SMAC CASE ANALYSIS

SUBMITTED BY: Ravi Vaghanani

SUBMITTED TO: Prof. Malathi Sriram

Discussion Points:
a. What is the social media tools role in interacting with employees and clients?
Employee advocacy is a term used to describe the exposure that employees generate for
brands using their own online assets. While social media is often the main medium for
employee advocacy, these online assets include email, chat, forums, discussion boards and
more.
Two metrics that play a major role in employee advocacy:
1) Reach
The reach of a companys employees combined can easily span beyond its brand reach,
and beyond the platforms they are currently on. While they are focusing their efforts on
Facebook and Twitter, their employees might already have a presence on other social
networks they havent explored yet, like Reddit, Tumblr, Paththe list goes on.
2) Influence
Influence goes beyond a Klout or Kred score; influence isnt something that can be
gamified via a score or a sophisticated algorithm. Influence comes with authenticity,
trustworthiness and reach. Additionally, bear in mind that offline influence is rarely
counted into online algorithms like Klout: your employees may be influential with what
they do outside of social networks, sometimes more than they portray on social media.

b. How to manage the risks involved in the employees and clients social media
interactions?
While social media-related risks seem daunting, a company can mitigate such risks by
creating and enforcing a social media policy that is effective, yet flexible and responsive
to ever-changing social media content and platforms. Crafting an effective social media
policy is not a one size fits all endeavor. Organizations vary greatly in their policies
toward social media. A diverse team responsible for the development and execution of the
policy should be assembled and should include members of human resources, legal,
marketing and information technology groups. Once a policy is tailored to the companys
needs, its employees must be effectively trained on the policy so that they understand its

parameters. It is critical to revisit the social media policy in response to changing trends in
social media and emerging social media platforms. The popular social media platform of
2015 may not even be in existence in 2014.

c. How to increase the employee and clients participation in the social media platforms?
Following are a few steps a company can use to increase employee and clients
participation on various social media platforms:
1) Use Facebook to highlight employees and reach out to fans
2) Connect personally on twitter with employees and clients
3) Use Google+ Circles, Communities and Hangouts to create valuable conversations
4) Participate in LinkedIn groups
5) Use Pinterest to invite others to pin on your boards
6) Create engagement on Foursquare
7) Use creative hashtags on Instagram

d. How to manage knowledge that is generated through the various social media
platforms?
To get genuine value out of social knowledge and sharing, a company must become a social
organization E.g. Zappos. And this isn't as difficult as it may seem.
The first step is to define a purpose and then measure everything based off of that purpose.
Then, adding social media to the suite of technology tools is actually growing an arsenal
for powerful customer engagement. A firm can amplify its outreach to customers as well
as boost engagement and increase productivity within their organization and with partners
and clients.

e. What type platforms and infrastructure are to be created for the social media
interaction within the organization? ( Blogs, Wikis, forums, Face book, Linkedin,
intranets, etc)
Employees are disengaged at work, and organizations have been exploring how social and
digital technologies can address this problem. The key to success in business is to have a

connected, integrated and involved employee base. All over the world, enterprise-grade
intranet portals are currently used in the digital workplace to improve synchronization,
store corporate documents, policies and executive directives, and thus, bolster productivity.

While an enterprise-grade social intranet software can be made to cover a lot of ground in
terms of features and functionality, its ultimate success and justification lies in its ability
to accomplish some core needs as shown below.

1) Org-wide Communications:
Communication from the management to the employees can come in the form of
information, reports, memos and news snippets. Your company intranet should be
able to communicate these properly and on time to every single authorized
employee.

2) Socially Engaging Intranets:

The intranet should also present a layer of social collaboration by incorporating
features like blogs, wikis, social community forums, micro blogs, social profiles,
powerful search, and collaborative idea management

3) Knowledge Management:
The intranet should be able to house organization-wide knowledge base and
resources to help your employees do their jobs well. These can include details of
experts, checklists, process documents, ideas, industry trends and best practices.

4) Business Process Integration:

All your important business procedures like project management, customer
management and process management should be rigorously integrated into your
enterprise intranet.