The rise of social media dramatically changed the way our society operates. And now that knowledge management is so important to companies, it is becoming more and more obvious that social media can also be used for the systematization and management of knowledge. Hence, here’s the role of social media in systematizing and managing knowledge.
How Does Knowledge Management Work?
At its core, knowledge management is a continuous process that can be broken down into three main phases that create a repeating cycle:
- Knowledge Creation and Improvement
- Knowledge Distribution
- Knowledge Usage and Addition
Social media can be used during each of these phases in different ways to achieve a variety of goals.
Share Relevant and Useful Knowledge
First and foremost, social media helps you share relevant and useful knowledge both with your customers and your employees. There are so many different platforms that you can use to share your knowledge that you can even significantly increase the scale of your knowledge management and sharing.
Knowledge relevance and usefulness are critical in knowledge management and systematization, and with the help of social media, you will have a better understanding of which kind of knowledge is important to your target audience. This way, you can share the most valuable knowledge with your audience consistently.
Upgrade Employee Skills and Qualifications
One of the biggest advantages of good knowledge management is that it helps you upgrade your team’s skills and qualifications. Social media makes this even easier because you can arrange your knowledge management and sharing in a smarter and more efficient way. Moreover, you can make knowledge comprehension better by using different formats to present your knowledge.
For instance, you can create an Instagram account for sharing useful tips related to the work your employees perform at your company. This account will be useful to them and to other employees working at different companies who might also become your customers. As a result, you will be upgrading employee skills while attracting potential customers.
Inform Customers About News and Updates
Speaking of customers, social media is critical in keeping them informed about the latest news and updates. Though this may seem more like a part of your marketing strategy, communication with customers is still relevant to your knowledge management. You need to ensure that all kinds of knowledge are managed properly which includes knowledge intended for your customers.
For example, you can create an official Twitter account for your brand for posting announcements related to your company, including new product launches, company news, sales announcements, and so on. In this case, you will be sharing knowledge with your customers in a systematic and organized way.
Learn About Hidden Problems and Challenges
While knowledge management may seem straightforward at first, there are actually many things that you may not be noticing. This is why it is important to learn about hidden problems and challenges by utilizing social media. Essentially, your research through social media can help you improve your knowledge management.
By analyzing how your content performs and tracking online discussions related to your brand and niche, you can improve your knowledge management techniques. The results of your analysis can help you set more accurate goals, plan more effective marketing campaigns, and understand your audience better.
Diversify and Experiment with Your Knowledge
As mentioned earlier, there are many social media platforms you can use which means you have many opportunities and options when it comes to knowledge management. One of the best things about this is that you can diversify and experiment with your knowledge by trying different content formats.
When you publish knowledge with the intention to share it with your customers, you can present it in a variety of ways. By trying different content formats, you will be diversifying your knowledge and possibly even finding new ways to systematize, manage, and share it.
Stimulate and Support Innovation and Progress
This kind of experimentation with content formats and the diversification of your knowledge management practices will already be beneficial to you in a variety of ways. What’s also great is that using social media for knowledge management can also help you stimulate and support innovation and progress.
When your employees’ skills are upgraded and your team completely understands your target customers, your company could possibly invent or discover something completely new. It could be a new method of marketing or a new way of packaging products or something completely different. Whatever it is, this kind of innovation and progress will be directly stimulated by proper knowledge management.
Try New Knowledge Management Trends
Besides being ahead of everyone else with your inventions and discoveries, knowledge management with the help of social media can simply help you be informed of all the new trends in the industry. After all, knowledge management is not just about sharing knowledge – it is also about finding and adding it to your knowledge base.
By following the leading experts in your industry and in the knowledge management sphere, you can always get the most accurate insights into the way “things are done”. You can then implement the latest practices in your own framework and use different findings to your advantage.
Keep Your Knowledge Base Up to Date
Last but not least, social media can help you keep your knowledge base up to date. There is so much information to process and so much knowledge to systematize that it can become challenging to manage everything properly, but social media can make the job easier.
Once again, following leading experts in your field can help you a lot, but so can your analysis of online discourse around your brand and tracking of your content performance. All the information and data you collect could be valuable for your knowledge base in the short term and in the long run.
Wrapping Up
All in all, social media can definitely be utilized for knowledge management as long as it is done correctly. Companies have so many opportunities when it comes to using social media for managing and systematizing knowledge – they just need to use those opportunities smartly.
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