Impact of Social Media on Business
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Introduction
The usage of social media for business and personal reasons is increasing each day, with the innovation of new interaction platforms, business and individuals have taken advantage of this to market their products so as to reach a wider market. In the business world, social media usage has gained so much popularity with businesses ranging from startups, small and medium enterprises to large corporations leading in the usage of social media (Smits, & Mogos, 2013). However, despite the use of social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and blogs, little business has not realized the full benefit of using social media for their brands. The purpose of this report is to explain how the use of social media can help businesses improve their performance and help them in protecting their reputation.
Social Media Benefits to Company Performance
Social media can help businesses improve their performance in various ways. The most way in which social media is helping businesses to improve their performance is by improving the engagement between the customer and the company. Strong communication between the company and its customers is key. In today’s world, customers expect businesses to have a social media platform to enhance their engagement. Through the use of social customer relationship management, companies have managed to engage in customer-controlled conversation and respond to their needs immediately. Strong social customer relationship management increases customer satisfaction and improves business performance as well since the company will be working together with its customers to improve their products. The second benefit is that it a platform that improves the company’s marketing strategy. Most people spent their time browsing through social media sites. Thus through real-time data, the company can identify the regular products being used by different people and develop an advert that targets them. It also helps in knowing who their customers and potential customers are. These two benefits improve the company performance by ensuring the company focuses on customers, and the company improves its marketing strategy.
A good example of a company that uses social media to improve its performance is AliExpress. AliExpress is an online retail service based company that mostly sells the latest electronics, phone accessories, fashions, home appliances, and other accessories. The company uses social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to interact with its customers and market their products so as to improve its performance. The company also through real-time data they are able to identify and advertise their products to potential buyers.
Company Reputation
However, social media usage in an organization needs to be monitored to protect the company’s brand. The organization today have adopted various ways to protect their reputation. The most commonly used approach by companies is first understanding the content that is being posted and ensuring that the content is not offensive and does not damage the company’s reputation (Segal, 2017). The step-in monitoring is training employees on how to handle negative remarks from customers so that they are well prepared for what is coming and enact a clear policy that explains what an employee can post on the company’s social media and how to respond to clients on behalf of the company. However, organizations can use software such as Hootsuite and Reputation.com to monitor their social media platforms.
Mr. McIntyre’s statement means that the situation reached a point where responding to the post will further jeopardize the Domino’s pizza reputation, hence keeping quiet was the only solution.
Conclusion
Social media platforms cause significant benefits to an organization that helps in improving their performance and increase customer satisfaction. Also, social media platforms help in building the company’s reputation, however not monitoring what the employees are posting or having policies that explain what can be posted on the platforms will lead organizations to the state at which Domino pizza was, and this will build a negative reputation from the public, and if the employees were not trained adequately on how to handle such incidence, it might lead to the fall of the company. Thus organizations should not be focused on the benefits of social media on their performance but also pay attention to their reputation on social media.
References
Segal, S. (2017, February 6). How to protect your company’s reputation on social media. Marketo Marketing Blog – Best Practices and Thought Leadership. https://blog.marketo.com/2017/02/how-to-protect-your-companys-reputation-on-social-
Smits, M., & Mogos, S. (2013, June). The Impact of Social Media on Business Performance. In ECIS (p. 125).