Communications

9SOCIAL MEDIA IN BUSINESS

As a management accountant, you could be called upon—now or in the future—to help your company determine or refine its goals for communicating both inside and outside the organisation, develop strategies for accomplishing those goals, and evaluate whether those strategies are working. You could be asked to assist with new initiatives, such as integrating social media into your company’s business plan and operations. Management accountants can apply the same technical knowledge, financial expertise and critical thinking skills to communication management that they have applied to other areas, such as advising a company on managing operations more efficiently and at lower costs or evaluating plans to enter new markets or acquire other companies. This chapter will discuss some of the benefits and risks of using social media, summarise the features of some popular social media platforms, and explain why your company should have a social media policy.

Social media refers to interactive platforms where individuals or groups (such as companies) can create, share, discuss and modify user-created content. Employees of corporations and businesses are probably well-accustomed to using social media sites, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Google+.¹ Individuals spend more time on social media sites than anywhere else on the Internet.² According to an MIT Sloan/Deloitte survey and research study, the main reasons people participate in social media at ...