Social Media and Stakeholders

The Social Media revolution is having a dramatic impact on businesses worldwide. Once considered a distraction, Social Media has transformed into a tool to increase ROI and the relationship between a company and it’s employees, stockholders, and product consumers.

Before we can discuss social media use in terms of stakeholder relations, we must first define a few key terms.

Stakeholder: Refers to any individual or group that maintains a stake in an organization in a way that shareholders possess shares. There are seven forms of stakeholders according to the original stakeholder model. They are:

·      Government

·      Competitors

·      Customers,

·      Employees

·      Civil Society

·      Suppliers

·      Shareholders.

We must also define the term Social Media, since it is quite broad as well.

Social Media is defined as, “forms of electronic communication through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos, art, and music). Social Media is an unrestricted and unstructured set of communication channels that people use to share ideas openly and freely. In addition, social media provides a form of collaboration that companies only dreamt about until years ago.

To simply illustrate the relationship between social media and stakeholders, a list of a few successful people in this industry is a good way to take a quick peep.

·      Biz Stone: The co-founder of Twitter has been at the forefront of the evolution of social media.

·      Liz Strauss: Strauss is an influential non-celebrity blogger helping people to learn. She's been called an idea machine and is the CEO and founder of SOBCon and author of the popular Successful-Blog.com.

·      Clay Shirky: Shirky, an adjunct professor in NYU's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), is one of the world's most requested speakers on social media.

·      David Meerman Scott: Marketing strategist and author, Scott was well ahead of the curve in 2007 with his best selling book, "The New Rules of Marketing & PR.

·      Amy Jo Martin: Martin has over 1.3 million followers on Twitter. She works with Shaquille O'Neal and other professional athletes/franchises.

·      Valeria Maltoni: Maltoni's blog, Conversation Agent, is recognized among the world's top online marketing blogs (among the top 25 on Advertising Age's Power 150, as well as three categories in Guy Kawasaki's Alltop)

·      Chris Brogan: Brogan is president at New Marketing Labs. He is recognized as one of the "World's Top Bloggers" (Advertising Age Power 150 Top 10 Blog) and his book, "Trust Agents" (coauthor is Julien Smith) reached The New York Times Best Seller's list in 2009. His new book "Social Media 101" was recently released.