THE ROLE OF SOCIAL SOFTWARE AS A TOOL FOR
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
Waad Assaad and Jorge Marx Gómez
Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Ammerländerheerstr. 114-118, 26129, Oldenburg, Germany
Keywords: Knowledge management, Social software, Marketing.
Abstract: Web 2.0 is a term, which is increasingly established in recent years in the media landscape, and the
development of the digital knowledge society has permanently changed: The Internet is no longer just pure
information medium, but an interactive platform on which the user is paramount.The Companies have
realized in recent years that knowledge management (KM) plays an important role in the success of their
business. Today is the ability to deal strategically with the knowledge and intelligence, become a success
factor for companies that are dependent for their survival, effectively, efficiently and continuously generate
innovation. Therefore the company must have deep knowledge about their customers and their needs. It is
possible to know better the customer's pursuits, and to deepen the relationship between the customer and the
company.Social media is a great way for the companies to communicate with its customers. It has allowed
the communication between them like never before as they discuss about products and their likes/dislikes on
social media channels.In this Paper we will examine how can social software (e.g. Wikis, Weblogs,
Facebook, Xing, Twitter, etc.) as useful tools for knowledge management and what are the opportunities
and Challenges with the use of social software for knowledge management in marketing.
1 INTRODUCTION
Recently, a lot of emphasis has been shifted to the
study on the importance of knowledge management
to business productivity. Studies have sometimes
gone further by equating knowledge management
(KM) goal to that of Customer relationship
management (CRM) including the delivery of
continuous improvement towards customers (Gebert,
Geib, Kolbe and Brenner, 2003; Dous et al., 2005).
To this extent, Dous et al., (2005) conceptualized
Customer Kknowledge Mmanagement (CKM) as the
utilization of knowledge for, from and about
customers in order to enhance the customer-relating
capability of organizations.
Today the companies are faced with many
business problems: the change of customers´
behaviour, their communication, and the way, which
they use to get the knowledge about their needs.
Knowledge management concerns the problem of
how the knowledge can be optimized within the
company, which uses social software. The use of
social software can make a contribution to the
success of the company. The Internet-based
applications have the advantage that they are
actively working with the customers and can get
feedback directly from there. Salomann et al (2006)
further concretizee this notion, and distinguish three
kinds of knowledge flows that play a vital role in the
interaction between an organization and its
customers: knowledge for, from and about
customers.
Web 2.0 , its tools and social software enable a
variety of applications in businesses, particularly in
knowledge transfer, so the company with this
knowledge can know better the customers' needs and
thus to deepen the relationship between each other.
The evolution of social media is having an important
effect on both how consumers interact with
companies and the level of control such companies
have over the sales, marketing and service of their
products. Introducing knowledge management into
an organization is a strategic issue. As well, they
enable the customers to communicate with their
companies and other customers and discuss their
problems. This knowledge about the customer and
his needs and wishes is a critical factor in the long-
term success of organisations. In fact, companies
and the customers can gain benefits from the using
of social software as tools for knowledge
512
Assaad W. and Marx Gómez J..
THE ROLE OF SOCIAL SOFTWARE AS A TOOL FOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT.
DOI: 10.5220/0003699905120516
In Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development (SSW-2011), pages 512-516
ISBN: 978-989-8425-80-5
Copyright
c
 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

management. Social media sites have thus turned
amplifiers of people’s voices in the marketplace and
are having profound and far-reaching effects on the
ways in which people buy. Customers can now
research companies online and then ask for
recommendations through social media channels,
making their buying decision without contacting the
company. People also use social media to share
opinions and experiences on companies, products
and services. In turn, companies provide their
sales/service toll free numbers or website
information in Twitter or Facebook. Customers
might in turn use Twitter or Facebook as a one-stop
site to lodge a complaint or to create a sales inquiry.
This paper examines usefulness of social
software as tool for knowledge management and the
opportunities and Challenges with the use of social
software for knowledge management.
2 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
DEFINITION
Knowledge management is "the process of critically
managing knowledge to meet existing needs, to
identify and exploit existing and acquired
knowledge assets and to develop new opportunities.”
(Quintas, Lefrere and Jones, 1997). Knowledge
management is concerned with the creation, storage,
dissemination and application of organizational
knowledge.Because the communication’s revolution
and the change of customer’s behaviour, we need
basic-knowledge to effectively learn from
customers. This knowledge comes from the social
network, which the customer uses for connecting
with the others, speaking about his likes or dislikes
about the product, sharing their experiences and
feedback about the company and its brand. This
means whether a company chooses to be involved or
not, these experiences will still be shared. This
sharing includes an easily accessible centralized
customer database, keeping track of events,
coordinating activities, managing important sales
and marketing processes.
The big question today is not what is social
networking at all, but rather what does it means for
business? Does your small business really need to
become an active participant in social networks?
