How is social networking changing businesses? Firms are using social networks to communicate throughout their organizations, and managers and marketing professionals use social networks to generate interest in their firms’ products and increase their revenues. Dell entered the Chinese computer market by becoming a popular brand on the country’s top social networking site Renren. Social networks are also being used to generate funding, and human resources departments use social media to recruit employees. Let’s take a closer look at the specific impact this technology is having.

Are social media apps used within businesses? Enterprise social networking refers to the application of products like Facebook in a corporate setting. Today, enterprise versions of products such as Facebook and Twitter and workplace wikis such as Yammer are becoming more common in the office. Companies hope the tools will increase collaboration and speed up decision making in their organizations and improve the customer’s experience and ultimately their profits. For example, @DellOutlet, a Twitter account the computer maker Dell uses to advertise discounts, has generated millions of dollars of sales for the company.

How are companies using social media to monitor their business? Social media monitoring—keeping watch on the external messages and information being spread about their products in cyberspace—is critical and a relatively new activity for businesses. There are many products now being sold, like Brandwatch and UberVU, which collect social media mentions of a specific product or company and then analyze and report on patterns and trends.

Many companies are doing much more than purchasing software for social media monitoring software, however. The computer manufacturer Dell is a good example. A number of years ago, the blogosphere was in a furor over Dell’s poor products and service. “Dell Hell” rants on the Web continued for more than a year before Dell figured out what to do about the bad publicity.

Dell has opened a Social Media Listening Command Center, where employees monitor more than 25,000 web posts daily. The average daily number of mentions of Dell on Twitter alone is more than the combined circulation of the top 12 daily newspapers in the United States. The company also has thousands of staff members who work on more than 40 Facebook pages worldwide for Dell as well as handle the firm’s Twitter account. Dell has turned this into an area of business expertise and advises other companies how to run their own social media listening centers.

What new jobs have been created with the rise of social media? Firms large and small are now hiring social media managers, who are also sometimes called social media marketing specialists. A person in a position such as this is responsible for monitoring social networks and generating “buzz” on them about a company and its products. Social media managers also listen to what is being said about their firms to identify problems and opportunities. For example, the social media manager watches over Facebook groups who have “liked” a product and makes sure they get special updates, offers, and the latest news on promotions and events. Other social media–related jobs include social media strategists, social media copywriters, and search engine optimization specialists.

Can social media provide information that is directly useful to a business? It is important to use social media for marketing, but using it as an avenue for more specific business decision making is happening as well. Using information solicited from people on social media and the Internet to help make a decision is referred to as crowdsourcing. Dell uses crowdsourcing to help develop its products. Its IdeaStorm website allows customers to post ideas for products, promote others’ ideas, and then see how the company puts them into action. Likewise, because many manufacturers require that large minimum orders be placed, Susan Gregg Koger, the owner of the clothing franchise ModCloth, faced tough buying decisions. So, ModCloth introduced a “Be the Buyer” program that encourages customers to vote online on clothing styles. By evaluating their feedback and responses to a particular item, Gregg Koger knows whether she should risk placing a large order to have it manufactured.

How can social media help with technical support services? Companies can use social media to head off potential technical problems that might turn into public disaster. The company iRobot, manufacturer of home robots like the Roomba vacuum cleaner, realized the importance of this when one customer posted to YouTube a video account of the trouble he was having and very quickly racked up 60,000 views. Now iRobot uses software to match social media comments with specific customer records and respond quickly to problems to help solve them.

How is social media helping people start and fund new businesses? For several years, the microlending movement, begun by Muhammad Yunus, has been used to connect many people in need of funding for very small businesses with those who can loan small amounts. The Grameen Bank became a microcredit lending institution by making extremely small loans with very low interest rates to the poor of underdeveloped countries. The website Kiva combined this idea with the interconnectivity of the Internet to allow investors to make a loan as small as $25 to borrowers worldwide.

