The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Using Social Networks For Businesses

Project objective

Modern media has greatly influenced almost all walks of our livesfrom businesses to communication to entertainment. Website users now have a hard time to avoid the modern media due to the presence of social medias like YouTube, linked in professionals, Google plus and the likes which help us to communicate over the internet (Buettner, 2016). The communication has lowered the cost of reaching people around the world through creating content and sharing it with the population. The majority of social media platform users are businesses, which have content related to products brands and company information with communities and interested individuals. Right now, the quality of social media as a tool for marketing is what has made many businesses develop marketing and promotional strategies for their products and services. Furthermore, the fact that the platform is self -promotional, the spread of information and content takes place at no cost (Shmueli, et, al 2016). According to recent research, it has identified that 70% of the social media users, are mostly sourcing for shopping site or evaluating the various products being offered by the various business. Thismeans that most consumers prefer to sit in front of a computer and search for the product services that they want through the internet, instead of going to the actual shop or business. This paper will provide a way forward on how the social media has affected businesses both positively and negatively.

Project objective

The project aims to identify the advantages and disadvantages that come along with using social networks in taking the business to the next level.

Scope of the project

The project will focus on the organizations that have incorporated social networks in their daily business operations, to try to identify the various challenges that these businesses are facing. The project will focus on organizations that have reported the impact of social networks. The project is expected to last for a month to deliver reliable data.

Literature review

The social media platform has become a most useful tool in advertising and promoting an organization. The reason behind this is that majority of the world population are o this networks such as Facebook which has millions of users (Denscombe, 2014). Other factors that make the platform convenient in advertising and promoting include:

Huge audience; which ensures that the information shared by a particular organization reaches a huge number of people across the world.

Scope of the project

Creating an account is free; this means that to start operating an account on any social media platform, one requires no cost to obtain such an account. However after one has obtained an account, the user has an option to either promote the business on paid or unpaid option. These options are very much cheaper compared to traditional methods of advertising (Borgatti et al., 2013).

Sharing information: one of the useful function that social media platforms have provided is the option helps to share information through the assistance of the followers who help to share the information across their networks. This helps many people to get the information at no cost(Myers, 2013). The assistance show by followers helps to determine the popularity of thebusiness as well as how the advertised service or product is being welcomed I the market (Buettner, 2016).

Rise in brand loyalty; the social media has enabled businesses to manage to create their brand loyalty as well product loyalty through increasing the overall reach of the brand. Moreover, according to research findings, followers on social media who are loyal to the brand are most likely to stay true to the brand for the longest period. Also, the social media enhances the loyalty, since apart from being a sale pitch, it also provides a two-way conversation which enables an organization to build a solid association with the present as well as potential clients (Ozdemir et al., 2016). This further builds the confidence of customers and contributes to their decision making relating to the brand or product.

Valuable insight; the social media is a very helpful tool that helps businesses gain feedback from consumers, the platform enables one to make useful decisions about the business(Rennie and Morrison, 2013). A careful observation on the conversations on the social media can also help notice conversations that are related to the business, which helps to tailor the business products to suit consumer preferences. Moreover, this creates an edge in business, which helps move ahead past the completion and satisfy the preferences of many people (Juš?ius and Snieška, 2015).

Authentic relationship; with the age of social media, it is now easy to be the next big thing through the internet of things. Most of the business organizations, whether small or big are now spreading their content to their customers through this platform (Zeng and Gerritsen, 2014). This helps them to build a strong relationship with the consumer. With billions of users engaging on social networks, which vary in age and status, the platforms allows the business to deliver and promote selective content to target the market as quickly as possible (Shmueli et al., 2016). The social media platform works as an automated platform in that once some business content is shared on the platform, and the audience considers it as valuable, the audience whoare the clients take it upon themselves to share the information across their networks without the request from the business owner. This ensures the content reaches the circle, which are even beyond those of the business. Through the same platform, businesses can engage their clients through videos, audio, and text where they ask questions as wellas provide recommendations to improve the services and products of business in a way that promotes the trust of employees (Leonardi et al., 2013). However, the wake of social networking has not thrived with a couple of disadvantages that make businesses to taste its bitter fruits these disadvantages are as follows

Literature review

Social networking is time intensive in that, to maintain the two-way communication, there requires an individual controlling the exchange of information. This activity consumes the time that would have otherwise been used to focus on other revenue generating activities (Eriksson and Kovalainen, 2015).

