Social Media for New Firms - Essay Example

? SOCIAL MEDIA Rygo Morales Comp 2000 Introduction Social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and others, change the way business is being carried out. They not only influence our personal life and business practices, but also begin to dominate all different functional areas of businesses. Almost the entire world is connected to each other through social networking websites and that is why today business firms find it very easy to conduct online transactions, sales as well as keep in touch with their customers through the social media, thus raking in a great deal of profits at a lower cost margin. For example, advertising, relationship marketing, communication, knowledge management, public relation and so on are some strategies that businesses use to grow. Moreover, being on the social network also provides a business firm the opportunity to reach out to a larger consumer base in even the most remote parts of the world. This research paper examines social media’s impacts on contemporary business environments. This paper examines how social media can benefit new firms to survive in today’s highly competitive business contexts (Marketingtoday.com). Social Media for New Firms Social media is undoubtedly an effective tool and strategy for growing a new or an existing business. Hundreds of social media networks are obtaining wider popularity across the globe since more and more business people are tempted to use social media to share their views, ideas, feelings and information with others. Social Media is about the different ways of communicating with people through the internet. The first thing that a new firm looks at is the startup costs that it will have to delve into; excellent utilization of the social media helps the firm negate these costs because it can help firm sell its products without having to invest in property and design a store. For example, for a group of individuals starting a small book shop, and they need not invest in a store to display and sell their books. Instead, they can form a website or a page on a social networking site and post photos and shipping and payment details of their books online at very low costs. Even buying one’s domain costs much lesser than investing in or renting property. Social media refers to any of the many online tools that allow people to share information and learn from others through a communication network in an open process. Social media thus refers to online contents that are created and consumed by regular people for communication. As Singh and Diamond (10) noted, it may be comments a person adds at the end of a website- article or family photograph he uploaded to a photos-sharing site or a video he uploaded to a video-sharing site. From some years ago to now, business communication for most of the business had a huge impact, because social media brought tremendous changes in business and marketing communication. It has not only brought greater opportunities for many businesses, but also posed bigger challenges for many to survive in competing with others. It thus becomes very important for a small startup firm to also realize that it needs to utilize the power of the social media well in order to prosper against the big companies that are already established. The marketing and advertising needs to be very sharp; website interface must be very catchy and most importantly, it must be able to gather a large customer base. For a new business to be set up successfully, marketing communication is an extremely important function since its ultimate plan to reach its customers will be successful only if it can communicate with its people about the business and its goals. When introducing a new brand or the existing brand with new product or service to the market, it needs to be communicated to the general public in order to make them aware about it, to inform or persuade them to buy or to keep on reminding them about the goods or brand (Kitchen 21). This can be done by displaying catchy captions and promotional logos of the brand or the product on different social networking websites that are frequented by millions of users each day which on clicking will transport the user to the business organization’s website. Social media can play pivotal role in marketing communication and thus perform the functions of advertising as well as marketing promotional activities. New business or an existing business with the aim of expansion has wider options to use social media. It can launch its own website, start blogging or even open accounts in popular social networks. As Anjum (2011) observed, social media has become an integral part of organization’s integrated marketing communication plans. Integrated marketing communication is a marketing tool that uses and integrates various communication tools such as advertising, personal selling, public relation, event marketing and public relation with a view to ultimately bring a common communication goal. The main idea is to become ingrained in the lives of customers to the point that they just cannot resist clicking on the link and finding out what the business has in store for them. Firms also need to make sure that they do not indulge in scamming or spamming customers because that will only lead to a loss of goodwill – it does not take long for someone to crib about something on the social network and watch it spread like wildfire! (Social Media Examiner) Many small businesses have the option of saving a large amount of financial resources by cutting down on costs to advertise and market their products as they can do so for free on social networking websites. For example, a small group of individuals selling clothes can market their products online on a Face book account and attract attention for free by merely posting photos of the products and inviting onlookers to the sale. Moreover, a small business can even sell its products through websites like e-bay and etsy – websites that invite small cottage industries and individuals to sell their products. You Tube also provides small businesses the chance to showcase their advertisements on their own channels for free, helping individuals to cut down on their advertising costs. Social Media in Competitive Business Contexts Can social media help firms compete with others and achieve competitive advantages in today’s marketing landscape? Almost all Fortune 500 and world’s largest multinational companies have established relatively much stronger stance in social media to use it for marketing communication purposes, and they proclaim that social media helped them a lot. A best example is Wal-Mart because as recent reports and studies revealed, social media played a significant role in Wal-Mart’s success (Konrad 