BUSINESS RESEARCH

Social Software Strategy

Organisations are increasingly being sold the virtues of social software – not only will it help connect and empower employees, customers, and partners, it will also foster innovation and deliver performance breakthroughs. Because of this, senior executives are under pressure to conform to the ‘social trend’. But simply mimicking the social software choices of competitors is dangerous because every organisation faces unique challenges – and opportunities.

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December 2012

One of these challenges is to uncover what problems employees are facing right now and then to create a clear business case for social software and a supporting strategy. Specific, identifiable business problems should provide the impetus for leveraging social software strategies to drive performance. Your competitor’s social software strategy can highlight opportunities, but it shouldn’t dictate your unique strategy.

Social software presents five core capabilities:

1. Identify expertise: accelerates learning and problem-solving as people can easily connect on topics of mutual interest.

2. Facilitate cross-boundary communication: knowledge flows readily across the organisation as conversations transcend hierarchies and individual functions.

3. Preserve institutional memory: knowledge and context are preserved, improving the value of information.

4. Harness distributed knowledge: intelligence is pooled to solve problems and to drive innovation and create new knowledge.

5. Discover emerging opportunities: identify opportunities for innovation and acquire insight into potential communication gaps.

Referenced techniques

Technique

Social Media Marketing

The concept explains how organisations can leverage social media marketing to build relationships with new and existing customers. It describes the different strategies for implementing social media marketing and the associated strengths and limitations.

Technique

Knowledge Management

This concept provides a review and interpretation of previous work on knowledge management and offers a comprehensive account of benefits achieved by properly managing knowledge, implementation information and success factors.

Technique

Knowledge Capital

The concept reviews the critical points of current knowledge including substantive findings as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to knowledge transfer and intellectual capital. It also presents a compilation of possible and potential benefits and offers selective resources for further exploration.

Technique

Empowering Employees

Over 70% of organisations now use empowerment initiatives. This concept explores how and why companies apply them. Empowerment is a key driver of motivation, autonomy, and innovation. Edmondson (2018) and Parker (1998) show it thrives in safe cultures and well-designed roles.

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