3 Ways to Use Social Media for Product Research and Development
Are you looking for creative ideas for your next product or service?
Have you considered the wellspring of social media conversations as a source of product or service innovation?
Keep reading to discover how you can tap social media to enhance the development of your next great product.
Social Media for Product Research?
Yes, that’s correct… you can use social media-based conversations, feedback, comments, complaints and more as a source of research and development! This can be especially handy for smaller businesses that do not have big budgets for R&D.
Social media is not as planned or controlled as a focus group when it comes to research and development; however, with concentrated time and dedication you can use these channels to your company’s advantage. And, ultimately, you can benefit the very people you’re polling about improved and new products and services.
Innovation does not have to be limited to just within your company walls, so consider getting started with the following three steps. 
3 Ways to Benefit From Social Media Crowdsourcing
Are you familiar with crowdsourcing? Do you know what the benefits are?
Social media has changed the way businesses engage with consumers—fans and followers don’t want to be told, they want to discover. It’s no longer a one-way (or even a two-way) conversation.
It’s now a multiplayer experience that relies on collective, thoughtful engagement.
Consumers have the tools, time and desire to be involved on a much deeper level than we’ve ever seen before. There are several distinct ways that you can take these ideas and build social media campaigns that use existing tools and technologies to achieve powerful results.
Today, brands big and small are homing in on the tactic of crowdsourcing, defined as the act of outsourcing tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor to an undefined, large group of people or community (a “crowd”), through an open call. Hidden within this utilitarian definition are powerful cultural drivers that can be catalyzed to achieve powerful social engagement and activation.
Dealing With Employees Who Are Social Media Celebrities
One of the big promises of social media is that literally anyone can become a celebrity now because of cheap and easy access to social media tools. We all have a shot at our 15 megabytes of fame if we can create compelling content.
But what are the implications for businesses that get serious about social media? Are there hidden dangers lurking for companies whose employees are “too good” with social media? This article will explore five benefits and five threats of celebrity employees.
4 Ways Social Media Is Changing Your Relationships
One main facet of social media is its emphasis on creating and maintaining relationships.
All the content you create, all the following you build, each of these is designed to create and foster more intimate relationships with people, in some cases, people you might not have met any other way.
What’s interesting is social media is changing the foundation of the ways we relate. This article will examine how social media is changing our interpersonal psychology and what you can do about it.
How IBM Uses Social Media to Spur Employee Innovation
“Be yourself.” It’s one of the rules of social media. If you’re blogging, tweeting or Facebooking for business, be real—or you won’t be followed.
Yet, how do you pull off “authentic” while maintaining the company brand message?
It’s tough enough for a small business. What if you’re #2 on Business Week‘s best global brands list, with nearly 400,000 employees across 170 countries?
At IBM, it’s about losing control.
“We don’t have a corporate blog or a corporate Twitter ID because we want the ‘IBMers’ in aggregate to be the corporate blog and the corporate Twitter ID,” says Adam Christensen, social media communications at IBM Corporation.
9 Ways to Get More From Twitter
If you talk about social media, invariably someone is going to say something I’m sure you’ve heard a lot: “I don’t have time to chit-chat. Time is money, and I don’t care about a bunch of nerds’ opinions anyway.” …or something along those lines! Twitter is often the target of such criticism.
Now, reading Social Media Examiner, you might be surprised to hear that sometimes I think people who say this have a point. Sometimes.
Fact is, if you see Twitter or any other social media service as a venue for chit-chat, and that’s how you use it for hours a day, then you’re likely better off doing something more productive with your time.
On the other hand, there are ways to get a lot of value out of Twitter. As with most things, it all depends on how you use it.
We programmers have a saying: “Garbage In – Garbage Out.” This essentially means you get out what you put in. If you put in chit-chat, don’t be surprised if that’s all you see in return!
Here are nine benefits I’ve personally seen through my couple of years of Twitter usage.
