Potential Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Social Media in Organizations
Social media has offered ways through which employees in an organisation can modify the way in which processes are completed. Social media has affected processes in Sunshine 100 in both positive and negative way. Social media also help employee to safeguard and improving brand reputation (Chadwick and Dennis, 2017). The issue that was faced by Sunshine 100’s was leakage of information and security breach.
Social media is a medium that allow users to share information and have an interaction. Social media has become an integral part of organisation as they help the firm to improve brand image and reach to more customers (Cawsey and Rowley, 2016). It is beneficial for companies as they allow analysing the feedback gained by the customers.
Advantage- Social media offers cheaper and easy way for advertisement and promotion of services as compared to other traditional methods. It offers worldwide connectivity by accessing services in real time. It is a way of sharing information in real time by saving the time and money (Alalwan, Rana, Dwivedi and Algharabat, 2017). It is a tool used for conducting meetings and generating interaction. It is a best to improve engagement between customers and allow team coronation from remote location.
Disadvantage- The disadvantage of using social media is negative feedback as it can degrade brand image. It also increases the chances of cybercrimes as it makes the information available publicly that could be used by authorised user. It also has a negative effect on productivity as it keeps user busy on social networking sites for a longer time (Allcott and Gentzkow, 2017). Social media cannot be used as a business communication tool as if the information can be leaked and be misused.
Social media affects the brand image of an organization as it is used for promotion and advertisement of services. The positive feedback from client’s can help in gaining more customers and building trust. On the other hand, negative feedback can spoil brand image can cause conflicts among customers. The profile over social media can also be misused by users for building false image. Social media boost up the visibility of organization and help them to reach to wider audience (Roshan, Warren and Carr, 2016). It is a significant part for creating awareness among customers and improving brand image. Increasing brand awareness in turn increases number of clients.
Social media enhances brand reorganization by exploring the services of company to wider audience. It also increases trust among customers by making them sure that services offered is authenticated and confidential (Sarker, et. al, 2015). Social media in turn increases sale by increasing clients and awareness among them.
Impact of Employee’s Comments or Behavior on Organization’s Brand
The social media policy on Sunshine 100 should cover defend against security risk and legal issues. These policies are used to robust the functions and by keeping the employees out of trouble and security concerns (Panagiotopoulos, Shan, Barnett, Regan and McConnon, 2015). The policy also allows unlocking benefit of employee by offering them a plan to deal with credibility of risk. Social media policies make user that information remains protected and it is accessed only by authorized user (Chung, Andreev, Benyoucef, Duane and O’Reilly, 2017). An access control list needs to be defined so that only valid user can access the information. Social media policy focuses on sharing the information in an effective manner.
The communication strategy is created in an organisation so that employees in the organisation become aware about the social media strategies used (Stamati, Papadopoulos and Anagnostopoulos, 2015). Some of the communication strategy parameter is:
- Timing- The awareness is spread as soon as the policies are designed.
- Audience- The members of an organisation and the management tea are considered as audience.
- Sender- The messages are forwarded by the communication leader.
- Key Message- The impact of social media and its importance for improving the functions are discussed.
- Desired Outcome- The outcomes of using social media are discussed.
- Medium- It is transferred by the means of email, memo and other messaging tools.
- Materials- The rules and guidelines designed by the government and code of conduct.
- Frequency- It needs to be monitored and updated regularly.
From the research and analyses the impact of social media on an organization are discussed. Social media has both positive as well as negative impact and the impact of policy on employees is also discussed. The privacy procedures were described so that customer information can remain secured. These policies are applicable to every member in the organization (Stamati, Papadopoulos and Anagnostopoulos, 2015). The social media policy covers the ways in which employees should maintain security by keeping the information confidential. This helped in creating secure passwords so that malicious attacks could be controlled.
References
Alalwan, A.A., Rana, N.P., Dwivedi, Y.K. and Algharabat, R., 2017. Social media in marketing: A review and analysis of the existing literature. Telematics and Informatics, 34(7), pp.1177-1190.
Allcott, H. and Gentzkow, M., 2017. Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2), pp.211-36.
Cawsey, T. and Rowley, J., 2016. Social media brand building strategies in B2B companies. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 34(6), pp.754-776.
Chadwick, A. and Dennis, J., 2017. Social media, professional media and mobilisation in contemporary Britain: Explaining the strengths and weaknesses of the Citizens’ Movement 38 Degrees. Political Studies, 65(1), pp.42-60.
Chung, A.Q., Andreev, P., Benyoucef, M., Duane, A. and O’Reilly, P., 2017. Managing an organisation’s social media presence: An empirical stages of growth model. International Journal of Information Management, 37(1), pp.1405-1417.
Panagiotopoulos, P., Shan, L.C., Barnett, J., Regan, Á. and McConnon, Á., 2015. A framework of social media engagement: Case studies with food and consumer organisations in the UK and Ireland. International Journal of Information Management, 35(4), pp.394-402.
Roshan, M., Warren, M. and Carr, R., 2016. Understanding the use of social media by organisations for crisis communication. Computers in Human Behavior, 63, pp.350-361.
Sarker, A., Ginn, R., Nikfarjam, A., O’Connor, K., Smith, K., Jayaraman, S., Upadhaya, T. and Gonzalez, G., 2015. Utilizing social media data for pharmacovigilance: a review. Journal of biomedical informatics, 54, pp.202-212.
Stamati, T., Papadopoulos, T. and Anagnostopoulos, D., 2015. Social media for openness and accountability in the public sector: Cases in the Greek context. Government Information Quarterly, 32(1), pp.12-29.