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Chapter 8: Social Media
The chapter continues the discussion of media options with a look at digital platforms that have a
significant social component: social networks, information- and content-sharing sites, blogs, microblogs,
and wikis.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Writing Strategies for Social Media
Social Networks
Business Communication Uses of Social Networks
Strategies for Business Communication on Social Networks
Information- and Content-Sharing Sites
User-Generated Content Sites
Content Curation Sites
Community Q&A Sites
Blogging
Understanding the Business Applications of Blogging
Adapting the Three-Step Process for Successful Blogging
Microblogging
Wikis
Understanding the Wiki Philosophy
Adapting the Three-Step Process for Successful Wiki Writing
Learning Catalytics is a “bring your own device” student engagement, assessment, and classroom
intelligence system. It allows instructors to engage students in class with real-time diagnostics. Students
can use any modern, web-enabled device (smartphone, tablet, or laptop) to access it. For more
information on using Learning Catalytics in your course, contact your Pearson Representative.
LECTURE NOTES
Section 1: Writing Strategies for Social Media
Learning Objective 1: Identify seven key points for using social media in business communication.
Social media change the relationship between sender and receiver.
Because the relationship has changed, the nature of the messages needs to change as well:
Remember that it’s a conversation, not a lecture or a sales pitch.
Write informally but not carelessly.
Create concise, specitic, and informative headlines.
Get involved and stay involved.
If you need to promote something, do so indirectly.
Be transparent and honest.
Think before you post!
Classroom discussion question: Should business writers on social media match the writing style of the
people with whom they are communicating, even if that means disregarding conventions of spelling,
grammar, and punctuation? After all, isn’t it good practice to interact with customers and other parties in
the style they are accustomed to? Do you agree or disagree?
Section 2: Social Networks
Learning Objective 2: Describe the business communication applications of social networks.
Social networks are online services that enable individual and organizational members to form
connections and share information.
Businesses now use several types of social networks:
Public, general-purpose networks (Facebook being the most signiticant of these)
Public, specialized networks (LinkedIn is the largest of these)
Private corporate networks
Business Communication Uses of Social Networks
Business applications of social networks include:
Integrating company workforces
Fostering collaboration
Building communities of practice
Supporting brand communities
Socializing brands and companies
Understanding target markets
Recruiting new employees
Finding business partners
Connecting with sales prospects
Providing customer support
Extending the organization
Crowdspeaking—using social networks to amplify a message
Strategies for Business Communication on Social Networks
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.
offer valuable content.
Join existing conversations, in addition to starting your own.
Anchor your online presence in your hub, a web presence that you own and control, such as
a conventional website, a blog, and/or a company-sponsored online community.
Facilitate community building; make it easy for customers and other audiences to connect
with the company and with each other.
Restrict conventional promotional effort to the right time and right place.
Maintain a consistent personality across sites, while staying within the evolving norms of each site (e.g.,
LinkedIn has a somewhat more formal tone than Facebook).
Section 3: Information- and Content-Sharing Sites
Learning Objective 3: Explain how information- and content-sharing sites are used in business
communication.
This diverse group of website categories include user-generated content sites, content curation sites, and
community Q&A sites.
User-Generated Content Sites
YouTube, Flickr, and other user-generated content (UGC) sites, on which users rather than website
owners contribute most or all of the content, have become important business tools.
Video (including screencasts) is a powerful medium for product demonstrations, interviews, industry
news, training, facility tours, and other uses.
The social aspects of these sites, including the ability to vote for, comment on, and share material,
encourage enthusiasts to spread the word.
The keys to effective user-generated content are making it valuable and making it easy, such as
organizing it all on a branded channel on YouTube.
Content Curation Sites
Content curation involves someone with expertise or interest in a particular field who collects and
republishes material on a particular topic.
Pinterest and Scoop.it are among the most popular of these sites.
Curation has the potential to bring the power of community and shared expertise to a lot of different
fields.
Ultimately, it could reshape audience behavior and therefore the practice of business communication.
Two key ethical concerns:
You must not plagiarize, which is presenting someone else’s content as your own.
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.
Community Q&A Sites
Community Q&A sites are websites (or sections of websites, including support forums) on which
visitors answer questions posted by other visitors or by representatives of companies.
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.
Section 4: Blogging
Learning Objective 4: Describe the role of blogging in business communication today, and explain how
to adapt the three-step writing process to blogging.
Millions of business-oriented blogs are now in operation, and blogs have become an important source of
information for consumers and professionals alike.
Good business bloggers pay close attention to several important elements:
Communicating with personal style and an authentic voice
Delivering new information quickly
Choosing topics of peak interest to audiences
Encouraging audiences to join the conversation
Understanding the Business Applications of Blogging
Here are some of the many ways businesses are using blogs:
Anchoring the social media presence
Project management and team communication
Company news
Customer support
Public relations and media relations
Recruiting
Policy and issue discussions
Crisis communication
Market research
Brainstorming
Employee engagement
Customer education
Word-of-moth marketing
In6uencing traditional media news coverage
Community building
Adapting the Three-Step Process for Successful Blogging
The three-step writing process is easy to adapt to blogging tasks:
Pay attention to your audience, your purpose, and your scope: Make sure you have a clear
audience in mind, a purpose with “legs,” and a scope that gives you enough room to write
about it month a;er month.
Carefully consider the information you are including (others could link to it months or years
from now).