Uncontrolled feedback, which makes businesses to suffer negative popularity, Feedback from some of the business clients can be very hostile and therefore detrimental to the business image. Marketing managers are continuously facing challenges in after angry customers post a defacing comment or videos which the manager cannot do anything about them. Moreover, competitors of the same industry have used the social network to damage the images of each other, and again the marketing manager has little power over them. Although some social networks have developed an option where one can report offensive posts and comments, it is still not adequate to manage by providing a timely response.

Another disadvantage of social networking is that most social network users are viewing the network that intrudes their privacy. These clients take the strategies that business use to market their products by displaying their advertisements on their walls, pages, and even devices, as an intrusion of privacy. Research confirms that in every ten people eight of ten very advertisement on their walls as an intrusion of privacy (Bryman, 2015).

Another disadvantage is that most of the advertisements meant to target local clients mostly end up reaching to customers who are away from the business. This has made the use of social network inefficient since it is failing to satisfy the immediate business market with the necessary information (Trainor et al., 2014).

Social networking has a tendency of attracting present brand customers. This means that the network will manage to get the attention of present base of loyal customers, but fail to get the attention of new kinds of businesses (Autio et al., 2014). The reason behind this is that social networking works on pure advertising, which limits the creation of new businesses.

Primary hypothesis

H1 social networks are advantageous to businesses

H3 social networks are disadvantageous to businesses

Secondary hypothesis

H0 social networks have no effect on business

H1 social networks have no advantages over businesses

H2 social networks are not disadvantageous to businesses

H3 social networks help to reach a wider market for businesses

H4 social networks do not help reach a wider market

H5 social networks are good for creating business popularity

Primary hypothesis

H6 Social network damage the business popularity

H7 social networks have increased business sales

H8 social networks have reduced business sales

Qualitative research

The project employed qualitative research method, which involved evaluating journals, company records, as wellas research studies done earlier based on the topic.

Sample size

The paper aims at engaging all the top 100 organizations on Google search that have fully implemented the social network and solely rely on them in conducting their business. These organizations will have to have operated more than 12month on the social network platform.

Research methodology

The research methodology applied in this project is the phenomenology, which aims to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages experienced by businesses while using the social networks (Buettner, 2016)

Data collection

Data collection will take place through document analysis as well as open-ended questioners

Data analysis

Data analysis will be done to ensure the data collected is valuable and reliable in basing our conclusion.

Interpretation of data

The interpretation will be made through descriptive statistics, which will serve to summarize the data and highlight the patterns.

Quantitative research method

The research project employed a quantitative method to collect data. Which involved collection of primary data through questioners

Sample Description

The project will engage the top managers of those organizations that are relying on social networks for business. The project will target the top 100 businesses on Google search that use social networks.

Determination of variables

The research study will contain two variables, which are dependent, and independent variables. The dependent variables will be the business performance, while independent variable is the social network. Also, there will be a control experiment which will involve organizations that have not yet adopted the social network (Rothaermel, 2015).

Data collection

Data will be collected through questioners and interviews on the top-level management in the targeted organizations

Data analysis

The collected data will be analyzed to ensure it is authentic ad reliable to be used in drawing up a conclusion.

Interpretation of data

The analyzed data will be interpreted in the form of graphs and pie charts to show the trends in these businesses.

Research limitations

Researches are always conducted under constraints that are inevitable; these limitations include the following.

Limited time that is given to complete the study, which means the study may have to omit some of the planned target organization if the findings are to be delivered on time.

Secondary hypothesis

Also, the cost is another limitation that faces this research in that funds will be required to fund the research project. Lack of funds means that the project will not be able conclusive and if it manages to deliver the results, they will not be conclusive (Zikmund, et al.,2013).

When the qualitative research method is used in the project, there is a limitation in that the findings cannot be generalized to the broader population.

The research will depend on the individual’s skills in research as well as what the research is baseless.

Lack of enough research data is also a limitation that can hinder the research project.

