The Impact Of Social Media On Businesses: Benefits, Legal Matters, And Challenges

Benefits of Social Media for Businesses

Discuss about the Social Media on Contemporary Business Communication for Socialist.

First and foremost, it is important to know what the term social media means. Generally, social media can be described as the online application that allows their users to interrelate with one another. It includes making and sharing of contents such as messages, pictures or images, and videos too. It also involves networking and bookmarking with one another. In comparison to conventional media that only deliver content; social media encourage active users or consumers participation (Pan, 2017, p. 176). There are various types of social media today ranging from networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook, content-sharing websites such as Youtube and Flickr, private enterprise social network such as Yammer and Socialist, to Wikis such as Wikipedia, blogs such as WordPress and blogger and micro-blogs such as Twitter.

The use of social media by companies especially in communication, marketing, and recruitment sector is on the rise. As these continue, the legal framework applying to social media for the business function is often complicated and unclear. It has several effects; both negative and positive to the businesses. As stated earlier in the above paragraph, the study will also focus and insight into how it has created an impact on businesses and the legal matters related to the use of social media. This shall be done in consideration to the various laws and regulations that are applied to market practices, privacy, intellectual property, data protection and employment law in various nations across the world.

Social media has played an important role in the growth in companies’ business communication. Several affordable benefits create improved sales of products and services as well as customer loyalty through diverse platforms and face to face interaction or orally. Here are the few roles and benefits;

In data generation, social media creates a large volume of data about company’s customers in the actual period. Daily, millions of people who Tweet, like Facebook posts, Instagram photos and other platforms where these can be transformed and used to gather information about the customers. The company can use this information to understand what they like, how they feel about the product or the brand, and most importantly, who the customers and what the love. Frequent engagement and social listening can help the company collect important information about the customer and apply this information to make perfect changes or smarter business decisions. With the application of HootSuite, for instance, an organization can collect information across all its social networks in actual time, enabling the company to weigh the sentiment of a customer and find the conversations taking place around the company’s brand, and operate or manage real-time reports (Vernuccio, 2014, p. 225).

The Role of Social Media in Data Generation

The presence of social media makes it easier for the customer to connect with the business. Through a connection with customers on social media, the company is probably retaining the customers and increasing brand loyalty. In normal cases, customers always look for new products from their favorites companies through social media. However, increasing the brand awareness and loyalty is not an easy task for the companies. The company needs to find the audience in the first place. This is done through searching for a related conversation about the company’s service or product. Secondly, after identifying the audience, the company must now grab their attention by using catchy visuals with company’s content Gazal, Montague, Poudel & Wiedenbeck, 2016, p. 348). In most cases, videos and images have proved to be effective in the social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. After creating all these, how does the company start engaging the customers? Since social media is all about interaction through communication, the company must initiate a conversation where it will showcase the personality by even tagging and mentioning names. Having done all these, the company can build the authority to get higher engagement rate together with better brand awareness by sharing the real value. However, when making the posts on social media, the company should come up with original and unique content to increase and add credibility to the business.

As compared to physical ads that are done through actual banners, social media ads are cheaper to run and distribute as well. They provide powerful targeting alternatives so that the business can get t the right and expected audience. For instance, if the business runs an ad promotion on LinkedIn, the company can divide it by locality, employment title, sexual category, and age among other important things. Similarly, when a company is running an ad on Facebook, the company can get target based area, demographics, characters, interests, and connections.

In the recent times, most businesses have reported a higher amount of sales compared to the time when social media was not effective. In this case, it clear that social media has increased sales and retention using a continuous interaction and prompt service. For example, in 2015, MHI Global rated social media as the most effective means to recognize and identify major decision makers and new business opportunities (Wikman & Cottrell, 2013, p. 35).

Currently, nearly every with a Smartphone is on social media; therefore, even the company is not social media, their customers to be there at all cost. In most cases, customers always express or air their grievances through social media and expect a prompt response as soon as possible. This is a challenge to any organization, and almost every company with a huge customer base is now on social media to provide customer care services or support.

Social Media for Customer Connection and Engagement

For businesses that depend on the websites, this is the biggest advantage that social media has come with to increase the traffic. Social media can be used to direct clients to the business, when the link is shared with many people users, the more it will get traffic and thus increase the ranking. For instance, if everyone who follows the company Tweets or Retweets the content, the more likely to rank higher in Google’s search engine.

On the other hand, the company can use social media as spying tool for knowing what other players are doing. This is key to the business as it can be used to strengthen areas where there are weaknesses and make critical adjustments were necessary to stay on top (Zorn, Grant & Henderson, 2013, p. 672). Besides, social media helps the company share content the fastest way possible. Sometimes back, it was difficult to reach all customers; however, the rise of social media has changed that, sharing of content has been easier than before. Reaching specific target has become easier since some social media platform has tools that identify the location of the target, thus the company precisely reach out to the right audiences. Lastly, as much as business is a competition, relationships also matters a lot to the companies. Social media has helped companies build relationships as well as with customers.