Social networking can help a business gain contacts,
clients, and increased public awareness. Even
entrepreneurs who run small businesses from their
homes can take advantage of this resource to set up a
global presence. It's important to fully understand
the concept of social networking and how it can be
applied in ways that will help you grow your
business. Social networking sites offer visitors the
opportunity not only to communicate with each
other, but also with other members with similar
interests and make them relevant ad-hoc
communities.Knowledge for customers through
social software comprises information about
products, markets and suppliers (Garcia-Murillo and
Annabi, 2002) and is primarily addressed by CRM
service processes. This knowledge dimension also
impacts the customer’s perception of the service
quality - which has been identified as an important
determinant of satisfactory financial performance
(Wang and Lo, 2004; Taylor and Baker, 1994;
Spreng and Mackoy, 1996). Knowledge from
customers has to be incorporated by the company for
product and service innovation, idea generation as
well as for the continuous improvement of its
products and services (Thomke and von Hippel,
2002; Kristensson, Gustafsson and Archer, 2004;
Chesbrough, 2003). Capturing customer knowledge
and involving customers in the innovation process
can be achieved in various ways (Gibbert et al.,
2002). For example, customers’ knowledge about
products, suppliers and market trends can be used
via appropriate feedback mechanisms to enable a
systematic improvement and innovation of products
(Garcia-Murillo and Annabi, 2002; Gibbert et al.,
2002). The collection and analysis of knowledge
about customers encompasses the getting in touch
with customer’s present needs and requirements,
future desires, connections, purchasing activity and
financial capability (Davenport, Harris and Kohli,
2001; Day, 2000). Thus, whether it is for, from or
about customers, knowledge management remains
important in order o identify, capture, process, mine
and use for company’ competitiveness
3 SOCIAL SOFTWARE AS A
TOOL FOR KNOWLEDGE
MANAGEMENT
3.1 Overview of Social Software
Applications
The applications described below are divided into
three focus areas: information, relationships and
communication:
THE ROLE OF SOCIAL SOFTWARE AS A TOOL FOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
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3.1.1 Focus on Information
i. Blogs
A blog (a blend of the term "web log") is a type of
website or a part of a website. Blogs are usually
maintained by an individual with regular entries of
commentary, descriptions of events, or other
material such as graphics or video. Entries are
commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order.
"Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to
maintain or add content to a blog. The blog is the
most important applications in the field of social
software, because it links all principles of social
software. Each user has the option of free and
without specific technical knowledge to contribute
(post) blog publishes. The following technical
properties support the networking of blogs with each
other:
Trakckback: A trackback is one of three types of
linkbacks, methods for web authors to request
notification when somebody links to one of their
documents. This enables authors to keep track of
who is linking, and so referring, to their articles.
Ping: with the help of ping, new entry can be
automatically reported and it calls Blog Portals.
RSS: RSS (most commonly expanded as Really
Simple Syndication) is a family of web feed formats
used to publish frequently updated works such as
blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video in a
standardized format.
ii. Wiki
The Wiki consists of at least one but usually several
together linked websites. The use of wiki pages is
very easy because you just need to possess any
knowledge of HTML (Hypertext Markup
Language). Another advantage is that wikis have
usually a full text and can recover to its content in
the whole site quickly. Wikis are basically
collections from Inter sides or Intranet sides, by
users not only read, but also easily can be changed.
The use of wikis in knowledge management in
organizations, give the employees many advantages,
they can have active communication with each other
to extend the transfer of knowledge, experience and
competencies within the company.In enterprise the
knowledge is gathered in documents, as a Word
Excel, mails and in project folders, in such structures
it is to be utilized difficultly the whole knowledge of
an enterprise in all areas. In traditional data banks
often some representatives for the management
capture the knowledge responsibly; there is why the
quality of the information also depends on these few
authors.
iii. Podcasting
Podcasting refers to the production and provision of
the media files (audio or video) through the Internet.
It is a word could be considered as a part of the field
of video-audio-on-demand. Each file in the podcast
called episode can be stored in PC and then transfer
it to any media and listen to it at any time without
having to connect to the internet.
iv. Social Tagging
Social tagging is not the creation of new content, but
it the creation of the description and categorization.
3.1.2 Focus on Relationship, Communities
and Social Networking
Social interaction of the people changes significantly
with the advent of computers and networks. Web
offers people opportunities to communicate with the
others, and build relationships. The difference
between a social network and a community arises
from the differences in the nature of the relationship
between users. Community application focuses on a
sense of community, which consists of common
interests and strong results. The core of social
networking software (SNS) is to represent the user.
Open social network systems are in principle apply
to any user in network without limit. One example is
the popularity of social networks or offline Xing: it
is a platform which offers personal profiles, groups,
discussion forums, event coordination, and other
common social community features. Basic
membership is free, but many core functions, like
searching for people with specific qualifications or
messaging people to whom one is not already
connected, can only be accessed by the premium
members.
