Only twits don’t tweet

A survey out of North America found that generation Y is turning to LinkedIn instead of newspapers to find jobs. According to the survey, 28 percent say they will use LinkedIn to find a job, compared with 7 percent the previous year. Newspaper ads are becoming less popular, with 28 percent saying they would turn to newspapers, compared with 34 percent for the previous year.

Other companies are using social media to drive innovation and ideas. Many companies are now turning to the people most engaged with the product and brand. They are creating public online forums that tap into customers’ ideas.

In 2008, for example, Starbucks launched a major initiative called My Starbucks Idea that polls members on decisions that would most directly impact them. This has been hailed as the “poster child” of social media success. Many people have pointed to it as a shining example of what you can get when you listen to your customers.

But it’s not that simple and creating these sorts of social media interactions are fraught with challenges. If resellers don’t implement customers’ suggestions, 

or at least show signs that they are taking them on board, the entire exercise would come across as a shallow promise and would do the brand a lot of damage. If it’s just a gimmick or if you’re doing it to be like your competitors, customers will sniff it out quickly.

Social media can also make executives more accountable to staff. One of the best examples is accountancy firm Deloitte which is very much a pioneer in the social networking space. It has a community online platform called Yammer which includes an “ask us” function on the firm’s Facebook page. Yammer works like an internal discussion board. Anybody can post a response to a message. People can exchange ideas and send real-time messages. Yammer works as an “enterprise-Twitter” that helps break down departmental walls. The company’s chief executive officer, Giam Swiegers, says it means employees can discuss issues with managers on Yammer, even disagree with them. Managers need to take it on board.