Social Media In The Organisation

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

INTRODUCTION

Ben and Jerry’s (B&J) was first started by two childhood friends, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield in 1978 and it has been extending its reach worldwide with more than 5,000 outlets in over 30 countries such as Australia, Japan, Singapore, Germany, etc (Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream Statistics 2012).

B&J’s mission go way beyond its ice cream products and retail stores. It also define the company’s social and economic missions which they strive to integrate innovative ways into their business operations to make a positive change to improve the quality of life locally, nationally and internationally (Ben & Jerry's n.d.). According to an interview, B&J marketing specialist stated that "Social Responsibility is built into our mission statement so it is really a part of everything we do including social media. Social media allows us to take our message about social responsibility and the initiatives we want to champion and educate many more people about them. We bring our social mission to life in a lighthearted way which, when done right, makes the topics more approachable. It is a balancing act of the right messaging, at the right time, in the right way. The Ben & Jerry’s brand has a lot of flexibility, so you should not be surprised to see one tweet about Grateful Dead lyrics followed by a tweet about Fair Trade." (Hayes 2012)

Social media is considered as "the future of communication", a countless array of internet tools and platforms that increase and enhance information sharing, enabling easy transfer and exchange of photos, videos, audio, text and all forms of information (Social Media Defined, 2007).

Social media allows immediate communication of responses and feedbacks with the help of internet and latest technologies, rapidly disseminating information to massive audiences and also bringing people from different geographical locations to meet at a single point and express their views. Therefore it is a very powerful medium for communication and networking as compared to regular media such as newspaper and television which work only as a one-way street.

Because social media is so open and broad, it acts as a platform, or Ba (Nishida, 1990), for great exchange of both tacit and explicit knowledge. Based on the SECI model of knowledge creation, it is also capable of including the entire cycle of knowledge creation on its own (Nonaka, 1994).

An effective channel for social interaction and real time conversations between users on social media allows socialization and externalization to happen at the same time with the exchange of tacit knowledge which can be transferred through conversation and narrative as well as explicit knowledge which can be found from books and journals. Explicit knowledge can then connect and combine to create more explicit knowledge which people retrieve and execute, which in turn generate more tacit knowledge.

According to USAtoday (Mullaney 2012), other than advertising on Facebook or Twitter, many companies are using social media to build teams that are proficient in bringing customer ideas for new product designs to market earlier, problem solving, able to share information effectively and efficiently among their employees and partners, and redesigning all kinds of corporate software in Facebook's easy-to-learn style.

In Singapore, social media has become a substantial part of the Singaporean lifestyle. As social media becomes an integral part of modern society, more companies are beginning to make use of social media to improve in communication with their internal staffs as well as external parties.

SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE ORGANISATION

Improving knowledge sharing

According to Hayes (2012), B&J uses an internal social network named ‘Flavourhood’ to connect their outlets over the world onto a single platform. This platform allows tacit knowledge to be transferred from one outlet to another outlet. Suggestions, problems and information can be transferred in practically real time across the globe. It also promotes the company’s stance on double–loop learning which involves questioning the role of the learning and framing systems where actual goals and strategies underlie.

Beside Facebook and Twitter, B&J also has social outposts on platforms like Google+ and Instagram (Hayes 2012). B&J spread its reach across various outposts and different team members are responsible for each outpost. Consumer data and feedbacks are collected from each of these various platforms and the team members, together with the social mission team, meet once a week to discuss information that has been gathered to further facilitate knowledge sharing within the company.

Building social capital

Social capital is the norms and social relations embedded in the social structures of societies that enable people to work together to achieve desired goals (OECD Glossary of Statistical Terms 2003). It is a type of intellectual capital which can represents a competitive advantage, if handled well. This is supported by Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs which indicates that good inter-personal relationships play an important role in people and will generally lead to satisfaction and cooperation.

B&J builds social capital by building relationships through networking with potential business partners and clients. At the same time, business opportunities are also gained. Forum is used to improve internal relationships and connection between employees. By having a more cooperative and socially satisfied workforce, employees will tend to enjoy work more. With high motivation to work, B&J can expect higher performance output from the employees.

At the moment, B&J stance is to convey fun and wackiness through social media. They believe it will resonate with people as long as the fun and wackiness is authentic and the company stay true to itself. Their hope is that through positive engagement with the brand on social media, they can turn Ben & Jerry’s customers into Ben & Jerry’s brand ambassadors.

Supporting innovation

Innovation, in organisational context, is the bringing of creative ideas to life (Business Improvement Architects, n.d.). Values are added by changing old organisational forms and practices to improve organisation efficiency, productivity, quality, competitive positioning and market share.

In Singapore, B&J organised a 5 days event known as ‘Free Cone Day’ in 2011 and it was a great success due to the fact that the event was marketed through social media and it was used alongside with other pre-existing marketing strategies. In that event, B&J promote their new Clusterfluff flavour by travelling around in their attention-grabbing decorated van ‘Cowmobile’, to give out free ice cream. Instead of having standardised location and timing to give out free ice creams, B&J make use of a popular website Facebook and asked their fans to send requests for the much-loved ‘Cowmobile’ to make a stopover at their location to give out free scoops of Clusterfluff.