In using quantitative research method, there is a possibility of limited outcomes due to the use of open-ended questioners

Qualitative research takes time, and it is difficult to analyze the data collected through this method. Also, this method requires extra resources to analyze the results (Eriksson, et al., 2015)

Schedule (research plan)

Week	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11
Submission of proposal
Data collection methods
Literature review
Case study analysis
Data analysis and interpretation
Review of the project
Finalizing the project
Submission of project

Conclusion

Social networking is already taking place and cannot be stopped, as this is a change towards better and efficient business. However, like any other change, social networking has come with its challenges. The disadvantages that social networks are bringing to the businesses should be viewed as small bumps since; the advantages of social networking outweigh its disadvantages. For instance, social networking has managed to cut the cost of marketing by almost 80% compared to traditional forms of marketing and has reached many audiences than ever before. Having a negative comment from on client cannot be viewed as the end of social networking, but as a challenge for improving the services so that it does not happen again.

References

Autio, E., Kenney, M., Mustar, P., Siegel, D. and Wright, M., 2014. Entrepreneurial innovation: The importance of context. Research Policy, 43(7), pp.1097-1108.

Bryman, A. and Bell, E., 2015. Business research methods. Oxford University Press, USA.

Batjargal, B., Hitt, M.A., Tsui, A.S., Arregle, J.L., Webb, J.W. and Miller, T.L., 2013. Institutional polycentrism, entrepreneurs’ social networks, and new venture growth. Academy of Management Journal, 56(4), pp.1024-1049.

Bryman, A., 2015. Social research methods. Oxford university press.

Buettner, R., 2016, January. Getting a job via career-oriented social networking sites: The weakness of ties. In System Sciences (HICSS), 2016 49th Hawaii International Conference on (pp. 2156-2165). IEEE.

Borgatti, S.P., Everett, M.G. and Johnson, J.C., 2013. Analyzing social networks. SAGE Publications Limited.

Chu, S.K.W. and Du, H.S., 2013. Social networking tools for academic libraries. Journal of librarianship and information science, 45(1), pp.64-75.

Denscombe, M., 2014. The good research guide: for small-scale social research projects. McGraw-Hill Education (UK).

Eriksson, P. and Kovalainen, A., 2015. Qualitative Methods in Business Research: A Practical Guide to Social Research. Sage.

Hair, J.F., 2015. Essentials of business research methods. ME Sharpe.

Hinz, O., Schulze, C. and Takac, C., 2014. New product adoption in social networks: Why direction matters. Journal of Business Research, 67(1), pp.2836-2844.

Juš?ius, V. and Snieška, V., 2015. Influence of corporate social responsibility on competitive abilities of corporations. Engineering Economics, 58(3).

Leonardi, P.M., Huysman, M. and Steinfield, C., 2013. Enterprise social media: Definition, history, and prospects for the study of social technologies in organizations. Journal of Computer?Mediated Communication, 19(1), pp.1-19.

Myers, M.D., 2013. Qualitative research in business and management. Sage.

Nielsen, R.K. and Schrøder, K.C., 2014. The relative importance of social media for accessing, finding, and engaging with news: an eight-country cross-media comparison. Digital journalism, 2(4), pp.472-489.

Okazaki, S. and Taylor, C.R., 2013. Social media and international advertising: theoretical challenges and future directions. International marketing review, 30(1), pp.56-71.

Ozdemir, S.Z., Moran, P., Zhong, X. and Bliemel, M.J., 2016. Reaching and acquiring valuable resources: the entrepreneur’s use of brokerage, cohesion, and embeddedness. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 40(1), pp.49-79.

Prpi?, J., Shukla, P.P., Kietzmann, J.H. and McCarthy, I.P., 2015. How to work a crowd: Developing crowd capital through crowdsourcing. Business Horizons, 58(1), pp.77-85.

Rennie, F. and Morrison, T., 2013. E-learning and social networking handbook: Resources for higher education. Routledge.

Rothaermel, F.T., 2015. Strategic management. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Shmueli, G., Patel, N.R. and Bruce, P.C., 2016. Data Mining for Business Analytics: Concepts, Techniques, and Applications with XLMiner. John Wiley & Sons.

Trainor, K.J., Andzulis, J.M., Rapp, A. and Agnihotri, R., 2014. Social media technology usage and customer relationship performance: A capabilities-based examination of social CRM. Journal of Business Research, 67(6), pp.1201-1208.

Turban, E., King, D., Lee, J.K., Liang, T.P. and Turban, D.C., 2015. Electronic commerce: A managerial and social networks perspective. Springer.

Zeng, B. and Gerritsen, R., 2014. What do we know about social media in tourism? A review. Tourism Management Perspectives, 10, pp.27-36.

Zikmund, W.G., Babin, B.J., Carr, J.C. and Griffin, M., 2013. Business research methods. Cengage Learning.