responding to questions on Q&A sites can be a great way to build your personal brand, to demonstrate your company’s commitment to customer service, and to counter misinformation about your company and its products. Keep in mind that when you respond to an individual query on a community Q&A site, you are also “responding in advance” to every person who comes to the site with the same question in the future. In other words, you are writing a type of reference material in addition to corresponding with the original questioner, so keep the long time frame and wider audience in mind.
- Blogs, online journals that are easier to personalize and update than conventional websites, are a major force in business communication.
- To maintain a positive connection with target audiences, business bloggers should follow several important guidelines: ●● Communicate with personal style and an authentic voice. Traditional business messages designed for large audiences tend to be carefully scripted and written in a “corporate voice” that is impersonal and objective. In contrast, successful business blogs tend to exhibit the personal style of their authors. Audiences relate to this fresh approach and often build closer emotional bonds with the blogger’s organization as a result. ●● Deliver new information quickly. Blogging tools let you post new material as soon as you create or find it. This feature not only allows you to respond quickly when needed—such as during a corporate crisis—but also lets your audiences know that active communication is taking place. Blogs that don’t offer a continuous stream of new and interesting content are quickly ignored in today’s online environment. ●● Choose topics of peak interest to audiences. Successful blogs cover topics that readers care about, and they emphasize useful information while downplaying product promotion. These topics don’t need to be earthshaking or cutting edge—they just need to be things that matter to target readers. ●● Encourage audiences to join the conversation. Not all blogs invite comments, but many bloggers consider comments to be an essential feature. These comments can be a valuable source of news, information, and insights. In addition, the relatively informal nature of blogging seems to make it easier for company representatives to let their guards down and converse with their audiences. Of course, not all comments are helpful or appropriate, which is why many bloggers moderate comments, previewing them before allowing them to be displayed.
- Blogs are a potential solution whenever you have a continuing stream of information to share with an online audience—and particularly when you want the audience to have the opportunity to respond. Here are some of the many ways businesses are using blogs: ●● Anchoring the social media presence. As noted earlier, the multiple threads of any social media program should be anchored in a central hub that the company or an individual owns and controls. Blogs make an ideal social media hub. ●● Project management and team communication. Using blogs is a good way to keep project teams up to date, particularly when team members are geographically dispersed. ●● Internal company news. Companies can use blogs to keep employees informed about general business matters, from facility news to benefit updates. By reducing the need for grapevines to spring up, blogs can enhance communication across all levels of a company. ●● Customer support. Customer support blogs answer questions, offer tips and advice, and inform customers about new products. Also, many companies monitor the blogosphere (and Twittersphere), looking for complaints and responding with offers to help dissatisfied customers. ●● Public relations and media relations. Many company employees and executives now share company news with both the general public and journalists via their blogs.
- ●● Recruiting. Using a blog is a great way to let potential employees know more about your company, the people who work there, and the nature of the company culture. In the other direction, employers often find and evaluate the blogs and microblogs of prospective employees, making blogging a great way to build a name for yourself within your industry or profession. ●● Policy and issue discussions. Executive blogs in particular provide a public forum for discussing legislation, regulations, and other broad issues of interest to an organization. ●● Crisis communication. Using blogs is an efficient way to provide up-to-the-minute information during emergencies, to correct misinformation, or to respond to rumors. ●● Market research. Blogs are a clever mechanism for soliciting feedback from customers and experts in the marketplace. In addition to using their own blogs for research, today’s companies need to monitor blogs that are likely to discuss them, their executives, and their products. Negative product reviews, rumors, and other information can spread across the globe in a matter of hours, and managers need to know what the online community is saying—whether it’s positive or negative. ●● Brainstorming. Online brainstorming via blogs offers a way for people to toss around ideas and build on each others’ contributions.
- ●● Employee engagement. Blogs can enhance communication across all levels of a company, giving senior managers a channel they can use to communicate with employees and giving employees the chance to offer comments and ask questions. ●● Customer education. Blogs are a great way to help current and potential customers understand and use your products and services. Doing so can also improve sales and support productivity by reducing the need for one-on-one communication. ●● Word-of-mouth marketing. Bloggers and microbloggers often make a point of providing links to other blogs and websites that interest them, giving marketers a great opportunity to have their messages spread by enthusiasts. Word-of mouth marketing is often called viral marketing in reference to the transmission of messages in much the same way that biological viruses are transmitted from person to person. However, viral marketing is not really an accurate metaphor. As author Brian Solis puts it, “There is no such thing as viral marketing.” Real viruses spread from host to host on their own, whereas word-of-mouth marketing requires “hosts” to spread messages voluntarily. The distinction is critical because you need to give people a good reason—good content, in other words—to pass along your message. ●● Influencing traditional media news coverage. According to the social media consultant Tamar Weinberg, “The more prolific bloggers who provide valuable and consistent content are often considered experts in their subject matter” and are often called upon when journalists need insights into various topics. ●● Community building. Blogging is a great way to connect people with similar interests, and popular bloggers often attract a community of readers who connect with one another through the commenting function. The possibilities of blogs are almost unlimited, so be on the lookout for new ways to use them to foster positive relationships with colleagues, customers, and other important audiences (see Figure 8.2).
