Assignment for 09/3/12

Social media engagement is one of the most important parts of several social media sites today. Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites use social media engagement to stay connected with their target audiences. According to chapter three of Secrets of Social Media Marketing, learning what people are saying about your business or products, is the first step to achieving social media engagement. Knowing what people are thinking and saying about your company allows for a better understanding of where, according to Gillin, to put in more effort.

The point Gillin made about social media hierarchies seems to be an important part of this chapter. Every social medium does have some sort of chain of command. The social media sites that are more popular will be, more than likely, ranked at the top of this chain. These hierarchies, according to Gillin, tend to create levels of influence. People who have more of “presence” within social media probably have a greater influence.

In chapter three of Design to Thrive, Howard explains why social networks and online communities are a good investment for a business or company. He introduces ten reasons why businesses should build social networks and online communities; to enhance and sustain intellectual capital, to increase creativity and cross-fertilization, to improve decision-making processes with “epistemic communities”, to preserve institutional knowledge, to provide a higher quality interaction with an organization, to improve intention and loyalty, to reduce training and support costs, to identify customer needs and new product opportunities, to reduce travel costs and addressing problems, and to flatten organizational hierarchies.

Enhancing intellectual capital and providing a quality interaction with an organization are the two that grabbed my attention. I like the point that Howard made about intellectual capital being just as important to a business’s success as financial capital. Making sure that a company, and those that work for that company, know and use all the informational resources they have, can lead to several things, including financial capital.

Providing a quality interaction with an organization can lead to a potential relationship with customers or users. These Quality interactions can lead to stronger connections with a user or customer that can in turn produce a better profit or allow for an increase within a company’s user or customer base.