Discuss about the Impact of Social Media on Contemporary Business for Service Business.
There are many definitions of social media in existence from the day the first social media platform was invented. Here we define social media as collections of multiple online designs platforms used for communicating with people in all parts of the global without having to meet(Obar and Wildman 2015). The social media platforms allow sending and receiving of information instantly with immediate feedback if the parties involved are online at the same time. Some of the known examples of social media include, pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, email, WhatsApp, Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn among others. The modern business environment operates on an in a very competitive environment which calls for grabbing any available opportunity that increases its customer base. Most of the businesses today have turned to social media marketing to connect to the current customers as they lure new ones to buy their products, promote their brands, and foster new business and by using these platform, they gather information for decision making(Edosomwan et al. 2011). The first social media platform was invented and came into existence in 1997. This social network was known as ‘Six Degree’ and was allowing people to create a profile, invite friends who are on the same site as well as send a friend request to those who were not having social sites account profile of the same(Edosomwan et al. 2011). It was until the 2000s that other social media platforms started to emerge such as MySpace and the most prominent of all social media platform today Facebook, among others. This essay focuses on the impact social media has brought in the modern business on the way they operate. It shall mainly focus on the service business i.e. those that deal with intangible products, offer professional skills like counseling, transports, security etc.
The most valuable business asset is the act of communicating effectively with both the employees and its customers. It is useful in persuasion, informing, and education to customers on about the service or products being provided. Interpersonal communication is important for managers and business owners and they should earn this skill in order to communicate effectively with the employees and other interested parties. Modern communication has really changed the way business operates(Pentina, Zhang, and Basmanova2013). The way to communicate to customers has also changed over the last one and half a decade ago. Any business that wants to do well in the modern competitive environment than its competitor must embrace good things brought by social media or risk becoming dominant to their competitors. Social media has brought existing, new and potential customers near to the business and it is upon them to grab their chances. The existing literature review will help us to understand how social media has changed business operation.
A 2010 U.S. study stated that social media consumes 12% of the total time spent on the internet. The study stated that Global online time spending between people with ages 15 and above on social media accounts for 15.6% with 4.5 hours on average per individual internet users. This to business would mean a better chance to capture their new and potential clients. The business that targets young people have a better chance to utilize social networking sites with the full faith of increasing their customers. Pew Research Centre reported on 2018 February that three-quarters of American adults use social media for connecting with each other, entertain themselves, share information and engage with news contents. Pew also indicated that in early 2005 only 5% of American adults used at least one of the social media platforms.They state that in 2011 the figure doubled to half.There are over 69% of American adults using one of the social media platforms today.A survey done by GlobalWebIndex stated that 28% of time spent online is consumed by social networks with an average user logging 1.7 times daily accounting for not less than 12 hours weekly and 1.66 times as per 2013.
Any business should be conscious that social media is crowded with potential customers, the legal practitioner (government), employees and competitors too. The action of a business on social media, therefore, will determine its success and loyalty to the above parties(Vinerean et al. 2013). There are only two options i.e. losing or winning on social media.
A 2016 research done by CMI and Marketing Profs, reported that B2B marketers distribute content on more than six social media platforms on average. This is a lot of effort to market your business which has not been easy for any business. This, of course, requires people who are not easy to lose the track no matter the slowness before picking, since tracking your customers on social media is tiresome(Safko2010). Proper preparation must be done in order to avoid plenty of perils which can befall a foolhardy brand that enters market unprepared and unaware.
For business to thrive in social media environment, several factors must be considered which are but not limited to scrutinizing your engagements with social media, the information posted and when is it posted, the benefit of information posted to the business entity, the competitors existence, and involvement in the social media, the budget allocation for social media existence among other important factors(Qualman 2010).Employees’ existence on social media may mean well for business and also endanger the business as well. Proper scrutiny of business-related postings should be warned against unless otherwise directed by the management.
Some of the other dangers related to business use of social media platforms include negative customer review. This happens where a message intended to be positive turns poisonous to the business what we may refer to use bouncing back and is dangers as it damages the reputation of a business(Kaplan and Haenlein 2010).When ‘negative’ information has been seen and viewed by customers, business reputation continues to get damaged people continue commenting, sharing and disliking the information. It is, therefore, not easy for the business to control the views of customers on certain information spread on social media.
Some customers result to use a social media platform to express their dissatisfaction with a company’s treatments, services or products instead of directly consulting the business. This too is dangers trends brought about by the existence of social media on the contemporary business environment(Laroche et al. 2012). You need to carry out frequent scrutiny to your social media activities to avoid being caught up by the time.
Business competitors also exist on social media and this means that they copy what your business is doing on social media, and may use this as a weapon to strengthen the competitive muscle. You need to ensure that what you post on social media is not related to things that put your business at a competitive disadvantage(George, Rovniak and Kraschnewski 2013). You should also be able to keep checking what your competitor is doing in order to counter their actions so as not to be left out.
