Advantages of Social Media in Business
Social media in business is of paramount importance in the present century. Entrepreneurs are making use of their online presence in order to promote their business. I think social media helps the business in achieving the presentation part in an efficient manner. The operators of social network have emerged to be patrons in regard to different online supplies (Aluri et al. 2015). I think social networking in business can create an enhanced relationship with the market and with targeted clienteles. Social networking helps in the process of decision making of the consumers. I think social networking is an important tool that helps in delivering important information regarding the products and facilities of an organization. According to me, the business can interact more conveniently with their clients by using social media. I think social networking has also led to lack of direct communication. The customers are not able to provide direct feedback.
The learning experience helped me in understanding important aspects of social network in business. It highlights the important of social media for business organizations and in what ways it contributes for the profit of an organization. It reveals why companies cannot profit effectively without the usage of social media. I learnt that the users of social media can view online advertisements by sitting at home. They do not have to go through the rigorous process of going through catalogues or roam around from one shop to another (Whiting and Williams 2013). This can be done from the comfort of home.
The learning experience will help me immensely in my course, career and life. Professional skills along with experience can be posted online and employers on the look out for filling vacancies can use the platform to bag suitable candidates. They have replaced the newspaper classifieds. Linked In helps one in creating a professional profile and candidates can upload their resume in different job portals. I learnt that it helps one in staying connected with colleagues and friends. It also helps in solving complex problems as one can take the help of friends with the help of various social platform. Groups can be formed in Facebook where students post their problems and people from their group can help them in solving their query.
I have learnt that social media can prove to be useful for diverse purposes. It is cost-effective and its advertising features can be made use of in order to promote content. Advertisements in regard to matrimony and jobs can be displayed in social media and others will be able to see their advertisement and contact them. I thus learnt that by using it in the appropriate manner, one can reap advantages and one can gain access to the social media platforms from the comfort of home. Social media is capable of defying all kinds of age barriers. The target audience can be either old or young and they are logged into the system and waiting for their right customer. One can gain access to a lot of information with the help of social media and feedback can be collected by taking recourse to it. The customers can share their thoughts and ideas. The business can make use of these ideas in order to innovate their products so that it can provide the consumer with satisfaction (Messing and Westwood 2014).
Disadvantages of Social Media in Business
I learnt that public relations in the initial stages relied to a great extent on automated devices apart from the print media. In such a scenario, global client do not get much chances in expressing personal opinion regarding the trustworthiness of the service. The social link hence turns out to be extremely crucial in order to familiarize the product with that of the market place. Individuals do not want to track updates regarding news reports in the categorized format.
The data in Facebook is being used in order to assess the interests and consideration of clients. I learnt that the corporate experts do not want to move to other place in order to gather the indispensable view of clientele. Some critics of social media have remarked that those belonging to the age group of 40-60 cannot make use of high-tech method. I hence deduced that social network can also turn out to be an undesirable impression regarding the production status of an organization. Common interactive media has become a vital link in between consumers from different topographical markets (Trainor et al. 2014). I found out that professional groups can be bended in introducing the brand within the domain of transnational marketplace. With the help of social media, teams can become interconnected with different classes of societies. Social media has thus turned out to be a foreseeable stage for promoting the company.
Social networking site like Twitter can be used to assess the popularity of products in different areas and on the basis of that research the company can manufacture products and deliver essential services. Online value can be added to audiences and social media can be used to nurture the fans. Social media functions in real time and feedback from customers can be received within a short span of time. Monitoring can be done 24* 7 and the speed of responses can be improved. Research has shown that recruiting agencies that have a strong media presence are rapidly gaining control of the market. With a very small amount of budget, a business can amass huge amount of profit.
While the advantages of social media in business are manifold, yet it carries with it a number of disadvantages. Direct communication is extremely significant in catching operational criticism. All the remarks are not visible and societal platform cannot garner honest response. Social networking sites can lead to a lot of harassment and wrong information can be published in the site regarding an individual thus causing immense damage to the reputation of an individual (Fox, Barry and Colbert 2016). The business research thus provides a impartial view regarding the advantages and disadvantages of social media in life and in relation to business. At the one hand, it reveals the areas where it proves effective and on the other hand it has laid bare the fall outs of this platform.
Importance of Research Ethics
The business research helped me in understanding the importance of research ethics. The data that has been used for the investigation will not be circulated thus contributing to research ethics (Leung et al. 2013). Responses from marketing managers highlights that the results are genuine.
The internet helps in interconnection. Connections between diverse interest groups help in making the movement more strong. Those who believe in technological progress, free flow of the information and in virtual communities take recourse to the benefits of internet. Humans have a deep seated desire to talk about themselves and express their opinions and social media can be used to give vent to their personal feelings. One can position themselves in the way he wants to and thus it creates a sense of self-fulfilment. People feel attracted towards a particular brand and advertising such brands tends to increase the popularity of their brand (Jussila, Kärkkäinen and Aramo-Immonen 2014).
Life in the present age is unthinkable without social media. All aspects of life have been greatly touched by the use of internet and so reflecting on the positive and negative sides of it is extremely important at this hour (Arnaboldi and Coget 2016). This research will help in judging the essential aspects related to social media.
Learning how to manage a professional learning network is a greatly sought after skill and it will become an important part of school curriculum in the future. There are some progressive educationalists who has a notion that personal learning network is not important. In my opinion, a network of learners is crucial and it will be the way of the future (Aral, Dellarocas and Godes 2013). Professional development of students has a lot of potential and it needs to be addressed on urgent basis. Successful manager of an organization knows how to manage time and how to respond to the posts. They use the platform of social media to review the works and products of their competitors (Bolton et al. 2013).
References:
Aluri, A., Aluri, A., Slevitch, L., Slevitch, L., Larzelere, R. and Larzelere, R., 2015. The effectiveness of embedded social media on hotel websites and the importance of social interactions and return on engagement. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 27(4), pp.670-689.
Aral, S., Dellarocas, C. and Godes, D., 2013. Introduction to the special issue—social media and business transformation: a framework for research. Information Systems Research, 24(1), pp.3-13.
Arnaboldi, M. and Coget, J.F., 2016. Social media and business. Organizational Dynamics, 1(45), pp.47-54.
Bolton, R.N., Parasuraman, A., Hoefnagels, A., Migchels, N., Kabadayi, S., Gruber, T., Komarova Loureiro, Y. and Solnet, D., 2013. Understanding Generation Y and their use of social media: a review and research agenda. Journal of Service Management, 24(3), pp.245-267.
Fox, C.S., Barry, K. and Colbert, J., 2016. Importance of social media alongside traditional medical publications. Circulation, 133(20), pp.1978-1983.
Jussila, J.J., Kärkkäinen, H. and Aramo-Immonen, H., 2014. Social media utilization in business-to-business relationships of technology industry firms. Computers in Human Behavior, 30, pp.606-613.
Leung, D., Law, R., Van Hoof, H. and Buhalis, D., 2013. Social media in tourism and hospitality: A literature review. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 30(1-2), pp.3-22.
Messing, S. and Westwood, S.J., 2014. Selective exposure in the age of social media: Endorsements trump partisan source affiliation when selecting news online. Communication Research, 41(8), pp.1042-1063.
Trainor, K.J., Andzulis, J.M., Rapp, A. and Agnihotri, R., 2014. Social media technology usage and customer relationship performance: A capabilities-based examination of social CRM. Journal of Business Research, 67(6), pp.1201-1208.
Whiting, A. and Williams, D., 2013. Why people use social media: a uses and gratifications approach. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 16(4), pp.362-369.