As we mentioned in Chapter 5, social networking is becoming a mechanism for funding start-ups in a variety of business arenas. Crowdsourced funding (crowdfunding) allows a great number of people who believe in a company or a product to contribute a small amount of money to help a company get started. In most cases the company gives them something back in return—a free copy of the product or a signed card from the founder. The virtual-reality headset project Oculus Rift began with a Kickstarter campaign to raise $250,000 they needed to get the device off the ground. Kickstarter backers actually contributed more than $2 million. Later when Oculus was bought by Facebook for more than $2 billion, those backers did not share in the profit. Crowdsourced funding is not ownership of part of the company but rather support at the critical early stage of development for products you would like to see succeed.

How do businesses use mobile devices? Most business organizations today find it critical to have a mobile component both to support their employees and to attract and serve customers. Customers demand a way to find the closest locations at which to shop and to place orders from their smartphones. A firm’s sales staff requires constant access to e-mail, calendar and contacts, and Internet resources. Being able to make video phone calls with applications like Facetime, see data mapped to their current locations, and create and send photos and videos all can serve the larger mission of the company if implemented well.

Jackson Kayak is a small business that designs, manufactures, and sells kayaks in Tennessee. The firm has its own kayaking social network on its website, a Facebook page, and its own mobile app. The app allows users to browse the latest kayak industry news, upload photos and status information, and, of course, shop at Jackson Kayaks. The company also uses mobile analytics, which allow its sales representatives to quickly display and analyze the company’s site traffic when working with kayak dealers in the field. The analysis can point to specific customer behaviors that support stocking certain items, for example.

How does a business select which mobile devices to purchase? There are a number of issues a firm has to consider when it comes to selecting the mobile devices it buys. For example, what kind of mobile devices—phones, tablets, and so forth—should the firm have, and what brand? What kind employees should use them, and what kind of devices are customers using? Should employees be able to use their personal mobile phones for work? How easily can the devices be rolled out to the entire company if a smaller trial of them is successful? How do they integrate with existing mail systems? IT also needs to think about what kind of encryption and data protection is available and whether the right applications exist or can be developed in-house.

Externally, a company would ideally provide mobile solutions for the various platforms customers may have, whether an iPhone, an Android device, or a cellular phone that is not a smartphone. The expense of developing and maintaining multiple applications, though, means that a business must thoroughly understand its own client base before deciding which mobile products to deploy.

What kinds of mobile apps are useful for business? There are more than 2 million apps available for mobile devices. For business, many useful apps focus on communications, task management, and managing data. Phone applications can allow users to conduct a WebEx conference, integrating a slide show, file transfer, and multiple voice and audio feeds. Products like Omnifocus organize a schedule beyond a simple calendar format, displaying tasks that require resources that are nearby geographically or listing which tasks can be run concurrently and which are on hold for input from someone else. Mobile apps for the sales force organize new leads and customer requests, help manage salespeople’s expense reports, or process invoices right from their tablets or phones.

How has cloud computing helped grow the mobile device market? Cloud computing refers to the practice of storing and retrieving information, resources, and software on remote servers accessed via the Internet rather than a local server or personal computer. Using cloud computing, online backup systems can work through a “cloud” so that files are automatically backed up and made available instantly to a whole set of users. Cloud backup makes a business free from worries that data could be lost due to a flood or a corrupted server. The instant synchronization of data can make employees more productive, especially when they are out in the field. With Apple’s iCloud service, for example, a photograph taken on someone’s iPhone is instantly available on his or her iPad as well as on his or her home PC. As more services beyond just storage begin to take advantage of cloud computing, businesses will become more agile and efficient.

As you read at the beginning of this section, Philippe Durand tried to become part of the social media revolution. His first foray into marketing his business using social media didn’t work out the way he’d hoped, but he learned from that. Specifically, he learned that discrediting the competition not only didn’t hurt the competition but also hurt his own business. Instead, he began to study more closely who was using his Facebook page and who was responding to the QR codes he used in his new ad campaign. He found that his restaurant was attracting a specific demographic of affluent, well-traveled people. He decided to try to appeal to their sense of interest in new cuisines and new experiences. His Facebook page began to highlight the ingredients he used and the stories behind his suppliers. He also offered customers a new way to pay at the end of their meals, using a custom mobile app that keeps track of their reward points earned.