2012). The company has been able to use social networking websites to attract people by providing them with discounts, sale offers as well as promotionals. Large numbers of business organizations and government firms use private as well as public social networks. Turban, Bollojuand and Liang (203) found that almost all Fortune 500 firms keep on encouraging its employees to use an internet social media by creating its own applications and social discussions. It proves that social media helps businesses not only for marketing communication, but also to enhance knowledge and experiences of employees and other people by knowledge share of social media networks and thus to improve overall productivity of its people. Websites like Twitter and Facebook allow companies to form their own forums and groups where they can keep in touch with one another and discuss important matters. Such an exchange of ideas is healthy and keeps employees at their toes. Moreover, since everybody checks their notifications from time to time, companies need not worry about the message not going across. For any new or existing business, consumers are the biggest concern. Almost all the businesses today are required to be consumer-centric. They focus on consumers in regard to how they can be satisfied and how they can be converted to loyal customers of the business. Burrow and Bosiljevac (30) described that social media is a very powerful tool to help small and new companies achieve great success overnight. In contrast, it has also the power to collapse a company’s well planned business campaign. It depends on how successfully the company uses its social media. The business organization needs to create a need in the minds of the customers which it can do wonderfully with the help of the social media; the use of short films, display banners, promotional offers, etc. can be posted anywhere on the internet in order to not only save financial resources but also get the message across to the potential buyers. Relationship marketing is one of the most effective strategies to become consumer-centric and social media has been found to be a tool for relationship marketing. In order to attract and retain customers, the business needs to understand customers’ varying requirement and specific needs to see whether they are met as customers expect them to be from the market. Relationship marketing has been found to help a firm understand its customers’ specific requirements to design and develop the goods or services accordingly. By holding a considerable stance in social media for establishing stronger relationship marketing, the business will be able to maintain its customers to be loyal and thus to achieve sustainable competitive advantages. Social Media’s Impacts on Business Social media helps people connect each others to share their information, ideas, views, criticisms and soon about various things including products, services, features, quality matters, values and money-worth. Social media has tremendously impacted the success of large corporations as well as small businesses around the world. Bennett (2012) found that 73 percent of small businesses are using social media for their business purposes. Out of these companies, more than 80 percent of the firms still look ahead for furthering their social media opportunities and growth potential. Employees within an organization also have the chance to interact with one another with the help of groups and pages on the social network; a feeling of unity towards one’s business organization is greatly met. A newly started new firm is also able to create its own homepage in Facebook, for instance, to provide explicit details about the business with no hidden cost. With help of Facebook application, the user will be able to link his Facebook page to the website he owned or blog posts that he already created for business or other purposes. Borges (2009) stressed that social media provides a low-cost marketing communication strategy to the businesses. Apart from that, it is a tool for brand building, maintaining customers to be loyal, obtaining staffing advantages, building trust among people, achieve positive SEO benefits and so on. Conclusion Social media has become one of the most powerful business strategies of recent years because businesses can gain sustainable competitive advantages by implementing relationship marketing and integrated marketing communication. The use of websites on the internet can help a firm gain a great amount of repute and goodwill. The firm can keep its customers up to date about its products, future plans as well as the corporate social responsibility that it is engaging in – all factors that will help it to retain customers as well as be on the lookout for potential new ones. Social media connects people to share and exchange their views, feedback and opinions about products and services or a particular brand. Since social media is a platform for customers to talk openly and listen to such views, these are playing significant roles in both the success and failure of many business firms. There are many ways for a business firm to enter the competition and stay strong in the market; however, it must formulate unique and exciting approaches to the use of the social media to attract and retain customers in an honest manner for it to prosper. Once something has been put out there on the social network, it does not take long for it to get noticed by people, but this comes at a cost of being effective in marketing because one may have a You Tube video that can even fail. Thus, social media marketing has taken over the world today and there are many methods to go about marketing on the internet in an innovative manner – from making a face book page to invite customers with offers to interactions amongst the employees on a Twitter forum. References Anjum, A.H. (2011)Social media marketing: The next marketing frontier. GRIN Verlag. Bennett, S. (2012).Social media is making a big impact on small businesses, infographic. Retrieved from http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/social-media-small-business_b26932 Borges, B. (2009).Marketing 2.0: Bridging the gap between seller and buyer through social mediamarketing.Wheatmark, Inc. Burrow, J.L., &Bosiljevac, J. (2011).Marketing.3d edition, Cengage Learning. Kitchen, P.J. (1999).Marketing communications: Principles and practice. Cengage Learning EMEA. Konrad, A. (2012).Top 10 social media stars. Fortune 500, Fortune Magazine, Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2012/fortune/1205/gallery.500-social-.fortune/index.html Singh, S., & Diamond, S. (2012).Social media marketing for dummies,2nd edition, John Wiley & Sons. Turban, E., Bolloju, N., & Liang, T. 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