Clothing business has become the most common business that uses social media to operate. One of the stores that run social media or online stores is Glamorous U.K; a company posts its clothes on its website and different social media platforms. From the post, the customer places his/her order and makes deposits and clears the rest after delivery. The business operates effectively through Facebook than any other social media. The company has social media marketers and administrators who manage different social media platforms where new products are posted daily with their prices.

Effective application of social media can bring opportunities for the business; however, that will need thoughts and good planning. Coping up with fast-speed improvement in online technology can assist to improve the brand, company profile and of course get the new business idea (Walden, 2016, p. 350). Social media has become the cheapest means of running marketing campaigns with huge effect possible from little investment. The company needs to have a social media strategy that has got a smart mix of appealing content and a sociable and receptive persona can develop a focused society which is attracted to the service and products (Panwar, Nybakk, Hansen & Pinkse, 2017, p. 602). As seen from the case study, it is clear that business can be managed through social media if good policies are in place. Similarly, it is a platform where the customer meets the product and with just a click, the customer gets the item. Based on the case study findings, social media offers opportunities for small-scale businesses.

Cost-effectiveness and Increased Sales

Besides, social media should be integrated into the business’s public relations strategy. This implies getting the people to talk and think about the company’s business in a positive manner. Social like it has been discussed before, offers a platform for the conversation between the business and the customers. The challenge is how the company manages that podium and engages the customers are an essential section of the public relation strategy (Matikiti, Kruger & Saayman, 2016). On the other hand, it is important to know that social media is not a closed forum, it is an open forum and therefore, it has numerous challenges to the modern business. It requires appropriate planning. Social media can reduce the benefits for the business if in any case, the business does not have a clear social media marketing strategy. As much as it creates opportunities for social media managers, it comes with disadvantages such as bullying, harassment, and potential hacking. It exposes the company to risks and thus requires 24-hour monitoring which might also be a challenge. Daily updates are important and if not done frequently, social media lose its importance to the organization.

In terms of communication, some company may decide to use social media to pass their memos to the workers, in my view, this is risky since the information may get to the third party and let confidential information be leaked out.

Conclusion

Social media enables rapid, targeted and all-encompassing communication and information-sharing both within the organization (inner social media) and outside the company (external social media). If proper controls are not put in place to regulate the use of social media, company’s image may be seriously broken due to the durability of the content available online as well as the size of the audience. In some cases, the company may be held criminally liable. Another challenge is that some staffs may breach the policy in disgrace; therefore, the company’s policy ought to draw lines between what is the acceptable and unacceptable use of the internet, how it is being supervised, how punitive rules and sanctions will be put into practice on the culprit (Research and M. n.d). Social media is not going down any time soon, the companies must learn, identify and control risks for them to remain relevant productive. 

List of References

Pan, J. (2017). How Market Dynamics of Domestic and Foreign Social Media Firms Shape Strategies of Internet Censorship. Problems Of Post-Communism, 64(3/4), 167-188. doi:10.1080/10758216.2016.1181525

Vernuccio, M. (2014). Communicating Corporate Brands Through Social Media: An Exploratory Study. International Journal Of Business Communication, 51(3), 211-233. doi:10.1177/2329488414525400

Gazal, K., Montague, I., Poudel, R., & Wiedenbeck, J. (2016). Forest Products Industry in a Digital Age: Factors Affecting Social Media Adoption. Forest Products Journal, 66(5/6), 343-353. doi:10.13073/FPJ-D-15-00007

Wikman, B., & Cottrell, C. (2013). Social Media Marketing: 5 Ways To Success. Archery Business, 38(4), 32-36.

Zorn, T., Grant, S., & Henderson, A. (2013). Strengthening Resource Mobilization Chains: Developing the Social Media Competencies of Community and Voluntary Organizations in New Zealand. Voluntas: International Journal Of Voluntary & Nonprofit Organizations, 24(3), 666-687. doi:10.1007/s11266-012-9265-1

Panwar, R. r., Nybakk, E. e., Hansen, E. e., & Pinkse, J. j. (2017). Does the Business Case Matter? The Effect of a Perceived Business Case on Small Firms’ Social Engagement. Journal Of Business Ethics, 144(3), 597-608.

Matikiti, R., Kruger, M., & Saayman, M. (2016). The usage of social media as a marketing tool in two Southern African countries. Development Southern Africa, 33(5), 740-755. doi:10.1080/0376835X.2016.1204228

Walden, J. A. (2016). Integrating Social Media Into the Workplace: A Study of Shifting Technology Use Repertoires. Journal Of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 60(2), 347-363. doi:10.1080/08838151.2016.1164163

Research and, M. (6). Research and Markets: The Social Media Handbook: Rules, Policies, and Best Practices to Successfully Manage Your Organization’s Social Media Presence, Posts, and Potential. Business Wire (English).