This document discusses best practices for dealing with loss of control in social media marketing. It provides examples of allowing loss of control for employees, such as open social networks at Dow Chemical and Lockheed Martin. For customers, it discusses crowdsourcing ideas through platforms like Kaggle and open ideation programs from Dell. For brands, it examines Nestle's response to criticisms. Throughout, it emphasizes the need to control parameters that enable productive loss of control, like access, participation and collaboration.

1. Corporate Communications Today
Social Media Marketing: What are best examples
and practices to deal with Loss of Control
Presented by,
Sivadurga Viswanathan
Younes Ghammad

2. Introduction
 Arise of Web 2.0 and social media
 Loss of control
 A gentle shift from the system of hierarchy to heterarchy
 Danger? Control of parameters that enable the loss of control to be
efficient

3. Agenda
 Web 2.0/ Social Media
 Loss of Control - Best practices and examples
o Employee
o Customer
o Brand
 Counter Arguments

4. Web 2.0/ Social Media
 Web 2.0 is a second generation of the World
Wide Web that is focused on the ability for
people to collaborate and share information
online (blogs, consumer reviews, video
exchange platforms)
 Goes beyond passive viewing of contents
limitations
 With the advent of this technology, a new
medium of communication has emerged,
social media, which is a supplant to the
traditional mass media.
 Social media are social software which
mediate human communication.
 Organisational changes in the modes of
communication through social media.

5. Agenda
 Web 2.0/ Social Media
 Loss of Control - Best practices and examples
o Employee
o Customer
o Brand
 Counter Arguments

6. Loss of control
Social changes
brought by
social media:
• Many interactive channels
• Credibility decreases
• Customer is demanding and active
• Employees communicate
• Uncontrolled messages
Need for Loss
of Control:
• Creation of more weak ties in a company’s network.
• Enable and facilitate knowledge flows, ideas, passions,
skills, and experiences
• Push to Pull economy.
• Openness - a fundamental requirement for any business.
• Provide “creation spaces” for employees and customers
alike
• Increase in productivity and loyalty.

7. Employees are no longer in control
 Traditional model of managerial resource allocation has become outdated
 Eagerness to do what employees are passionate about
 Example: “America's Corporations will lose control of their employees“ -
FORBES
 Paves a way for ‘knowledge workers’ inside the company find and talk with
other experts who may have valid input to particular projects
 Some practices to implement loss of control for employees: open source
social networks and open HR

8. Open source social networks
Dow Chemicals
 a company that has set up its own social network, to help managers identify
the talent they need to execute projects across different business units and
functions.
 Dow has even extended the network to include former employees – a smart
move.
Lockheed Martin:
 Developed a free, open source enterprise social networking platform, Eureka
Streams
 Content within Eureka Streams consists primarily of microblogs and internal
and external web feeds.

9. Open HR
Replace static piles of proprietary knowledge to dynamic, quickly accessible
expertise
A move from organization-centric to network-centric
Example:
frogForward
 An open-ended, conversational, and social performance management app.
 A 360 degree feedback system for the employees.
Survey results: A recent study by Birkman International:
Nearly 20,000 HR professionals found that 83 percent of respondents see great
potential in social media-based HR solutions

10. Loss of control imposed on customer
 Consumers are no longer brand loyal
 Word of mouth spreads exponentially through social media; example:
FACEBOOK
 Customers are dynamic and active
 The great success of NPR with Open API for its contents.
 The different practises for loss of control on customers: Crowdsourcing,
Open Ideation, Open Design, Open Source.

