Scope of Social Media in Business Free-Samples-Myassignmenthlep.Com

Question: Discuss about the Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Social Networks in Business. Answer: Introduction: Advancement in the technology has brought up many changes in the business world. The biggest technology invention is the invention of internet that is used by every single person on the planet. It has become the basis of every function of daily lives of the people. Introduction of social media tool is also a technological invention that has proved to be very popular these days. Every individual is using social media tools to communicate with each other overcoming all the barriers of communication (Kaplan Haenlein, 2010). Businesses are also using these tools for their benefits in the field of marketing, customer service, making connections etc. However, it not only brings benefits to the businesses but also act as the challenge for the companies to deal with such social media tools. This is because it requires an extra skill to make use of these tools for the benefits of the firm. It is required by the companies to analyze the tool properly and implement them in the processes with p rior training and development to the employees so that nobody can misuse it. social media Social media can be defined as the platform that helps the people to connect with the outside world with the use of technology called internet (Brison, Baker III Byon, 2015). With the evolution of internet technology the features of social media has also got improved and thus provides even better services to the people such as posting images, videos, chatting, editing picture, posting content etc. This is basically the platform that helps in exchanging the information with others. In earlier times, people used to share these types of information through posts after that technology has developed and people started sending messages and E-mails. Now the technology has become so advanced that people can have online live chats and video chats through the medium of social media. Web 1.0 technology is the technology of internet that allows the users to have access to read the data provided on the websites that has been generated by others (Kwak, Lee, Park Moon, 2010). Advancement in web 1 .0 results in development of web 2.0 technology. This technology allows the users to even interact with other users of the websites. Social media is not only playing a major role in individuals life but also playing a great role in the life of business. It has provided many benefits to the businesses along with some of the disadvantages. Benefits of social media: The below figure clearly suggests the different types of benefits that the companies are enjoying with the use of social media. Brand exposure and awareness: The above figure suggests that the major advantage for the businesses of using social media networks is brand exposure and awareness. It means that the social media network tool help the companies to make the people aware of their brand by marketing and posting about their products and services on these sites (Mangold Faulds, 2009). This ultimately provides high brand exposure to the company as more and more people can know about the brand. Social media tools allow the companies to increase their presence on the internet so that its brand can be exposed to large number of customers. Coles is the company in Australia that operates in the supermarket industry. The company uses social media tool for attracting more and more customers and succeeded in doing so. The Facebook page of the company has 869,000 likes. This suggests that intensity of the awareness the people have about the company because of social media presence. Targeted traffic: As many users are using the social media networking sites thus makes it easier for the companies to have a large pool of customers from which the relevant customers can be targeted easily. Search Engine optimization is the tool that helps in optimizing the website traffic for the company (Gerbaudo, 2012). Coles is the company that is using the help of the site called twitter not only to broadcast about the products but also to target the customers for the particular products. The target customer range of the company is so wide because it deals with many products and thus according to the likes and the retweets of the people company can target those customers (Econsultancy., 2017). Lead generation: Lead is basically the potential customers. As there are many users who are connected with each other on social media networking sites thus it creates a pool for sales prospects for the companies. Some of the users are customers for some of the products. Thus, the companies need to be active in order to generate the lead out of that customer. It is competition because most of the companies are trying this method to acquire customers and thus the companies need to make extra efforts in generating leads from the users. Using online website to serve the customers to buy the products is the basic step to generate lead online (Albarran, 2013). Coles is the company that uses such strategy to generate leads. The company is active on all the social media websites and thus tries to attract the customers with customized ads. Customer interaction: Social media networking not only allow the companies to post about their products and services but also allow the customers to leave their feedbacks on the company's post. It helps the companies to know about the reviews of the customers about their products and services. This also results in taking corrective action by the companies according to the analysis of the customers views. The above picture clearly describes that Coles post about their products on Tweets and the reviews of the customers can be identified from these posts on Twitter (Healey, 2011). Positive views of the customers help the company to have more sales of the products and negative views help the company to make correction to their products according to their needs. The benefits of using social media is not limited to the above four aspects. There is a wide scope of using social media for marketing and other processes (McHale, 2012). Social media also helps in internal networking of the employees thorough intranet. Coles is using this technology also to make connections between their employees so that easy c flow of communication can be done. Disadvantages of social media networking: Skilled resources: Using social media tools is not always easy and cheap. It totally depends on the size and the type of the business that how much efforts are required by the company to use these tools in order to take benefits of that (Hinton Hjorth, 2013). The