3.1.3 Focus on Instant Communication:
Instant messaging (IM) is a form of real-time direct
text-based communication between two or more
people using personal computers or other devices,
along with shared software clients. The user's text is
conveyed over a network, such as the Internet. More
advanced instant messaging software clients also
allow enhanced modes of communication, such as
live voice or video calling
.
3.1.4 Opportunities and Challenges with
using Social media
Social Networking Sites can be used as great tools to
manage knowledge that is beneficial for Customer
KEOD 2011 - International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development
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relationship management. However, they don’t exist
without challenges.
4 OPPORTUNITIES
Gotta and O’Kelly (2006) contends that, establishing
communities around products and services is a
potential strategy to build brand loyalty, establishing
exit barriers, and facilitating viral marketing through
self-emergent customer testimonials. Such
communities can also be a source of innovation by
soliciting consumer input, customer suggestions, and
critiques. However, there is a risk that such action
could occur organically (e.g., attention is brought to
some product or services defect or political issue).
Internally, strategists should examine business
process and ongoing community-building activities
to identify any possible application scenarios that
can be used to build a business case. Some general
examples according to Gotta and O’Kelly (2006)
includes:
Sales: Social-networking tools may provide a
better introduction mechanism for accounts with
higher conversation rates than cold Calles can.
Marketing: Tag clouds derived from an external
social software application could provide a
dashboard-like look into ongoing and timed patterns
based on member tags and bookmarks.
Customer service: Tagging of telephone or email
interactions by call center representatives could
provide interesting commentary at a collective level
(e.g. “possible recall,” “product defet,””confusing
instructions”).
Competitive intelligence gathering: social
bookmaking services can target a specific
information space (e.g. competitor activities or ways
people use a particular product).
Information Management: Folksonomy efforts
could result in taxonomies that are more precise (e.g.
integration with search engines) as well as more
responsive to change by picking up on terminology
and providing users with sense of participation and
ownership.
Organizational development: Tracking tags and
bookmarks over time can reveal trends (e.g. using a
Nielsen-like rating system) of what people are
reading and what the find important, thus providing
learning strategies and HR decision makers with
insights into the types of training, seminar, or other
topics that might be
of interest or
skills/competencies to focus on.
5 CHALLENGES
Although Social networks can help companies
spread good news fast, it can also spread bad news
just as quickly. Moreover, if customers want to vent
their anger on your product or service, they can use
your social network account. Managers need to
understand how to handle those situations quickly
and effectively. Also, as social media is not as
widely moderated or censored as mainstream media,
individuals can say anything they want about a
company or brand, positive or negative.
Increasingly, companies are looking to gain access
to these conversations and take part in the dialogue.
However, a potential problem that companies using
social media may face is the privacy and personal
security issues. There exists a niche segment that is
overly concerned about their security matters and do
not prefer to discuss their vocation and similar plans
on social web. Nonetheless, Gotta and O’Kell (2006)
agonize that, networks that thrive when they are
informal and invisible are at risk for changing
behavior or complete collapse if management
suddenly becomes aware of them and attempts to
influence, leverage, or exploit them in some ways.
They further connotes that, there are other
unintended consequences of making social networks
and their interrelationships public. Overall, the
success and failure of technologies specifically
geared toward social networking revolve around
user participation, trust, security, and privacy. So,
users sometimes tend to be hesitant to share some of
their sensitive information with companies. This
means, organizational issues regarding incentives for
participation, managing behavior changes, and
building effectives communities have greater
impact.
Reasons for user collectively interacting vary
greatly. At one extreme such interaction can be very
self-serving. Users might participate in socially
oriented applications only to link on the edges,
absorbing information from the community that is
relevant to their own research, personal needs, or
work-related tasks. The intensity of their
participation might be represented by their
contributions (e.g. providing opinions)
recommendations, insights and other types of
information or by aggressively tagging and sharing
bookmarks), their ability to persuade others to join,
or their level of influence in brokering linkages
between members in the community network
.
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6 CONCLUSIONS
Strategically, establishing communities around
products and services has been a well-known
method of building brand loyalty, establishing exit
barriers, and facilitating viral marketing through
self-emergent customer testimonials. One of the key
success factors of social software is involving its
customers and determining their needs on a personal
level through encouraging consumers to participate
enthusiastically and listening to their desires. Such
communities can also be a source of innovation by
soliciting consumer input, customer suggestions, and
critiques. However, there is a risk that such action
could occur organically (e.g., attention is brought to
some product or services defect or political issue).
This situation requires management of social
software implementations-and monitoring of related
consumer services-to become action items for public
relations, marketing, and related community
outreach departments. Moreover, companies have to
keep track of the conversations going on about their
services to assist them in monitoring dissatisfied
customers’ conversations and support to engage
them to resolve their issues. On successfully
disentangling, company will gain satisfied customers
increasing customer retention and ultimately
converting negative conversation on social media
platforms into positive Word of Mouth (WOM
).
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