Discuss about the Impact Of The Social Media On Modern Business Communication.
The essay aims at providing an insight into the impact of the social media on modern business communication. The essay would discuss how business communication has undergone changes over a time line of twenty years along with portrayal of the challenges that the businesses face in communication during the 21st century. The report also takes into account a retail business and shows how the introduction of social media in business communication has affected the way of doing business. The essay also tries to put forward an instance showing how the retails business is using the newer means of communication. There is also mention of the opportunities and the challenges it creates for modern business.
Business communication refers to the sharing of information between the people within organization for its commercial benefit. In other words, its people also refer it as the relaying of the information within the business (Schermerhorn et al. 2014). Communication is important within business as it leads to the development of the organization. Communication helps the managers in performing basic management functions that includes motivation, planning, control and organization. Thus, communication skills, whether oral or written, is important for business activity (Schullery 2013). The business world has undergone major changes and so has the process of communication in the past 20 years. The manner in which businesses engage in communication in matters related to business transaction and market to the customers has achieved a transformation. This transformation is contributed to the emergence of the internet. The introduction of the internet aided people to the create websites, learn new ideas and make use of the email facilities. This has also led to the emergence of companies like Amazon and Google in digital realm. Internet also led to the surfacing of the concepts like search engine optimization, social networking and social bookmarking along with various forms of digital generation of traffic. In present times, the existence of such avenues acts as the standard base for operation in the ongoing endeavor for increasing the sales volume via internet. The affiliate programs, the email list with the auto responders also emerged the viable avenues adopted by the business as a means of communication in reaching out and marketing to the masses. Internet has thus made billions of profit from the increasing number of business transactions carried online. Modern business owners think about marketing to the consumers through the creation of a company website instead of the traditional advertisements in prints (Edel 2017).
There has also been significant change in the verbal communication in business with the introduction of texting, email and the various social media platforms (Hair et al. 2015). Compared to the time when technology did not exist, verbal communication has a visible decline in the last 20 years. Email represented one of the first forms of the communication technology that remain in use as a means of corporate and business communication (Kim and Hastak 2018). Email represents the most common form of communication in business that accounts for close to 188 billion emails on a daily basis. Texting also represents a means used for effective communication in business. Nowadays, close to around seventy percent people uses their smart phones for texting (Lim et al. 2015). There has also been the presence of various social media platforms that has aided businesses communication. The use of various social media sites like Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram have increased in business thereby diminishing the verbal communication (Laroche, Habibi and Richard 2013).
Thus, two distinct phenomena occurred in business communication during the 21st century. First, the concept of communication redefined and given newer means through increased referral to the technological revolution (Cunningham and Fröschl 2013). Thus, through renegotiating the essence of communication, businesses have successfully created their own identity in the society and a global culture managed through technological innovations. The second phenomena refer to the mainstreaming of globalization that puts forward a global scope for economic, political, and social activity (Smith 2013). Thus, the phenomena dwindle between promotion of the global homogeneity and the promotion of heterogeneity that aids in challenging the identity within global community and the belief of a single culture on a global scale. Globalization however represents the byproduct of technological revolution that led to the creation of modern communication forms. The challenge for business lies in understanding the symbiotic relationship between globalization and communication and considers how one remains symptomatic of the other (Laszlo and Cescau 2017).
Social media significantly affects the retail business communication by offering another online platform for the retailers to market their products and brands, create additional avenues for the customers to provide feedback and engage with the retail brands. For a retail brand, the social media holds a financial significance (Rapp et al. 2013). In the year, 2014, around 3.3 billion retail purchases influenced directly by the social media. The social media influences the retail decisions of the people by representing exclusive deals and discounts, putting forward options for making a purchase, enable following the brand for communicating with the brand.
However, social media influences the retail business in the following manner:
Reputation Management and Risk Mitigation of Public Relations: With the emergence of social media, news spreads at an unprecedented speed. Retail brands can respond instantly to any sort of negative activity thereby reducing the harmful impacts and maintain a positive brand image (Kim and Park 2013). Quick response on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter can help in resolving a customer problem that helps in fostering loyalty and improvement in the reputation of the company.
Testing Market and Effectiveness of the Campaign: The social media enables the retail brands in keeping the customers at their fingertips (Rauniar et al. 2014). The use of the social media also helps the retail business in testing the ideas for the campaign with the followers of the social media before their commitment to larger advertisements. The platform also provides the retail business with updated analytics on variety of metrics thereby helping the brands to measure effectiveness of social media campaigns.