major disadvantage of using social media networking in businesses is that it requires committed human and time resources. The companies need to hire skilled employee or sometimes the whole team to take care of these social media networks of the company all the time. This requires the company to invest in hiring and training the people with the required skills. The staff of the company that deals with social media tools should be extremely trained so that they can give all the answers to the questions out on by the customers and the competitors on social media. Coles have a specialized social media team in the organization that looks after the social media sites of the company every time (Lomborg, 2014). The company replies to the customers reviews in 2 hours which is a very speedy time as compared to other companies. The company is also active on all the social media channels and post new things every time and then. This increases the efforts of the company and distracts the company from its core activities. Damage to brand image: As there are many user on the social media sites so they can post anything about the company anytime. This acts as the threat for the company because the new or any statement given by the users or the competitors can results in damage to the image of the company. It is a very big risk that the companies came across when they deal with social media networking tools (Scott, 2015). These are the tools that are open and allow the open communication and interaction between the people. Coles has faced this case of negative publicity at the time when the company has started its campaign with the statement In my house, its a crime not to buy This statement has received many negative replies from the customers and drops down the image of the company on social media. It is very difficult for the company to deal with such cases. The openness of this medium and networking allow the customers to write whatever they want and it may affect the image of the companies very badl y. Ethical and legal risks: Social media is the world that has different security and privacy concern. Any company's social media team should be knowledgeable with the IT laws before working with any of the social media team (Westwood, 2014). This is because any unethical practice at the social media sites can be subjected to legal punishment. Security risks for the companies are very high in case of using the social media tool. Any information of the company can be leaked by the social media team as they have all the data and information about the company that should be kept in secretive manner. Companies like Coles need to include all the legal consideration when using the social media tools that any of their practice cannot harm the image of the company as well as cannot put any legal harm to the company. Therefore, it has been analyzed that the companies should be very aware of all the disadvantages of using social media networking in business so that they can face those challenges at that time with prior plans (Stelzner, 2011). It has been recommended for the companies to assess the activities that need to be conducted on social media by the company and also to plan all the activities by delegating different duties and responsibilities to different people. A written social media policy should be framed by the company so that the activities can be conducted according to that policy (Aral, Dellarocas Godes, 2013). The main recommendation for the companies who use such tools is that the companies should train their employees with the skills of using social media tools so that they cannot make any technical mistake on the sites that may results in harm to the company's image and goodwill. Conclusion: On the whole, it can be concluded that social media networking is a very important element to be considered by the companies these days. This is because its a very strong marketing tool for the companies. It does not benefit the company in terms marketing but also help the companies to increase the revenue and the customer base (Hanna, Rohm Crittenden, 2011). Brand exposure is also the main benefit of using social media networking in businesses. On the other hand, the limitation of using such tools are elated to the damaging the image of the company and requirement of skilled workforce to use such tools. As the social media networking is very popular in todays world but the companies need to understand that the tools are still very new to most of the people and thus a proper strategy needs to be made in order to implement such tools in the organization. Coles is using an optimum use of these tool in the business but still faced many risks and challenges of using social media network ing. References: Albarran, A. (2013).The social media industries. New York: Routledge. Aral, S., Dellarocas, C., Godes, D. (2013). Introduction to the special issuesocial media and business transformation: a framework for research.Information Systems Research,24(1), 3-13. Brison, N. T., Baker III, T. A., Byon, K. K. (2015). Facebook Likes and Sport Brand Image: An Empirical Examination of the National Advertising Divisions Coastal Contacts Decision.Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport,25(2), 104-122. Econsultancy. (2017).How Australian supermarket Coles delivers engaging content on social, from https://econsultancy.com/blog/66922-how-australian-supermarket-coles-delivers-engaging-content-on-social/ Retrieved 4 May 2017 Gerbaudo, P.( 2012).Tweets and the streets: Social media and contemporary activism. Pluto Press. Hanna, R., Rohm, A., Crittenden, V. L. (2011). Were all connected: The power of the social media ecosystem.Business horizons,54(3), 265-273. Healey, J. (2011).Social impacts of digital media. Thirroul, N.S.W.: Spinney Press. Hinton, S., Hjorth, L. (2013).Understanding social media. Los Angeles, CA [etc.]: SAGE. Kaplan, A. M., Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media.Business horizons,53(1), 59-68. Kwak, H., Lee, C., Park, H. Moon, S. (2010), April. What is Twitter, a social network or a news media?. InProceedings of the 19th international conference on World wide web(pp. 591-600). ACM. Lomborg, S. (2014).Social media, social genres. New York, NY [u.a.]: Routledge. Mangold, W.G. Faulds, D.J.(2009). Social media: The new hybrid element of the promotion mix.Business horizons,52(4), pp.357-365. McHale, R. (2012).Navigating social media legal risks: Safeguarding your business. Que Publishing. Scott, D. (2015).The new rules of marketing PR. Hoboken (New Jersey): J. Wiley Sons. Stelzner, M. A. (2011). Social media marketing industry report.Social Media Examiner,41, 1-10. Westwood, J. (2014).Social Media in Social Work Education