Share what you know with millions of people
Focus is the best place to turn what you know into remarkable content
0
Social Media for IT Support: Coming to Your Business in 2010?
Salesforce.com has introduced Chatter, which brings features similar to those of Facebook and Twitter to business environments, and supports communications from applications, databases and other IT resources as well as from users. Other IT solution vendors are also integrating social media features and functions into their solutions. Will IT support providers begin or increase using social media tools and features at your business (or those of your clients) in 2010? Why or why not?
Events
- Dos and Don'ts of Small Business Marketing May 29 @ 11 am PT
- Lead Nurturing 202: The Next Generation May 31 @ 11 am PT
- The Tricks to Paid Media June 6 @ 11 am PT
- Display Advertising for Brand Awareness June 20 @ 11 am PT
Related Activity
4 Answers
Social media is very important and you need to pay attention to this now because if you do not you certainly will be blindsided not that far down the road. Social Media will get into almsot everything your business is doing so it makes sense to get on board. In large corporate environments you may see it called Enterprise 2.0. Social Media will a tremendous impact on the way that your company does business. It affects how you monitor and keep track of how your customers or portential customers think about your company and its products. Social Tools are becoming where the consumer finds information and also voice their opinons about there experiences about different companies and products.
It is important that IT organizations understand what is required for their company to participate in the Social Media tools. It affects all areas that include compliance, Information Security, data center mgmt, and content management,and collaboration tools.
The bottom line is that you need to come up to speed on this now. It will become a part of your environment and repsonsibility before you know it.
I'm using social media for blogging both personally and for business, am on Facebook for personal and Linked in for business. I also regularly use these types of sites for topic specific discussions. One of my challenges is on managing the numerous media outlets. A few feed into Facebook or Linked in (which is great!), many are connected to email allowing me to receive updates and link back to visit, but most are set up to be very passive and I rarely go back to them regardless of how relevant they are, because there isn't any kind of reminder or feed. I'd be interested to see if there are any tools to allow a user to centrally manage their social networks, or how others handle the multiple options available.
I know this question was likely posed about social media as it relates to sales and marketing, driving traffic to your businesses site or generating sales leads/opportunities, but I also see a value in it outside those realms.
I think in a global economy and with outsourcing overseas and insourcing inside the US, a social media function will be very helpful for the remote worker relationship. I have worked with many people in India and Brazil, most of whom I never met in person. We passed around pictures and used instant messaging. The pictures helped to identify a person with the name and voice you had heard many times. Since, in many cases, meeting in person is just not practical, having a way to connect with remote workers (whether in the US or another country) as a human being instead of just a resource to be utilized will be very helpful.
I am not saying it is necessarily a MUST have. I had good relationships with people I had only IMed with and never saw a picture or heard a voice, but those people I had met in person were always more comfortable to work with, if only because I could make a connection with them as a person. I think a social media connection would be a cost effective way of providing that extra connection...you know...as human beings.
It has already started to happen with many organizations including Dell, Best Buy and others who are following Social Media trends like those in Twitter as well as providing Twitter accounts that can be contacted specifically for support. Salesforce for Twitter is free and provides this integration with their customer support app. It autocreates a support case and allows the CSR to work directly with the customer to solve their issue through a twitter interaction. Many more orgs will adopt this in 2010 as the tools are maturing quickly. Chatter takes that opportunity to an entirely new level.
Answer This Question