Strategies for Social Media: Linking Vision, Mission and Goals With Metrics

An initiative such as social media requires firm-level strategies that should be modified to match the company's strategic vison, mission and goals. Development of the new ICT (Web 2.0/3.0, collaborative technologies 2.0, social networking tools, wikis, internal blogging, etc.) asks stakeholders (customers, employees and shareholders as a well as other interested parties, including competitors) to share knowledge through collaboration and critique in an unfiltered environment. While this enables instant two-way communication, the clarity and firm performance enhancing usefulness of the communication is often distorted by lack of fact checking and shouters who control the medium. This paper looks to the general business strategies and concepts and current academic literature to present how social media has evolved and connect how social media may differ from the prior approaches to connecting with stakeholders Paper Relevance: This paper is directed toward the themes of the conference with my approach being one of determining the connections necessary between firm strategies and performance metrics-especially product innovation and knowledge capture-and gain measureable results from the use of social media.