IBM has always stayed ahead of the game. As one of the world’s biggest technological companies, they were forecasting the rise of social media and immediately jumped on the opportunity.  Back in 2007, they foresaw how much of an impact social media was having on the world. They launched Lotus Connections, a product that combined five social networking applications into one package. Since it was aimed at the corporate social and collaborative environment, the apps focused around tools that allowed workers to communicate with each other via blogs, profiles, and common community areas. This was the start of an enterprise-wide integration and employees would have access for more information to collaborate with. IBM LotusLive has become IBM SmartCloud for Social Business. It’s used for business grade file sharing, social networking, communities, online meetings, instant messaging, email and calendar. There is also a productivity center that employees can edit documents in real time. Keeping employees involved has helped with successful organizational strategy.

Microsoft Corporation is one of the biggest technological companies in the world. So, when it comes to future development, they are always ahead of the game. Microsoft has integrated social media through the entire company and has even created social media management software systems. When it comes to their company, future development will only keep advancing because of the social media practices that have already been put in place.

Glossier originally started off as a beauty blog in 2010 by Emily Weiss called “Into the Gloss”. The blog was drawing a huge audience and created a wonderful beauty community that was generally interested in what Weiss was discussing. The launch of this community became the perfect platform for the brand launch of Glossier. The company is currently only available online which allows the brand to only focus on digital and social channels. “This online following would then rave about her products either through their own blogs, or post photos on Instagram to their own followers. This was a perfect example of word of mouth beauty marketing in action on social media (Chong, N. (2017, June)”.

Math. Science. English. Facebook. Snapchat. Instagram. Welcome to the modern classroom, where the way in which a teacher is expected to engage with students, deliver the learning experience and manage discipline has forever changed thanks to the increasing prevalence of social media. With this new dynamic comes the expectation that teachers are appropriately managing their own social media actions, both in the classroom and in their personal lives. These new expectations recently led the Ontario College of Teachers (OCT) – which governs and regulates the province’s teaching profession – to launch an employee-focused campaign called Social Media Tips for Teachers to proactively reinforce the proper use of social media both in and out of the classroom to its more than 200,000 accredited members. The OCT primarily used social media to successfully share the social media refresher.

We all have a story to tell. It could be one of personal hope, sacrifice, mentorship or despair. Others could be told from numbers or raw data – the stuff that drives work and project results. As social media becomes a more popular medium of communication and an avenue for influence and story telling, it’s the metrics that tell a bigger story and help to validate the hard work of a communications department.

Social media by its nature is about collaborating, networking, sharing and generating knowledge and content. It has transformed the way we interact with one another. According to a report by the Babson Survey Research Group and Pearson Learning Solutions, faculty members’ use of social media has been steadily increasing since the survey was first conducted in 2010. (Wired for teaching) Online learning has been popular for quite a long time, but the inclusion of social media is something that’s relatively new. Could social media play a more central role in education especially in online education in the future?