- The three-step writing process is easy to adapt to blogging. The planning step is particularly important if you’re considering starting a blog because you’re planning an entire communication channel, not just a single message. Pay close attention to your audience, your purpose, and your scope. ●● Audience. Except with team blogs and other efforts that have an obvious and well-defined audience, defining the target audience for a blog can be challenging. The decision often comes down to business strategy. ●● Purpose. A business blog needs to have a business-related purpose that is important to your company and to your chosen audience. ●● Scope. Defining the scope of your blog can be a bit tricky. With a clear purpose in mind, you’ll have a better idea of how wide or narrow your subject can be. After you begin writing your blog, careful planning needs to continue with each message. Unless you’re posting to a restricted-access blog, such as an internal blog on a company’s intranet, you can never be sure who might see your posts or when other bloggers might link to them. Use a comfortable, personal writing style. Blog audiences don’t want to hear from your company; they want to hear from you. Bear in mind, though, that comfortable does not mean careless. Sloppy writing annoys readers and damages your credibility. Completing messages for your blog is usually easy. Evaluate the content and readability of your message, proofread to correct any errors, and post it. Most blogging systems have built-in newsfeed options (often called RSS newsfeeds) so that your audience can automatically receive new posts from you.
- A microblog is a variation on blogging in which messages are sharply restricted to specific character counts. Twitter is the best known of these systems, but many others exist. Some companies have private microblogging systems for internal use only, either as standalone services or as part of broader collaboration systems.
- Many of the concepts of regular blogging apply to microblogging as well, although the severe length limitations call for a different approach to composition. Microblog messages often involve short summaries or teasers that provide links to more information. In addition, microblogs tend to have a stronger social aspect that makes it easier for writers and readers to forward messages and for communities to form around individual writers. Like regular blogging, microblogging quickly caught on with business users and is now a mainstream business medium. Microblogs are used for virtually all of the blog applications mentioned on pages 215–216. In addition, microblogs are frequently used for providing company updates, offering coupons and notices of sales, presenting tips on product usage, sharing relevant and interesting information from experts, announcing the headlines of new blog posts, engaging with customers (see Figure 8.3), and serving as the backchannel in meetings and presentations (see page 477). By following top names in your field, you can also customize Twitter as your own real-time news source.
- Customer service is also becoming a popular use for Twitter, thanks to its ease and speed and the option of switching between public tweets and private direct messages as the situation warrants. Even if a company doesn’t want to use Twitter as a customer service channel, it should monitor the system to look for complaints or questions from customers, many of whom use Twitter these days to ask for help or publicize their disappointment. The social networking aspect of Twitter and other microblogs also makes them good for crowdsourcing research questions: asking one’s followers for input or advice. Finally, the ease of retweeting, the practice of forwarding messages from other Twitter users, is the microblogging equivalent of sharing other content from other bloggers via content curation. In addition to its usefulness as a standalone system, Twitter is integrated with other social media systems and a variety of publishing and reading tools and services. Many of these make use of the informal Twitter feature known as the hashtag (the # symbol followed by a word or phrase), which makes it easy for people to label and search for topics of interest and to monitor ongoing Twitter conversations about particular topics. As Starbucks discovered, however, hashtags can turn into “bashtags” when members of the public use a hashtag campaign to ridicule or criticize a company (see page 205). Although microblogs are designed to encourage spontaneous communication, when you’re using the medium for business communication, don’t just tweet whatever pops into your head. Make sure messages are part of your overall communication strategy. Twitter followers consider tweets that are entertaining, surprising, informative, or engaging (such as asking followers for advice) as the most valuable. In contrast, the least-valuable tweets tend to be complaints, conversations between the Twitter account owner and a specific follower, and relatively pointless messages such as saying “good morning.”
- As Chapter 2 points out, using wikis is a great way for teams and other groups to collaborate on writing projects, from brief articles to long reports and reference works. The benefits of wikis are compelling, but they do require a unique approach to writing.
- To be a valuable wiki contributor, keep these points in mind: ●● Let go of traditional expectations of authorship, including individual recognition and control. ●● Encourage all team members to improve each other’s work. ●● Use page templates and other formatting options to make sure your content matches the rest of the wiki. ●● Many wikis provide both editing and commenting capabilities, and participants should use the appropriate tool for each. In other words, don’t insert comments or questions into the main content; use the “talk page” or other commenting feature if you want to discuss the content. ●● Take advantage of the sandbox, if available; this is a “safe,” nonpublished section of the wiki where team members can practice editing and writing. Wikis often have guideline pages to help new contributors integrate their work into the group’s ongoing effort. Be sure to read and understand these guidelines, and don’t be afraid to ask for help.
- You can easily adapt the three-step writing process for wikis, depending on whether you are creating a new wiki, adding new material to an existing wiki, or revising existing material on a wiki. If you are creating a new wiki, think through your long-term purpose carefully, just as you would with a new blog or podcast channel. Doing so will help you craft appropriate guidelines, editorial oversight, and security policies. If you are adding a page or an article to an existing wiki, figure out how this new material fits in with the existing organization. Determine whether any similar material already exists; it might be better to expand an existing article or add a subpage than to create a new item. Also, learn the wiki’s preferred style for handling incomplete articles. For example, on the wiki that contains the user documentation for the popular WordPress blogging software, contributors are discouraged from adding new pages until the content is “fairly complete and accurate.” If you are revising or updating an existing wiki article, use the checklist on page 157 in Chapter 6 to evaluate the content before you make changes. If you don’t agree with published content and plan to revise it, you can use the wiki’s discussion facility to share your concerns with other contributors. The wiki environment should encourage discussions and even robust disagreements, as long as everyone remains civil and respectful.