Building Brand Loyalty and Customer Engagement: Many people follow brands for gaining access to the deals and discounts of the retail brands (Hollebeek, Glynn and Brodie 2014). The retail business can therefore use the social media platforms for not only building brand awareness but also engage with the online communities in creating loyalty of the brand.
In addition, the social media platform can help the retail business in gaining more accuracy in responding and forecasting the consumers’ desires as well as their trends. The social media also helps in reducing the cost of marketing and enhancing the return on the investments. The retail brands can target the niche customers so that the business can target marketing expenditure with higher accuracy in comparison to the other marketing avenues. The social media also aids retail business in communicating the unloaded inventory. However, they need to take care of popular product demand, ensure timely shipping and response to the negative feedback.
The retail business can communicate through Facebook that is one of the leading converters for the retail consumers. Facebook dominates as source of sales as well as social traffic in retail business. Close to around 85 percent of all the orders from the social media platform comes from Facebook. Retail business can also benefit from social media networks like You Tube and Pinterest.
The social media has put forward various opportunities for the modern retail business in the form of market research, brand awareness, lead generation, lead nurturing and customer support (Cardon and Marshall 2015). In the terms of the market research, social media platform represents a tool for eaves dropping the audience. This conversation enables the retail brands in building the buyer profile, gaining first hand insight into the challenges they face, aspirations, pain points and preferences. In the terms of building awareness, social media put forward exceptional opportunities in promoting the retail brand and improving the brand’s online presence. The principles of inbound marketing encourage the usage of social media as a means of distributing the educational content for building brand awareness that need to be achieved in a subtle manner. Marketers not only invest significant time but also resources in creation of content for the purposes of lead generation. However, the value of the content is lost if it is not viewed by anyone. In the regard to lead generation, social media acts as a platform for the retail business that helps in the amplification of the reach, strengthening awareness of the brand and drives the efforts for lead generation. The content for the lead generations is discovered by prospects of social media. Social media also helps the retail business in nurturing the leads. Effective monitoring of the social media help the business in nurturing the known leads via the buying cycle through observing the questions customers asks and looks for. The retailers notified when there is a tweet regarding the specific keyword that gives an opportunity in providing helpful information. In terms of the market research, social media provides the opportunity to the retail business in managing communication and dealing with complaints, support and queries honestly and openly. This helps the potential and the existing client to rely on the retailers post sale through the platform they are most comfortable.
Social media also portrays various challenges to the contemporary retail business. This first challenge involves development of social media strategy. This refers to a daunting task for the business (Okazaki and Taylor 2013). The social media strategy represents the summary of everything that the retail business plans to achieve for the business with the help of the social networks. The second challenge involves the measurement of the return on investment (ROI) of the social media. The return of investment of social media depends on particular business goals. The method applied will differ for this will vary across business. Before the retail business start measuring its ROI it necessary for the business to have a defined set of goals. This is where the social media strategy holds importance. It is also necessary to have quantifiable goals. The third challenge lies in turning the employees into brand advocates. Easier must be adopted for turning the employees into the brand advocates. The retailers can launch an employees’ platform for advocacy that makes it easier for the companies to curate the content for the brand ambassadors or employees for sharing with the social network. The social media acts as a great platform for streamlining content and messages related to the brand. The fourth challenge lies in choosing the ideal social media platform for usage. It is necessary for the business to identify the social media platform where the target audience spends their maximum time. It is there important for the retail business to familiarize itself with the demographics of each of the social network and take a note of the target audience. However, it is not just sufficient for locating the target audience but also have an idea on the platform where they remain active. Hundreds of followers do not imply that the company has an audience since there can be existence of various fake accounts. It is also important for the retailers to find out the target audience to be actively contributing otherwise the aims of the business would not be met. The fourth challenge lies in improving the decline of the organic reach. The means for driving reach depends on finding right audience mix. Therefore, it is also necessary for the retailers to use a social media management tool for monitoring the engagement with the post along with tracking the post that performs well.
Conclusion
Thus, to conclude, one can say that social media platforms have put forward various tools that have made the task of the marketers much easier especially in connection to relaying of messages to the target audience. Thus, in present times one can say that, if a business does not have its presence felt on social media then it actually remains invisible to the customers. The essay thus tries to give an insight into the fact how social media acts as valuable asset that helps the business earn loyal customers, directly engage and interact with them, form trustworthy and honest relationships and finally leads to the creation of an environment where they would like to return frequently and also inform family and friends.
References:
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