What is Social Media?
Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein describe social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content”.
Social Media contains two words. The first one is “Social” which means interaction, sharing and so on. Another word is “Media” where to say that social media is a medium for publication.
Social media contains a lot of tools and applications which let the users express their opinion, publish articles, sharing videos and so on easily.
Social Media Influence:
According to Sir Andrew Likierman, London Business School Dean, “social media has completely disrupted the way businesses assess their performance”. This statement is completely true because social media is no longer an option but is a must, especially companies that dealing straightly with customers. Some business can completely avoid thinking about social media like wholesalers because they are just dealing with another business. Since social media became more powerful, organization are facing difficulties to measure their performance. They must have specific strategy for social media or even companies could have one special unit that handle feedbacks and responses from user. Any negative feedbacks should grab attention and they have to discuss on how to react with any negative comments. Any negative response from customers will be there on net forever. No way to remove that and because of that, companies that avoid think about social media will lose some customers.
Customers are now become more particular about with whom and from where they are buying products or services. They willing to make online search before making any purchase decision especially for expensive items. Since internet is now more conveniently searchable through smart phones, customer can make search in just a minute. That’s why companies must have social media presence and put some attention to manage customer response and try to convince them that the business is reputable and trusted.
Social media providing big opportunity to organization to build better relationship with clients and providing real one to one communication. They have no better advertising then “word of mouth”. Satisfied customers surely will share to their friends in their social network about their experiences with the particular company. If one person shares their experience to his 400 Facebook friends, and that friends spread that news to their friends, the information moves extremely fast. If a video uploaded in YouTube with attracting title like “Think Twice before you eat XXX”, this video surely will grab thousands or even millions of social medial users. With “Share” function available almost in any site, in just a second we can share anything to social media community.
One of the main reasons that we must use social media is because our competition is using that daily as marketing strategy. Another big reason why a business should use social media because their customers and future customers are using it. A lot of people have at least one social media account like Facebook, YouTube and so on. A business should present their brand where customers are. Traditionally we can see people open shops at crowd places like in shopping mall and so on. The same case here where a business should present in crowd place like social media. Millions of people using that every day.
Some Fail Stories of Businesses When Using Social Media:
In 2012, giant car manufacturer Toyota launched Camry Effect Campaign on Twitter to promote Camry. They had created number of Twitter account. This campaign was designed for directly communicating with users but what happen is, big number of users start to accuse Toyota for their bombarding and spamming marketing then with many unsolicited messages. As response Toyota suspended their accounts. Until now this campaign is well known as fails campaign. The main problem with this campaign is, not because Toyota Spamming but the content of the messages that they send out were not attracting. They also were sending same messages content over and over. They were only sending promotional messages which did not help to build relationship with users.
Advantage of Social Media for Business:
The advertising cost is much more cheaper then traditional advertising and promotional activities. Social media also gives full value for every penny they spend. Traditional advertising only shows the brand to the customer but with social media company can build long term relationship through “Like” function and can get their email address for sending future emails.
Future customer able to find our brand through many channels like sharing activities, news, search engine search result and so on which gives company free advertising. Social media can bring huge amount of traffic to their content especially when that content is grabbing their attention. This is what we can call free traffic or free customers.
Social media allows customers to express their experiences to others. A satisfied customer surely will bring another new customer through sharing experience activity. Companies will improve their products and services to customers.
Disadvantage of Social Media for Business:
A successful online presence especially in social media, a company needs an experienced team which can improve companies’ reputation. Social media becomes unique and able to drive a lot of sales when they engage with their customers. This mean they have to reply messages, comments and so on. Pushing sales without engaging with customers or not responding to negative feedback will damage the companies’ reputation. Organization also must produce new contents and always find out ways to overcome to any negative feedback.
Wrong online presence strategy will damage the companies’ reputation and put them at a viral social disadvantages. Any mistake they companies make in front of thousand of fans or social media members will result in big reputation impact. So, companies must be careful when performing social media campaign.
Using social media marketing and advertising campaign could be more time consuming because companies would have to watch out every activity in the social media.
Conclusion:
Social media gives deep impact to the business world. Today from small companies to big giant companies. Social media landscape is big and the system and technology are continuously growing and changing everyday. Companies who are using and present in social media are enjoying big benefits. Social media is no longer an option but is a must especially companies that dealing straightly with customers. Social media promises a lot of opportunities and challenges, so organization must prepare themselves for facing it.
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