Social Network: implementation strategy

Background

Social networking is the practice of expanding the number of one’s business and/or social contacts by making connections through individuals (whatis, 2011).

 

Social Networks

Today, social network is more poplur than anything else on the Internet. According to Holt that around 65 percent of U.S. adults who use the Internet are using social networking services like Facebook, LinkedIn and Myspace, up from 61 percent in 2010. That figure is more than double the percentage of adults who said they were using social networking services in 2008 (29 percent) and means that 50 percent of all adults in the U.S. are using such services.

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BAS

Social Network Tools vs. Strategy

In this blog post I will discuss how can BAS use social network for external communication purposes. BAS Est. can improves their internal collaboration by using social network for the purpose of external communication. I’m not going to discuss here the different social network tools that can BAS uses rather I’m going to discuss how BAS can implement social network tool/s successfully.

implementation strategy

First thing to do before implementing social network, is determining the objectives and goals. In this case the goal is to build good external communication with global community.

Find the Best social tool

Facebook would be the best social tools in Saudi Arabia for the following reasons:

• 46.39% of Internet Users in Saudi Arabia use Facebook (2011).
• Many companies are using Facebook for external communication purposes in Saudi Arabia
• 54% of the Facebook users in Saudi are aged between 19-29 (2010)
• People become a fan on Facebook because they actually like the product/company, not because of advertising (Seager, 2011)

Making Conversation & Building Relationship 

Engaging with customers by answering their questions and solving their problems is the key of building relationship (Shin, 2010).

Measure Results 

Having an objective and a goal can help BAS to measure their results. Here are some great metric tools that can be used for measurement.

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Some of the Benefits of implementing Social Media at BAS

• Joint operation:
• BAS still have internal collaboration with staff and external communication with customers as a separate tasks. However, with the advent of social network tools, stakeholders can find a real benefit to having both internal and external groups operating under the same social umbrella.
• Relationships:
• A foundation that spans both internal and external collaboration is relationships. Relationships in E2.0 are not limited to people, but include interactions between employees, teams, experts, content, knowledge assets and the community at large — including customers, partners and prospects (Green, 2010).

Recommended Materials:

1. This video reviews how social network sites like Twitter and Facebook are changing how companies think about external communication. It includes points on:

• How social network sites are making organisations rethink external communication
• How one company confronts a crisis – and learns how social network can help
• The role of empowering employees to participate
• The role of policies and guidelines in social network participation

2. This blog post introduce some really good statistics in social media usage around the world

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Reference

Green, P. (2010). Enterprise 2.0 Best Practice: Unite Internal Collaboration with External Communication

Holt, K. (2011). STUDY: 65% Of Adult Internet Users Use Social Networking Services

Seager, S. (2011). Social media round the world 2011: statistics in social media usage and a question for marketers

Shin, N. (2010). 7 Steps For a Successful Social Media Strategy

Whatis. (2011). Social Network