Strategic Communication and Social Media in Business †Free Samples

Question: Discuss about the Strategic Communication and Social Media. Answer: Introduction Social media is an online communication group where users are allowed to share and receive to a wide audience while focusing more on the content of information as well as participating in sharing ideas and giving feedbacks. Social media improves customer communication and helps a company save on cost.Whereas business communication is a way of passing information about products or services to customers, this is effectively achieved through social media. The use of social mediahas helped improve many business functions making them effective and grow fast for the past years and changed the way potential customers interact with products of their interest. The coverage of customers has also been improved as there are increased interconnection channels between customers and companies and this has helped to ensure efficient and effective communication. Most companies that have adopted social media, it has helped them to completely change their way of operation. The paper therefore discusses the impact of social media on contemporary business communication under a case study of mobile phones business.(Meredith, 2012) The impact of social media on contemporary business communication Social media basically plays a great role in helping a company gets many sales, building a conversation with customers and make companys brand well known to customers. Most mobile phone business companies are using social media to interact and connect with their customers. The companies use social media platform to connect with customers by sharing latest information about the products, sharing images of the new products or of any changes made currently on the product. In the long run this ensures information about new product or about changes made on the existing product reaches the customers on time thus creating a longlasting relationship with the customers. (Basri, 2016) The companies also use social media platforms like Facebook, twitter and Instagram in advertising the mobile phones. This will help the company cover a wide audience since the world has got many users of the social media platforms and once they visit their media pages, they will tend to come across the advertisem ent and all the information about the new products. This will eventually enable the company make a lot of sales because the advertisement captures many customers worldwide.(Jussila, Krkkinen and Leino, 2013) Social media ensures a company receives customer feedback in a fast manner. For instance, if the mobile phone sold to the customer had a problem with its features, the customer can raise a complaint through the social media platform and attended to as quick as possible hence building a good reputation for the company and attract more customers in the long run. The company also uses social media in carrying out market research in order to find out current and more information about their competitors and look for ways of outsmart them. (Capriotti, 2009) They also use the platform to research on demographic data so that they can have a hint of the population they are supposed to serve; this information helps the company plan on the quantity of products to produce so that they satisfy their customers demand. Frequent communication made to customers through social media also helps the company get an opportunity to raise the brand awareness, the brand loyalty and the recognition of the pro duct brand to all individuals. (Grayson, 2014) Social media has however presented a great impact on how business operates today since companies always have a lot to gain from using social media and little to lose. According to the case study of mobile phones business,most operations in the companies have changed to be more efficient and effective through the use of social media. Use of this platform has enabled quick approach to customers all over the world, quick access to products and wide spread of information. Marketing of products has also been made easy through the use of social media because customers are fetched easily online which gives a great chance to get more customers within a short period as compared to looking for customers physically. This in return helps the company increase on sales.Social media is a good tool that ensures efficient and proper customer service as argued by experts .This is because the platform offers an opportunity that makes it easy for customers to have a close relationship with the company.T hrough this platform, the company is able to receive information from customers about what they prefer and their needs.Experts also suggest that social media provides a friendly environment for customers to raise their problems which are fixed faster than the regular way the company might have done.Customer engagement with the company is also achieved through the use of social media especially in the marketing field. The rapid growing use of internet by most people helps to create a long lasting relationship in business operation activities. (He, Wang, Chen, Zha, 2015) Despite social media expressing various benefits to companies, there are various risks and challenges involved in using the platform. Organizations mostly are structured in a hierarchical manner. The use of social media crushes this because most of the customers are attended to directly without following the long traditional procedure of the hierarchy.Adopting the social media platform in business operations hinder the implementation of the company policy rules and regulations to customers. This in turn results to a major challenge of risky business since most customers are not aware of the company policy and rules therefore end up engaging in business without conforming to any rules. Another challenge companies face from adopting the use of social media is decrease in production due to destructions by many social networking activities. In the past production was consistent due to the involvement of man power but today most production activities depend on technology which when distra cted lowers production. Some competitors use social media platform to post inappropriate material and hateful messages against their competitors. This in the end ruins the reputation of such companies because most customers will have the access to the information. Organizations that depends so much on social media platform where they save some of their sensitive data, might end up losing all this if such systems fail or get corrupted by third party. Such scenario results to a major challenge that such company will face. Use of social media also denies physical interactions with customers during marketing process. Lack of direct interaction with customers may not provide enough information about what the customer needs. However the use of social media has various benefits to the companies that have embraced the platform. First social media has enabled most companies create efficiency in operations within the organization. It has also helped in speeding up innovation as well as creating new services which was never in existence and improve services and ensure fast production. To add to that the platform has also ensured better delivery of product and services.In addition, social media has also helped enhance the advertising and marketing activities.The platform provides detailed information about products being introduced in the market, ensure it reaches many customers and also ensure better understanding of the products according to customer preferences. The use of social media helps create a point of contact between customers and the product. By doing these customers expect fast response about the product and incase of any problem they expect to be attended to immediately. Social media ensures fast feedback from consumers and act upon that feedback as fast as possible. New opportunities are also created through the use of social media that individuals might have missed out if they do not use social media platforms. Customers are kept happy by addressing any negative comments or experience they face giving the company an opportunity to outsmart their competitors. (He, Wang, Chen, Zha, 2015) Social media also creates a chance for the company to learn about its target audience and consumers,whereby it gives insights about what your audience need.Getting to know what your customers need helps an organization discover various creative waysof how to reach their audience which can be through advertising hence leading to increased conversions. If social media is done correctly, it will also help the company increase its sales. Customers that are interested in the advertised product on a social media platform will eventually respond to the sales messages and to add to that, having a social media presence gives an opportunity to know about the product in the long run gives the company a chance to gain more sales and build their brand name. (Thallmaier, n.d.) Conclusion Social media has a great impact in branding many companies.Having social media strategy makes it easy to achieve great awareness about product, company image and increased customer loyalty.It also ensuresefficiency in all business operations.However, companies should also be aware of the negative influence that social media might bring to the company. According to previous studies, social media is seen to be the most used platform for promotion that involves collecting of information from customers and attracting users to any unique product .Furthermore, social media being a new phenomenal should be subjected to change in order for it to be valuable bad explore its development in core business. References Basri, W. (2016). Social Media Impact on Small and Medium Enterprise: Case Review of Businesses in the Arab World. Arts And Social Sciences Journal, 07(06). https://dx.doi.org/10.4172/2151-6200.1000236 Capriotti, P. (2009). Economic and Social Roles of Companies in the Mass Media. Business Society, 48(2), 225-242. https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0007650307305724 Grayson, D. (2014). Social intrapreneurism and all that jazz. Sheffield: Greenleaf Publishing. He, W., Wang, F., Chen, Y., Zha, S. (2015). An exploratory investigation of social media adoption by small businesses. Information Technology And Management. https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10799-015-0243-3 Jussila, J., Krkkinen, H. and Leino, M. (2013). Innovation-related benefits of social media in Business-to-Business customer relationships.International Journal of Advanced Media and Communication, 5(1), p.4. Meredith, M. (2012). Strategic Communication and Social Media: An MBA Course From a Business Communication Perspective.Business Communication Quarterly, 75(1), pp.89- 95. Thallmaier, S. Customer Co-Design.