5-5 Navigating Social Networking for Business

5-5a Tapping Into Social Media

The Most Popular Social Media.
- YouTube is the most popular online platform as it draws 73 percent of U.S. adults,
followed by Facebook (69 percent), Instagram (37 percent), Pinterest (28 percent),
LinkedIn (27 percent), Snapchat (24 percent), Twitter (22 percent), and WhatsApp (20
percent).
- Overall, social media adoption is still growing, with a slight drop-off or leveling out
among Gen X and boomer Facebook users perhaps linked to Facebook’s privacy and
disinformation stumbles.
Where Businesses Go Social. As can be expected, a staggering 95 percent of the Fortune 500
companies have a presence on Facebook, up 6 percent over the previous year. With engaging
word-of-mouth content, corporate Twitter accounts (96 percent in the Fortune 500) can drive
e-mail subscriptions and increase sales overall. YouTube’s 1 billion global users may be the
reason that 90 percent of the Fortune 500 have a YouTube presence. Instagram is gaining
momentum; 73 percent of the largest companies use Instagram, up 10 points from the
previous year. Companies understand that to be successful, they need to embrace a
multichannel media strategy as part of their broader business goals.
5-5b Enterprise Social Networking
Nimble Damage Control and Responding to Grievances. Insurance and financial services
firm Nationwide uses internal social networking to quickly respond to disasters such as
hurricanes. Agents in Florida used the platform to record customers’ pressing needs during a
major storm, which led to improved service in subsequent natural disasters when Nationwide
trucks headed into disaster zones equipped with the right essentials.
Over at IBM, after an employee posted a petition against a new company policy that would
ban reimbursement for ride-sharing services such as Uber, within hours the post had drawn
hundreds of comments and more than 1,200 views. IBM’s social analytics picked up the
network traffic, and Diane Gherson, senior vice president for human resources, responded
directly to the employee on the Connections platform and explained that the company would
reverse the ban. The post and the swift response to it led to positive change, and the
goodwill of the unhappy employee was most likely restored.
Connecting Dispersed Workers. Because social networks are about connections, they
also enable companies to match up and connect off-site employees.
Crowdsourcing Employees to Achieve Buy-In. Internal social networks and blogs can help
companies invite employee input to effect change and solve business problems.

5-5c Social Media and Risk Management

- Public-facing social networks hold great promise for businesses while also presenting
potential risk. Most managers desire plugged-in employees with strong tech skills and
fantasize about their brands becoming overnight sensations thanks to viral marketing.
 Managers like to imagine their workers as enthusiastic brand evangelists. However,
businesses also fret about lost productivity, reputational damage, and legal issues
- To minimize risk, companies rely on social media policies, approve and oversee
employees’ use of social media, and mandate training.
- The best advice to workers is to follow company policies; assume that privacy doesn’t
exist, and avoid sharing sensitive information, least of all risqué photographs.
Furthermore, refusing friend requests or unfriending individuals could jeopardize
professional relationships.
5-5d The Dark Side of Technology and Social Media
Privacy Fears.
- Our smartphones spy on us. Location services in most apps allow users to be
tracked with pinpoint precision. Tracking is enabled by default and most people
don’t know that practically all their movements can be followed, as a disturbing New
York Times exposé revealed.

- Our personal data from every account or profile we create online ends up in the cloud
where it exists indefinitely. Once there, our data can be hacked, viewed by
unauthorized personnel, or sold to advertisers. Sometimes it ends up on the dark
web in the hands of criminals.

- Sensitive financial information and our medical data are stored in networks that are
frequently breached. Wearable devices track our vital signs, exercise frequency, and
lifestyle patterns. The end user doesn’t know where all the massive data are stored, as
U.S. consumers are largely unprotected in a yet barely regulated market.
Disinformation and Election Tampering. Researchers tell us that social media have
changed how we consume information and form opinions.
- Such charged information environments make people vulnerable to misinformation.
False news stories and doctored narratives, including targeted disinformation confuse
the public.
- Even more troubling, though, is stealthy interference by foreign agents who use
large bot armies to disseminate fake news stories on social media and incite conflict
to deepen sharp divisions among the American public. Bots are also used to steal
social identities of people by impersonating them. Our carefree sharing on social
media can provide criminals with clues.
Deepfakes, Doctored Videos.
- Advances in AI could soon make creating fake video and audio a lot easier,
permitting ever more sophisticated disinformation.
- Altering photos and videos to distort the truth is not new, but deepfake technology
takes deception to a whole new level. Computers can be trained to synthesize facial
features and create composites of realistic-looking humans. It’s easy to see how such
tampering could be weaponized before an election or might threaten national security;
likewise, people could claim that real videos are fake. Alarmingly, this is already
 happening as sizable Internet communities aggressively proclaim the moon landing in
1969 was staged, the Earth is flat, and the terror attacks of 9/11 were “an inside job.”
Incivility, Trolling, and Cyberbullying. The anonymity of the Internet facilitates toxic
behavior. Trolls are users who fake their identity, provoke skirmishes, and disrupt
discussions on social media. They can be vicious bullies who thrive on denigrating others.
Social media may originally have been idealized as a public square whichguaranteed
participants a practically unlimited freedom of expression.
- Cyberbullying is a particularly devastating form of online harassment through the
sharing of embarrassing information online, persistent messaging, and other digital
nastiness.
- In extreme cases, cyberbullying on social media— via texts, e-mails, and other
electronic means has driven victims, many of them teenagers, to despair.
Data Security. Spyware. Ransomware attacks. Phishing. Data breaches. Romance scammers
on dating sites. Fake bot accounts. Hacking of connected security networks. Vulnerabilities in
smart speakers and connected cars. These are but a few problems ranging from annoying to
highly problematic and downright fraudulent. Businesses face a huge expenditure of time and
money combatting cybercrime and ensuring safe data storage.