Social Media Essay

WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA?

• Social media describes online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other.

 Why does the social web matter to the contact center?

 Your customers are talking about their experiences and opinions of you—to other customers and prospects. Social media sites like Face-book and Twitter have drawn a critical mass of consumers. Their comments about your products and services are easily shared and visible to more and more people which can carry a lot of influence. In short, the social web empowers everyone to be an author. Social media has emerged as a prominent platform in the Web revolution and has a direct impact on how companies engage with their

 Contact centers can find and engage super users in order to get feedback, tap into ••customer expertise, crowd source incidents, and thereby reduces the contact center’s workload and creates word of mouth marketing.

BARRIERS TO ENGAGEMENT WITH SOCIAL MEDIA

• Despite this growth and success, there are barriers to engagement with social media, which tend to be similar to obstacles to using the Internet more generally. Understanding and confidence in using technology, access to technology and attitudes to learning all have implications for the degree to which people use social media. In the UK, 19 million households had access to the Internet in 2011 – about 77 per cent of the population. Those that didn’t have access cited a number of reasons, including the cost of equipment (19 per cent) and a lack of skills (21 per cent).3 Language can also impact on Internet usage, but especially on the use of social media, where users are required to not just access information but add content

 There is a wealth of research about the ways in which print and broadcast media shape attitudes. Mass media can influence an individual’s opinions about other groups, especially minorities and particularly where there is little or no offline contact between groups. Comparisons between online and offline media have always been challenging, but are becoming more so with the advent of social media. While editors, journalists and television and radio commissioners decide what makes it into the public realm via traditional media, social media challenges these hierarchies, allowing ordinary citizens to create and post content. These

 platforms also tend to take a much more hands-off approach to regulation, with the exception of interventions in relation to criminal activity (e.g. phishing scams) or extreme cases of hate speech, bullying and impersonation. As a result, much of the theory about attitude formation and influence through mass media is of limited relevance to social media.

USING SOCIAL MEDIA TO CREATE