Definition of Social Media
Question:
Discuss about the Impact Of Social Media On Contemporary Business Communication.
Many definitions of social media exist but let define social media in this case, as a collection of multiple online platforms designed for communication between people over long distances in a simple and fast way (Obar and Wildman 2015). This means there are instant sending and receiving of messages. Some examples of very known social media platforms include Facebook, LinkedIn, Palmchat, Whatsapp,Wikipedia, Twitter, Instagram, Email, Google+ among others (Aral, Dellarocas, and Godes2013).Today, businesses have turned to social media to promote brands, market products, connect to current customers while luring potential customers and fostering new business and most importantly, business are using social media gathered information to make decisions. The birth of social media can be traced back in 1997, where a social network is known as ‘Six Degrees’ was invented allowing people to create a profile and also friend others and also friend those who did not have profiles a little further. In 2000s other social media like MySpace emerged inspiring the invention of the other platforms like Facebook which is very popular today (Edosomwan et al. 2011). This paper will focus on the impact of social media in the service business which provides intangible products and more importantly offers professional skills, expertise, advice, and other similar products.
Communication in business is used to persuade, inform and educate people about the product or services the business offers. Business owners and managers should learn interpersonal communication in order to effectively pass information to their employees and juniors in the organization so that the information reaching the customer will inform them of the existence of products, educate of its usefulness and lastly persuade them to buy and use the benefit of the products (Safko, L., 2010). Communication in the modern world has really changed, how it takes place is very different and there is a need for businesses to embrace all platforms available to increase their customer reach. Social media, for instance, is inevitable as it offers wide customer base where feedback is a click of a button. Let us have a look at how social media has been used in modern world according to the available literature.
A U.S. study in 2010 stated that, of all time spent on the internet, 12% is on social media. Time spent online globally between those aged 15 years and above are on social networking accounting for 15.6% with an average of 4.5 hours per individual internet users. This means businesses should be very determined to capture their client base there. Businesses in the target of young people should be even keener on utilizing social networking than no other business. GlobalWebIndex states that 28% of time spent online goes to social networking with an average user logging 1.7 times a day accounting for 12 hours in a week an increase from 1.66 times from 2013. Pew Research Centre February 5, 2018, reported that close to three-quarters of adults in America use social media to connect with one another, share information and entertain themselves, and engage with news content.It indicates that at the beginning of 2005 only 5% of Americans adults used at least one of the social media platforms and in 2011 it increased to half. Today, 69% of adults in America are using at least one of the social platforms (Erdo?mu? and Cicek2012).
The Importance of Social Media in Business
It therefore important to note that social media is overcrowded by both customers and more so your employees too. All these may damage the reputation of your business. For instance, your posts on social networking may damage your business reputation if what they are posting is concerning the business. Their post mostly may be judged on the basis of where they work instead of who they are in their personal capacity. Employees should be warned of posting things that may portray negative impact to the business. It is important also for the business owners to keep monitoring the existence of employees on social media and encourage them to seek authority from them any time they wanted to post business-related information.
Businesses have less control over what stuff are being shared on social networking. This means messages; comments, re-tweets, likes and dislikes shared on this platform spread very fast to a large audience including potential service buyers and loyal customers and might damage your business reputation if they were portraying a bad image of the business. This is one of the greatest threats to the modern businesses. For instance, there was an allegation on social media that BlackBerry employees don’t use their own company’s products.This was witnessed when Alicia Keys who happened to be BlackBerry creative director sent a tweet using Apple iPhone, the company central account once again in the following January urges its loyal users to keep the conversation going with BlackBerry on social media platforms, it was also later learnt the phone used was an iPhone. This was received by criticism on social media with people doubting whether BlackBerry was any better than other brands (Culnan, McHugh and Zubillaga2010). Therefore it is important to actively have forums, groups and other consultations meetings to know what people might be saying about your brand. BlackBerry should have learned from Alicia Keys not to repeat the mistake again.
Negative customer review damages the company’s reputation. Once negative information has been posted on social media, it is difficult to remove it from the mind of a customer who reviewed it. It is important to cross-check many times before posting, whether the information is the one intended; assess its impacts (positive or negative) it has on its viewers (Pentina, Zhang, and Basmanova2013).Customers dissatisfaction today may be taken to the Company’s’ profile where they post complains about the services and products offered by your business without really having to directly contact you. You need to regularly visit your company’s profile and respond to the customer’s comments, or if you can’t forward them to the concerned departments (Erdo?mu? and Cicek 2012).
A most recent admission by Facebook C.E.O Mark Zuckerberg that Facebook scans all the information posted on the web raises fear of business privacy where competitors may have crucial and confidential information about the business hence reducing chances of business survival. At the same time, Facebook seemed to admit that personal information of up to 87 million users might have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytical.
Statistics on Social Media Usage
There are good customer relations due to direct interaction. Companies are able to directly connect with their customers, respond to their queries and also act as experts in the line of their services. This makes customers connect with you as a caring friend on their needs. Customers are ready to share interesting information from your sites to their friends(Vinerean 2013). Ensuring that your posts are appealing and of importance to your customers make them feel interested to share to those they love. This is a people driven advertisements which may probably cost you zero expenses. This, in turn, will add many clicks on your site and make more customers reach. Social advertising such as Facebook ads enables the business to advertise to advertise on Facebook users depending on their profile information. These adverts are charged per click and require you to put a constant budget to get better results. The more relevant the information on the Facebook is the more positive return hence large positive impact.