Business has no control over what people share on social media platforms. When Alicia Keys, the BlackBerry creative director tweeted on social media asking the BlackBerry customers to keep the conversation going it was discovered that she had used an Apple iPhone which is not a brand from the blackberry. This damaged the reputation of the company by uncontrollable re-tweets from people wondering whether the blackberry workers were loyal to their brands themselves(Erdo?mu? and Cicek 2012). Later from the very company central page again after some time, there was another tweet with a different brand phone asking customers to buy blackberry phones. A number of other tweets followed as if BlackBerry was not aware(Culnan, McHugh and Zubillaga 2010). Keeping an eye on what is happening with competitors is important so as to know what people are saying about your business. Having forums, meetings and discussion will create a good platform for exchanging views and information about the business progress.
Social media has enhanced good customer relationship as a result of the interaction. Connecting directly to your customer has been simplified by the emergence of social media platforms. A company can create a website or profile, invite people to like it and start the conversation with customers directly. These interactions are important as businesses are able to understand customer needs and how the will go about meeting them as well as know their areas of improvements. Customers can also share information with others especially if they feel their friends need them(Aral, Dellarocas and Godes 2013). This will multiply the number of clicks and views of information with a potential of increasing more contact with the customers.
Social media offers friendly advertisement budget compared to other media outlets and channels. Putting a small amount of budget on social media advertisement can improve your business network and until the target audiences are reached is when your budget gets depleted(Hutter et al. 2013). This means framing information for a target group can be easy as at times there are options to select age limits.
The global audiences are reachable through utilization of social media. A good example is Alibaba which sells products to millions of people across the globe through the use of social media networks. The official business profile is the best to use when you intend to grow your business first instead of using personal names and profile.Curated content and unique products attract millions across social network world. An estimated 665 million people are using Facebook across the globe and close to 500 million are on Twitter today(Bruhn, Schoenmueller and Schäfer 2012). If only one-third of this come across your business products you are likely to grow very fast.
Social media has therefore brought a lot of changes in the contemporary business environment impacting greatly on the way business operates. For instance, businesses can clearly target the right customers, advertisers can create and develop marketing and advertising messages to a particular known group, and competition has been heightened(Cook 2017). Business can now keep their customers thinking about their business most of the times, answer questions directly from their customers as well as take responsibility for their own actions. Allocation of resources has been made easy and this has reduced wastage of the time and energy.
Conclusion
Social media has brought both positive and negative impact on how business operates today. There is a negativity associated with the use of social media and at the same time positivity has also been witnessed. Social media is here to stay, and no business is likely not to use it in one way or another. There are over 66 million people using Facebook today across the globe with other 500 million known to be on twitter. This is a good number for business to target in order to increase customer base as well as increase profitability. Facebook is the leading giant social media which offers a big potential for businesses to lure more customers to buy their products. It has the highest market share across the globe and the consequences of utilizing it are as big as itself. Employers should be very keen in informing their workers to maintain a good reputation on social media and more so control what the post on Facebook. This does not mean you restrict them to their posting but advise them to avoid negativity.
References
Aral, S., Dellarocas, C. and Godes, D., 2013. Introduction to the special issue—social media and business transformation: a framework for research. Information Systems Research, 24(1), pp.3-13.
Bruhn, M., Schoenmueller, V. and Schäfer, D.B., 2012. Are social media replacing traditional media in terms of brand equity creation?.Management Research Review, 35(9), pp.770-790.
Cook, N., 2017. Enterprise 2.0: How social software will change the future of work. Routledge.
Culnan, M.J., McHugh, P.J., and Zubillaga, J.I., 2010. How large US companies can use Twitter and other social media to gain business value. MIS Quarterly Executive, 9(4).
Edosomwan, S., Prakasan, S.K., Kouame, D., Watson, J. and Seymour, T., 2011.The history of social media and its impact on business.Journal of Applied Management and Entrepreneurship, 16(3), p.79.
Erdo?mu?, ?.E., and Cicek, M., 2012.The impact of social media marketing on brand loyalty.Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 58, pp.1353-1360.
George, D.R., Rovniak, L.S. and Kraschnewski, J.L., 2013. Dangers and opportunities for social media in medicine.Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology, 56(3).
Hutter, K., Hautz, J., Dennhardt, S. and Füller, J., 2013. The impact of user interactions in social media on brand awareness and purchase intention: the case of MINI on Facebook. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 22(5/6), pp.342-351.
Kaplan, A.M. and Haenlein, M., 2010. Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media.Business Horizons, 53(1), pp.59-68.
Laroche, M., Habibi, M.R., Richard, M.O. and Sankaranarayanan, R., 2012. The effects of social media based brand communities on brand community markers, value creation practices, brand trust and brand loyalty. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(5), pp.1755-1767.
Obar, J.A. and Wildman, S.S., 2015. Social media definition and the governance challenge: An introduction to the special issue.
Pentina, I., Zhang, L. and Basmanova, O., 2013. Antecedents and consequences of trust in a social media brand: A cross-cultural study of Twitter. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(4), pp.1546-1555.
Qualman, E., 2010. Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business. John Wiley & Sons.
Safko, L., 2010. The social media bible: tactics, tools, and strategies for business success. John Wiley & Sons.
Vinerean, S., Cetina, I., Dumitrescu, L. and Tichindelean, M., 2013.The effects of social media marketing on online consumer behavior. International Journal of Business and Management, 8(14), p.66
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