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Social Media Strategy Book

CHAPTER 1 A Sustainable Approach to Social Media for Businesses 10 Facebook was proceeded by Twitter, which was initially quite effective for one-way communication. The company mainly tweeted corporate news re- lating to new products or special achievements. While the Twitter feed was originally followed by journalists and existing loyal customers, the channel eventually became increasingly active and, after only a few months began to be used by potential new customers as well. Twitter followers started to use the account to respond to tweets and to make service enquiries. As a result, the customer service department became quite busy with social media channel requests. Enquiries coming in via Twitter had to be addressed (and dealt with) immediately, in line with the dynamic nature of the medium and high customer expectations. This in turn led to higher staffing costs, particularly to cover weekend shifts. David has had several discussions with other departments regarding the impact of social media in the company. For example, the head of customer relationship manage- ment (CRM) argues that receiving requests and complaints on social me- dia channels make it difficult to use standard CRM tools to manage and follow-up on enquiries as well as customer lead. This is because the plat- forms and customer data are not integrated. As a consequence, it is becoming increasingly challenging to develop and maintain successful relationships with customers and other stakehold- ers. As social media became more popular throughout Europe, customers became more active in wanting to shape their experiences with the com- pany and its products and services. They accessed their friends and peers online and interacted with them on different levels: by exchanging infor- mation and ideas, by providing peer support, leveraging their bargaining power and even engaging in co-creation. Eventually, the corporate commu- nications department became involved and expressed the need for more proactive control of user-generated content on the social media channels used by the company. David’s company also initiated important developments in HR man­agement including convincing recruiters to utilise social media chan- nels to search for high potential candidates. Early on, individual staff mem- bers started using Xing to establish and maintain business contacts. As the company’s operations became more international, LinkedIn also gained importance. Today, the HR managers actively use these platforms in their international recruiting activities to advertise job vacancies and identify potential candidates. However, to date this has not led to a reduction in the use, and thus the costs of more traditional recruitment methods. In recent months there has been an increase in evaluation of the company on platforms such as |www.kelzen.com|, which is used by former and current employees and job seekers to evaluate potential employers. Nega- tive comments by individual former employees give external users a bi-

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