Social media helps businesses reduce marketing costs. Social media marketing is most affordable and an effective way of marketing your brand. It helps and lets your business grow rapidly and offers you with new predictions for your business future success (Qualman, E., 2010). Many businesses today have increased their reliability and trustworthiness of brand, through utilization of social media which is considered to do it proactively. Regular communication with your clients makes your brand become a trusted source, hence increasing your business credibility. Social habitats have reported that 53% of Americans who happens to follow social media platform become more loyal to the brand offered (Laroche et al. 2012).
Social media enables businesses to reach a global audience. Social media accounts have the ability to reach a global audience without really having to cost you lots of money. Unique products and creative content reach millions of people across the globe (Hutter et al. 2013). To reach many people as much as possible, it is advisable to use your official business profile which will make you grab advantages of continuous shares and tweets on social media channels. There are over 665 million people using Facebook and close to 500 million on twitter today. All businesses are running after this opportunity to reach their potential clients. Social media also is encouraging businesses to gain a competitive edge.A Business is able to keep an eye on the competitors’ tactics helping it to develop strategies to counter the initiatives taken by the competitor.
There are changes brought about by social media and has really impacted the way business operates in the modern world. Some of the impacts include high advertising target. This means there is a clear target of exact customers in the business world like never before (Qualman, E., 2010). Advertisers can create, develop marketing and advertising materials with the exact target customer in mind. This helps in reducing risks associated with the targeting unknown clients which are very practical when utilizing Facebook platform(Cook, N 2017). The other impact brought by these changes is organic marketing. The Internet has been in existence for quite some time but companies and business did not confidently embrace it. However, with the social media, there is the provision of self-control of everything and this makes organic marketing a reality. There are business engagements in conversation and are promoting valuable content without forcing envelope. This has increased brand transparency hence boosting credibility as businesses can own up their own mistakes. For instance, Airlines are frequently using Twitter to engage their frustrated customers of missed flights, lost luggage, and or missed connections(Kaplanand Haenlein 2010).
Challenges of Social Media for Service Business
Despite social media offering friendly platforms for businesses to express and promote themselves, there are fears of backlash with some companies. Many companies are in fear of making costly mistakes online where there exist many potential customers and therefore thy share off from backlashes that may be received from customers(George, Rovniak, and Kraschnewski 2013). Some companies are aware of the dangers associated with mistakes going viral and they go back in fear of angry employees reacting negatively by either leaking confidential information, ridicule from competitors and posts that could be considered politically wrong. Some small brands will, by all means, fear to get negative feedback such as those witnessed in big airlines. Some analysis has shown that 47% of social media posts are negative on major airlines with only less than 20% with positive comments. It is, however, not advisable to fear using social media as it outweighs the negatives(Bruhn, Schoenmueller and Schäfer 2012).
Social media has also enabled flexibility in content dissemination there is over 2.4 million content sharing in minutes across the globe today on social media. People are able to post directly on social media which has also enabled publishing which was in the past only limited to knowing some people in media, creating some emails and subscribers lists, and or publish an onsite blog.
Conclusion
Social media is here to stay. No business can survive without effective communication within business corridors or even outside when it comes to interacting with customers. The modern business must be able to utilize the existence of social media in reaching potential customers who are close to 11 million both on Facebook and Twitter just to mention a few. Facebook is the giant social media, the most accessible and easy to use and this means many people are using Facebook across the globe. However as business utilizes this great opportunity to win themselves market shares, they must be consciously aware of the consequences that may arise from mistakes made on the same. Employers should make their employees aware that their postings have a direct impact on their business and therefore censor their posts before releasing them to the public.
References
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.
Bruhn, M., Schoenmueller, V. and Schäfer, D.B., 2012. Are social media replacing traditional media in terms of brand equity creation?.Management Research Review, 35(9), pp.770-790.
Cook, N., 2017. Enterprise 2.0: How social software will change the future of work. Routledge.
Culnan, M.J., McHugh, P.J., and Zubillaga, J.I., 2010. How large US companies can use Twitter and other social media to gain business value. MIS Quarterly Executive, 9(4).
Edosomwan, S., Prakasan, S.K., Kouame, D., Watson, J. and Seymour, T., 2011.The history of social media and its impact on business.Journal of Applied Management and Entrepreneurship, 16(3), p.79.
Erdo?mu?, ?.E., and Cicek, M., 2012.The impact of social media marketing on brand loyalty.Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 58, pp.1353-1360.
George, D.R., Rovniak, L.S. and Kraschnewski, J.L., 2013. Dangers and opportunities for social media in medicine.Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology, 56(3).
Hutter, K., Hautz, J., Dennhardt, S. and Füller, J., 2013. The impact of user interactions in social media on brand awareness and purchase intention: the case of MINI on Facebook. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 22(5/6), pp.342-351.
Kaplan, A.M. and Haenlein, M., 2010. Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media.Business Horizons, 53(1), pp.59-68.
Laroche, M., Habibi, M.R., Richard, M.O. and Sankaranarayanan, R., 2012. The effects of social media based brand communities on brand community markers, value creation practices, brand trust and brand loyalty. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(5), pp.1755-1767.
Obar, J.A. and Wildman, S.S., 2015. Social media definition and the governance challenge: An introduction to the special issue.
Pentina, I., Zhang, L. and Basmanova, O., 2013. Antecedents and consequences of trust in a social media brand: A cross-cultural study of Twitter. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(4), pp.1546-1555.
Qualman, E., 2010. Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business. John Wiley & Sons.
Safko, L., 2010. The social media bible: tactics, tools, and strategies for business success. John Wiley & Sons.
Vinerean, S., Cetina, I., Dumitrescu, L. and Tichindelean, M., 2013.The effects of social media marketing on online consumer behavior. International Journal of Business and Management, 8(14), p.66
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