Evaluate the content and readability of your message—write in a comfortable, personal
style.
Compelling headlines for posts are an essential tool to draw in readers.
Successful blog content also needs to be interesting, valuable to readers, and as brief as
possible.
Completing blog posts is quite easy: evaluate the content and readability of your message,
proofread to correct any errors, and post using your blogging system’s tools for doing so.
Use tagging features to make posts easy to find.
Section 5: Microblogging
Learning Objective 5: Describe the business uses of Twitter and other microblogging systems.
A microblog is a variation on blogging in which messages are restricted to specific character counts.
Twitter is the best known, but many others exist, including private corporate 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:
Twi7er is frequently used to announce or promote new posts on regular blogs.
Microblogs tend to have a stronger social networking aspect that makes it easier for writers and
readers to forward messages and for communities to form around individual writers.
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 in the chapter, as well as:
Providing company updates
offering coupons and notice of sales
Presenting tips on product usage
Sharing relevant and interesting information from experts
Serving as the backchannel in meetings and presentations
Interacting with customers individually
Commonly used Twitter features are the hashtag to tag tweets by subject (strictly speaking, not a Twitter
feature, but a user convention) and retweeting to share content.
Section 6: Wikis
Learning Objective 6: Offer guidelines for becoming a valuable wiki contributor.
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.
Understanding the Wiki Philosophy
To be a valuable wiki contributor, keep these points in mind:
Writers must let go of traditional expectations of authorship, including individual recognition
and control. The value of a wiki stems from the collective insight of all its contributors.
Team members sometimes need to be encouraged to edit and improve each other’s work.
Writers should use page templates and other formatting options to make sure the content fits
the same style as the rest of the wiki.
Many wikis provide both editing and commenting capabilities, and participants should use
the appropriate tool for each.
New users should take advantage of the sandbox, which is a “safe,” nonpublished section of
the wiki where team members can practice editing and writing.
Wikis usually have guidelines to help new contributors integrate their work into the group’s
ongoing effort. Read and understand these guidelines; don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Adapting the Three-Step Process for Successful Wiki Writing
Whether you’re creating a new wiki, adding new material to an existing wiki, or revising existing
material on a wiki, you can easily adapt the three-step process.
If you’re creating a new wiki, carefully think through your long-term purpose and ask these
questions:
Will the wiki be a one-time project or an ongoing effort?
Who will be allowed to add or modify content?
Will you or someone else serve as editor, reviewing all additions and changes?
What rules and guidelines will you establish to guide the growth of the wiki?
What security measures might be required?
If you’re adding a page or an article to an existing wiki, figure out how this new material fits in with
the existing structure. Find out 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.
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. A well-run wiki encourages discussions and
disagreements, as long as everyone remains civil and respectful.
Classroom discussion question: Given that individual recognition for writing efforts isn’t usually part of
the wiki experience, why would business professionals put forth the effort to contribute? What steps could
managers take to encourage and motivate their employees to contribute to internal or external wikis?
HIGHLIGHT BOX: THE FUTURE OF COMMUNICATION
Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality
By focusing on the immersive “depth” of the user experience, students should be able to article why
augmented and virtual reality technologies offer a level of communication effectiveness that
conventional media can’t always match. For instance, verbally describing a potential new product and
asking target customers if it meets their needs might not be nearly as effective at generating meaningful
answers as le?ng them experience it virtually.
HIGHLIGHT BOX: DIGITAL + SOCIAL + MOBILE: TODAY’S COMMUNICATION
ENVIRONMENT
Community Manager: One of the Hottest New Jobs in Business
1 Someone with limited work experience but a long personal history of using social media probably
would not be a good candidate for a community manager position because the job requires much
more than just using social media. As the second paragraph of the highlight box explains, community
managers need a wide range of skills and insights to be effective, and these require some work
experience to develop.
2. The risks of having a single person be the voice of a company include “mental bandwidth” challenges
for the community manager (being required to know so many aspects of the company and its
products), the need for that person to be available 24/7 in the event of communication crises or
opportunities, and the chance of that individual’s personality eventually dominating the company’s
public persona. A good way to limit the risk would be to create an internal support network for the
community manager, so that he or she can get information quickly and to provide a backup so the
person doesn’t need to be on the job or on call without a break. Having “guest hosts” step in
occasionally could reduce the risk of one person’s personality dominating the company’s external
communications.
COMMUNICATION CHALLENGES AT STARBUCKS
Individual Challenge
This teaser tweet should combine an upbeat tone with key pieces of information, enough to compel
interested readers to click through for more information. Here is one possibility:
Show us your community spirit for a chance to win a $50,000 makeover for your park or
community center!
Team Challenge
Here is an email message that recruits new writers using the criteria of being able to write social content
that is engaging, personal, honest, and friendly:
[subject line]
Would you like to join the Starbucks social media conversation?
[message body]
When you tell a friend about something interesting or amusing that happened at work, have you
ever wondered what it would be like to share that story with the entire world? One member of our
social media team is retiring, and we’re looking for a fresh, new voice to take her place.
Our best social content connects with thousands of readers because the writing is engaging
(people want to read and respond), personal (readers want to get to know real, live human beings,
not a faceless corporation), honest (we don’t sugarcoat anything or hide from criticism), and
friendly (our readers want to enjoy the experience).
If you can create messages like this, we want to hear from you! [message continues with
contact/application information]