The usage of social media improves communication between the company and their customers through this event. By using social media, B&J was able to market this event to reach out to a large group of ‘followers’ at a low cost. In fact according to Cassandra (Aw 2011), the 5 days event received 784 requests for the ‘Cowmobile’ and the amount of Facebook Likes for B&J increased more than 28%.

Aiding problem solving

Social media is a medium where sharing and socialising are ongoing. In order to allow social media to be part of the problem solving process, a mechanism is put in place for people to give their comments or feedbacks. By having such a huge social media presence, B&J allow the public to help them to comment on the good and bad issues with the company. It is important that such feedback platform is made known to the world who knows B&J existence. Otherwise, it would be useless and might in return causes negativity if the same problems are met by a different group of people arises again.

The management could also identify problems much more easily and quickly and find key employees related to particular problems, thus helping them in becoming more effective and efficient in problem solving. Solutions may also be available through feedbacks and comments on the forum which employees may be more enthusiastic to provide compared to other forms of feedback.

Benefits and Risks in using Social Media

4.1 Benefits

Social media is a platform on the internet which inherited characteristics such as real time data transfer and freedom of speech. Due to the vast amount of users and the easy accessibility on social media such as Facebook and Twitter, it is a highly effective and yet low cost method to reach out to the customers. Information such as new items, events and promotions can be easily posted on such social media and reach out to the customers in real time.

Furthermore, social media also allows feedbacks and suggestions from the customers. Discussions about new innovations such as new ice cream flavours or other events can take place on the social media platform. Information on customer data or suggestions from them can be easily obtained just by going through the social media platform. In order to ensure that there are substantial flow of people on the social media platform, activities such as contests, discounts for customers being their social media ‘fans’ can be carried out. Such actions can be seen as an effort to thank the customers for their support and also to boost social capital.

Social media also acts as a tool to promote learning. It can be used as an effective information gatherer regardless whether it is single-loop learning, where the company detected an error and correcting it permits the company to carry on its present policies or achieve its present objectives, or double-loop learning where error is detected and corrected in ways that involve the modification of an organization’s underlying norms, policies and objectives. With the help of social media, market and customers information are easier to obtain and from there, the company can decides if it wants to follow its current policies or create changes.

4.2 Risks

Social media also have its own set of risks. The social media platform gives customers the freedom to express their views. Customers are able to post negative comments that is reputation damaging and they can be viewed online in real time even with restriction in place. Any attempt to delete or remove the post might be considered by social media users as an attempt to cover up any wrong.

Another risk the company faces when it comes to social media is the sharing of information. Employees can share opinions in ways that reflect badly on the company or they can release confidential information or intellectual property to the public. If no sufficient preventive measures are put in place, issues such as confidential information being leaked, data breaches, privacy violation and offensive comments might happen.

There is also risk of leaking out information to the wrong parties. As much as a company would want to find out information about their competitors, the same would apply to the competitors. It is easy for competitors to find information about the company and from there, they can quickly and easily keep up with the company’s progress, strategies, strengths and weaknesses.

Furthermore, there are always worries of virus and malware found in the webpage and inflecting users who access that page when internet is concerned. Accident like this might create negative impression of the company as the customers will take the view that B&J managed their social media page inadequately and will thus avoid accessing their website in future.

There is also risk of hackers hacking into the social media website and gaining access to information such as customer data or company records. According to wired.com (Schreier 2011), in April 2011, Sony was attacked by hackers on two occasions. 24.6 millions of Sony Online Entertainment users and 70 millions of Sony’s PlayStation Network accounts which contain their personal information with credit card information were stolen respectively.

Conclusion

It is not possible to ignore the huge opportunity to use social media to interact with anyone, anywhere, at any time. Social media has changed the way companies approach advertising and promotion, and it is also a powerful tool for knowledge sharing.

According to an article from WebWorkerDaily (Wade 2010), social media user is in the driver seat and no longer being in control anymore. The company is along for the ride but fortunately can still give some directions and guidance in appropriate ways. The company can delete things from its social network page, but in the world of social media, that is an attack on transparency, freedom of expression and spirit of online community. When someone says something negative about the company on the page, it would be advisable to look at it as an opportunity to right a wrong or to give the company’s side of the story with unrestrained candor.

Therefore, the best policy is always to have somewhat be transparent and honest. Agreeing to mistakes and sticking to the truth is always better than lying because when the act of dishonesty comes out, a firestorm of backlash will hit the company via cyberspace. It is of high importance that feedback and criticism must be handled tactfully as this data or information can be useful to utilise for knowledge innovation and knowledge sharing but negative feedback and criticism if handled badly will hurt the company’s reputation. Therefore, it is critical for a company to have a team of personals trained to handle such situations.

Despite the countless benefits, there are many considerable risks in using social media. Therefore, effort and care must be exercised when dealing with such platforms. When used appropriately and strategically, companies can increase their opportunities and improve their overall performance, thus gaining advantage over their competitors.