Robin Singh — February 20, 2017 
Ever since the days of MySpace, it became pretty clear that social media platforms have a bright future ahead. This became further clear when networking platform Facebook was launched and became an instant hit.
In other words, the social media world has expanded rapidly in the past few years. People are using it to post and share a variety of content. The messenger apps are increasingly used for engaging in direct online communication.
Social media trends
The displayed statistics reveal that as of April 2016, Facebook stands as the number one social network with 1.6 billion active users. The data puts forth the fact that user engagement holds the key to success of social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and more.
In simple words, user engagement is crucial as an average Facebook user spends over 36 hours on a monthly basis.
Realizing that user or customer engagement can ensure success, businesses worldwide recognized it as a lucrative opportunity to extend reach and clientele base. This is also one of the reasons why social media marketing became huge and the demand for an internet marketing director, digital strategist, content marketing manager, online community manager, social media strategist, online marketing specialist, and social media manager grew.
Social media platforms became the new competing grounds where companies created awareness and build an online presence. In fact, many businesses used their official social media profiles to provide a better customer service. This trend is growing at a fast pace as businesses are able to build a connect with the existing customers and prospects both.
Understanding the relevance of knowledge management
Information is one of the most important resource any organization has. The use of information, operational knowledge, and their distribution are able to lead an organization towards success. Efficient handling of these resources within an organization can be ensure by the use of knowledge base. The role of an efficient knowledge base management is not just limited to storing the practices but also to identify the best ones and develop an efficient way to put them to effective use to help the stakeholders.
The benefits of having a knowledge base are many. The companies that have fully adopted this approach have witnessed a jump in productivity, improved workflow, shortened onboarding phase, and better collaboration. These benefits are tied to the internal knowledge base, but the use of an external knowledge base can prove helpful in strengthening client relationship. User guides, quick resolution to common problems and an engaging learning environment are some of the important factors that an external knowledge base is capable of handling which eventually boosts the customer satisfaction and increases the chances of getting more referrals and mentions.
Now we enjoy access to top-notch knowledge management solutions and we have the access to in-depth guides on how to build a knowledge base. But the only thing that can act as a hindrance is the company culture.
It is proven that the best practices always come from the most experienced workers who usually play a key role in solving the problems through collaboration and deduction. At this point, an organization has to find a way to motivate such employees to share their knowledge with colleagues leveraging the knowledge base. In such a scenario, the use of knowledge management can ensure success. This is one of the key reasons why knowledge management is fast gaining ground as companies have reported improvements across all departments after implementing it.
How social media can transform knowledge management?
The form and aetiology of the data found on social media and on the knowledge base are completely different. The only social aspect of data in knowledge management systems is found during the approval process when an appointed employee reviews the credibility of the data source and its value for the organization before publishing it via the knowledge base software. This data can then be altered by an update that has to follow the same approval process.
On social media, things work differently. The social interaction aspect removes all boundaries and makes it interactive. Content becomes a key part of social interaction and it can shift the meaning as the discussion progresses, where every reply has robust value. But, how to use the power of this information found on social media with a knowledge base?
The solution is enterprise social computing which is rather an emerging trend. The leaders in the artificial intelligence field have developed APIs that can be used to manage unstructured content such the one found on social media. Associating and categorizing unstructured data will provide companies with new insights on how to improve and increase the chances of reaching success.
Conclusion
This newly compiled data can easily be integrated into the knowledge base without much time lost on cleaning, validating, and categorizing data. It is less likely that social media will push the knowledge base completely out of the picture, but it is safe to assume that it will definitely put this practice to serious challenges.
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