11. Crowdsourcing
 The process of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting
contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online
community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers
 80% of the innovations which are developed by a company on her own are
not successful. By contrast 80% of the innovations initiated by customers
succeed. (Robert G. Cooper 2010)
 Closed networks are of diminishing value.
 Example: KAGGLE

12.  Kaggle is a platform for predictive modelling and analytics
competitions on which companies and researchers post their
data and statisticians and data miners from all over the world
compete to produce the best models.
 The effect of the live leaderboard, which encourages participants
to continue innovating beyond existing best practice.
 It brings in liberalism into the involvement of the participants
who include the employees of the company as well.
 Thanks to crowdsourcing approach that led KAGGLE to find new
market streams such as HIV research, chess ratings and traffic
forecasting.
KAGGLE – A Crowdsourcing
approach

13. Open ideation
 Open Ideation offers plenty of opportunities to increase its product pipeline
and to integrate external ideas into its ideation process.
 Involves redistributing control of getting ideas from an elite group of
thinkers to a broader group.
Direct participation of the users allows for generating ideas that best fit their
individual needs.
 Few Guidelines for efficient Open Ideation process:
o Start ideation process with clear and concrete assignment.
o Use a team approach to get a structured ideation process with both
best ideation results and internal supporters for the innovative
outcomes.
o Ideation process isn’t instanteneous
 example DELL Idea storm

14. DELL Idea Storm
 Idea Storm is a launched initiative of DELL
 Invites people around the globe to suggest product improvements and new
product ideas online
 Received more than 10,000 idea submissions

15. Open design research
 Everyone can be a contributor to the design process
 Design process gets rapid compared to traditional design research
method

16. Open source
In software space, we need open source projects that promotes a universal
access via a free license to a product's design or blueprint, and universal
redistribution of that design or blueprint, including subsequent improvements to
it by anyone to create innovation.
Open source gained hold with rise of social media.
Few benefits of Open Source:
oSecurity
oQuality
oCustomizability
oFreedom
oFlexibility
oCost
Examples : LINUX and RHoK

17. LINUX – An open platform
 Provides full access for the users; provides administration rights allowing for
accessing more functionality of the operating system.
 Provides kernel access to modify the code to make improvements. For
instance, fixing bugs.
 There are a community of users rendered to fix errors in linux systems who use
code sharing to find solutions, unlike Windows, and hence reduces the cost
involved.
 The LINUX OS has 22% more market share than Windows OS
 Google ‘s OS is based on LINUX OS

18. Random Hack of Kindness (RHoK)
A joint initiative between Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, NASA and the World
Bank.
A community of “developers, geeks and tech-savvy do-gooders around the
world, working to solve development problems particularly during times of
crisis.
Hackathons - fast-paced competitions to solve challenges.

19. Loss of Brand Control
Obsessive control over a brand is ineffective
The integrity and respect of a brand is closely related to how to
handle “negative” press and criticisms. Example – NESTLE
Open up a discussion around the platform
Promote negative press
Encourage people to steal the content and work

20. NESTLE - Response to Criticisms

21. Characteristics to be followed when implementing
loss of control
 easy access.
 open platforms.
 open-ended formats that can evolve as the problem statement
changes and enables sharing.
 ample room for participation.
 strong incentives (intrinsic motivation/social currency)
 real-time visibility (through sharable content)
 tie-ins to dormant or active social networks.
 distributed decision-making.

22. More into Loss of control…
Organisational change- Closed
versed open models

23. Agenda
 Web 2.0/ Social Media
 Loss of Control - Best practices and examples
o Employee
o Customer
o Brand
 Counter Arguments

24. Counter Arguments
 “Many companies are still afraid of loss of control of information by using
social media”
 Openness as permanent crisis.
o Lack of confidentiality leading to information leaks to the company’s
competitors.
o The question of quality and validity of the user entries to the open
system.
 The same organization that depends on the loss of control for its content
very much depends on a highly controlled environment to protect itself
and keep operating effectively.

25. Conclusion
To design for the loss of control, control the parameters that enable it
(access, boundaries, authorship, participants, agenda, process, conversation,
collaboration, documentation, etc.)
Loss of control can be valuable if there is efficient collaboration between
the users/ employees and the business processes.
Loss of
Control
Responsibility
Respect
Heterarchy
Coherance
Voluntarin
ess
Trust