The term social media can be defined as interactive computer-mediated technologies which facilitate the creation as well a sharing of information, career interest, innovative ideas and other forms of expression via virtual communalities as well as networks. Some of the highly popularly media platforms includes Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and LinkedIn. With the enhancement of technology, marketers today are getting highly inclined for using social media platform for marketing purpose. While several advantage of using the above marketing technique can be detected, several disadvantages of using social media platform for marketing purpose are also evidenced.
The purpose of this essay is to find out whether the usage of social media is advantageous or not for the today’s business organization. The position statement of the essay is in spite of several disadvantages, usage of social media platform posses the potentiality to enhance the competitive advantage as well as productivity of organizations.
One of the major advantages of the usage of social media includes increased brand awareness in a highly cost effective way. Social media is considered to be one of the most cost effective digital marketing techniques which is currently used by the marketers to syndicate content as well as to enhance the visibility of the business. According to researchers, majority of the popular social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn offers promotional activities at a highly low price or at free of cost. Moreover, as per the survey, more than 86.3 percent o the global population is present at social media (Alharbie 2015). Thus, companies can effectively reach to the consumers through social media in a highly cost effective way.
Considering the fact that social media platform makes it possible for the management of companies to directly communicate with their target consumers, they are able to understand the exact needs of the consumers. This in turn helps them to manufacture the product depending on the quality of the same. This action helps the company to obtain consumer satisfaction which lead to enhancement of consumer base and loyalty. Not only that, regular conversation with the consumers also enhances the brand equity and brand requisition.
One of the chief example of organizations that have enhanced their brand reorganization through social media includes Samsung. The above mentioned evident is based on secondary research conducted by eminent researchers and thus is highly authentic. Finally it can be concluded that social media promotion is directly proportional to the brand equity of the organizations.
Social media marketing impose a huge impact on the psychology of the children which adversely affect their decision making power and psychology. Thus this can be termed as a negative impact of usage of social media for marketing. According to researchers, children now a days are highly sensitive to online advertisement. This affects their decision making while selecting food items for themselves. Children are found to take decision based on the degree to which they can relate with the advertisement rather than the nutrition present in the food item.
For instance, food items like Kellogg’s and m&m attract children with animated advertisement and attractive packaging. Regular consumption of unhealthy food items does impose negative impact on the health of the children (Kelly et al. 2015). Thus this manipulative action needs to be stopped as soon as possible. According to researchers, laws have been taken place in different countries to reduce the new technology effects on children. Through the article, the author has pointed out the need of awareness associated with adverse impact of social media advertising on children.
The article contains good number of proof so that the relevance is a bit of a problem since everything cannot be taken as an example. However, the lack of well sorted evidence and appropriate placement of the same can be considered as a major limitation of the article. From this paragraph it can be concluded that that management of organizations that offers children food items needs be more cautious while marketing their product in the social media platforms.
Another major advantage of using the social media platform by business organization includes enhancement in the revenue of the organization. A being stated earlier, more than 80 percent of the population across the world is present at social media platforms like. Promotion as well as marketing through social media thus makes it possible for majority of the population to reach a huge base of the consumers at a highly short amount of time (Vinerean 2017). Along with that single click links which are posted by the organizations in order to encourage consumers to view their official website can also be considered as added advantage.
Since social media provide the management with the capability of posting high quality pictures as well as videos of their products and services, the target communication are able to go through the same and thus develop an idea about the product or the services. This in turn encourages the consumers to buy the products and thus enhances the revenue of the company. According to the researchers, 27.9 billion revenue have been earned by organizations after posting advertisement on Facebook. Twitter has gone 2.5 billion revenue from advertising. This article contains enough evidence that is needed to support the mentioned advantage. However, the academic side is less in this article and lack of specification is also evident in the same.
As per (Whiting et al. 2015), social media marketing posses a major risk to the protection of the confidentiality of the consumers as well as on their security. Social media posses the potential to impose both good as well as bad impact on an organization. While some of the organization uses social media for promotion, other organization do not do the same. The data which remains in the media profile can impose risk on the consumers since several act of piracy can take place through this process without the awareness of anyone. The purchasing decision can always be affected through social media.
Hence organizations require to perform this process affectively in order to gain maximum result. The risks behind it should be taken in to consideration and right techniques used be used. Major example of organizations that have gained success through social media marketing includes Starbucks and twitter. This article clearly demonstrates the risk associated with social media. However, the article lacks the enough strategies that can be incorporated by the organization to deal with the mentioned risk.
Social media enables the organization to gain more inbound traffic. According to the consumers, without marketing the business trough social media, the inbound traffic of the organization is limited to the usual consumers (Phillips et al. 2015). The individuals familiar with the brand name are the only most likely ones to search for the organizations. Lack of inbound logistics means that the organization will not be able to reach majority of the consumers within a stipulated time.
On the other hand inbound logistics helps the organization to enhance the consumer base and the loyalty of the consumers. One of the major example of organizations whose inbound logistics have enhanced due to social medial marketing is the Body shop. The article has clearly demonstrated the benefit of inbound logistics. However, it would have really great if the article was more efficiently structured.
Social media posses the potential to enhance the search engine ranking of the organization. Using social media for marketing purpose enhances the site traffic. Search engine optimization is a highly crucial method for achieving higher page ranking as well as obtaining traffic to the business website (Pan 2015). While social media platforms doe not directly enhance search engine ranking, according to the researchers, more than 58% of marketers who have been using social media for one year or longer still see improved search engine rankings.
For instance, Zomato, has gained high search engine ranking after marketing its service through social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. One of the major strength of the article is its detailed description, analysis and evaluation o the mentioned advantage of social media platforms. However, the fact that the article as not provide evidence of strategies that can be implemented in order to enhance the ranking in search engine can be considered as a major limitation of the same
From the above discussion it can be concluded that social media do posses both positive as well as negative impact on the business of an organization. While positive impacts includes enhancement in consumer loyalty consumer base and brand equity, improved search engine ranking and inbound traffic, negative impact of social media marketing include risk of the consumer security as well as negative impact on the decision making of the student. However, the fact that the mentioned limitations can be effectively eradicated by incorporating effective strategies cannot be ignored.
Ethical demonstration of the product through advertisement is highly required n order to prevent the inclination of the children to unhealthy food product. In order to deal with the issue of security, the organization should implement several tools that are available in he market to ensure online security.
Reference List
Alharbie, A., 2015. Business growth thru social media marketing. International Journal of Innovation and Applied Studies, 13(4), pp.873.
Kelly, B., Vandevijvere, S., Freeman, B. and Jenkin, G., 2015. New media but same old tricks: food marketing to children in the digital age. Current obesity reports, 4(1), pp.37-45.
Pan, B., 2015. The power of search engine ranking for tourist destinations. Tourism Management, 47, pp.79-87.
Phillips, J.M., Huggins, K.A. and Harding, L.M., 2015. From Old Spice to the Texas Law Hawk: How Inbound Marketing, Content Leadership and Social Media Can Level the Playing Field for Solo Practitioners. J. Bus. Entrepreneurship & L., 9, p.389.
Vinerean, S., 2017. Importance of Strategic Social Media Marketing. Expert Journal of Marketing, 5(1).
Whiting, Anne, Deshpande Annat, Social Media Marketing: A Myth of Necessity, The Journal of Applied Ethics and Economics, 2014, vol 16, Iss 5, pp 74- 81.
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