The Role of Social Media in Marketing - Essay Example

? Social Media Social media refers to the means of interactions among people in which they create exchange andeven share information and ideas in virtual communities and networks. Whilst social media has contributed many huge things to marketers, not all of the good stuff comes without its own baggage. Majority of the organizations on the other hand, tend to lie unsure of how to develop effective social media policies. Instead, many organizations either simply prohibit social media use altogether, or have no policy regarding social media use. Both of these approaches are unsatisfactory. Social media differentiates from traditional/industrial media in many aspects such as usability, reach, frequency, quality, permanence, and immediacy. There are many effects, which stem from internet usage. The role of social media in marketing is to use it as a communication tool that makes the companies accessible to those interested in their product and makes them visible to those that do not know their result. It ought to lie used as a tool that creates a personality behind their brand and creates relationships that they otherwise may never gain. This not only creates repeat-buyers, but customer loyalty as well. Fact is social media is so diversified that it can be used in whatever way best suits the interest and the needs of the business (Tini, 2011). Social media depend on mobile and web-based technologies to create highly interactive platforms through which individuals and communities co-create, share, discuss, and modify user-generated content. It introduces pervasive and substantial changes to communication between relative communities, organizations, and individuals. Various statistics account for social media usage and effectiveness for individuals worldwide. Some of the most recent statistics have it that Facebook remains the most-visited social network in the U.S. and all over the world. It receives over 152.2 million visitors via P.C and is multiple times the size of the next largest social site across this platform. Similarly, statistics state that Consumers continue to spend more time on social networks than on any other category of sites. To be more precise, they spend roughly 20% of their total time online via, and 30% of total time online via mobile (Smith, 2011). Social media can have tremendous benefits but also can have serious security risks for organizations. Two of the greatest risks to organizations are malware and inadvertent disclosure of sensitive information. The security risks are often cited by companies as a reason they do not allow social media use. Seventy-two percent of companies believe employees’ use of social media poses a threat to their organizations. Their concerns are justified. Companies in the west are investing increasingly in SMM to get in touch with their customers (Capriotti, 2009). They indulge in constant interaction with their prospects in order to understand their needs and hence make products better. It lies as the best way to learn from ones customers about their needs and your own shortcomings. Nonetheless, SMM is a very personalized way of advertising and promotions can lie targeted only to specific groups, which are interested in a particular domain, quite unlike conventional advertising. According to a report by researchers, the incidence of malware is increasing on the most popular social media sites including Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter (Smith, 2011). There are currently more than one thousand companies compiling comprehensive databases about individual consumers, a vast increase in just five years. Rather than engaging in mass marketing, they focus on gathering as much information as possible about specific people to engage in targeted or profile marketing. By compiling layer upon layer of information about specific individuals, they are able to produce a profile based on income, lifestyle, and an enormous variety of other factors. By making use of these databases, it is possible to identify people by what many would consider private aspects of their lives, including their medical conditions, their SAT scores, and their ethnicities. Those selected by their personal characteristics can lie targeted by not only direct marketers, but also by lawyers, insurance companies, financial institutions, and anyone else who has the funds to pay for the information. It is all available for a fee (Smith, 2011). When asked to rate their experience using social media marketing for their businesses, a significant 72% of marketers have just either started or have been using social media for only a few months. What’s more is the fact that many people want to learn how to use the many social media tools available. What lies to follow, are tools marketers are interested in based on how they have been doing social media marketing. To some extent, Social media has proved to lie as a catalyst of change for the way millions of people communicate. Unfortunately, most marketers have not changed. The content marketers continue putting into social media in a manner similar in that it is boring, and legally reviews sound bites that people have tuned-out on TV and in print. Marketers continue doing the same thing and expecting to get different results. Social media does not stand to drive this change, but just enabling marketers to do bad marketing easier. A research shows that charitable organizations are still outpacing the business world and academia in their use of social media. In a research study conducted in 2008, a significant 89% of charitable organizations lay viewed as using some relative form of social media including podcasts, blogs, social networking, message boards, video blogging, and wikis. A popular 57% of the organizations remain blogging. A 45% of those studied, report that social media lies as very important to their strategies of fundraising. While these organizations stand best known for their nonprofit status as well as their fundraising campaigns, they exhibit an acute, and still growing, awareness of the importance of Web strategies in meeting their objectives (Capriotti, 2009). Significantly different from conventional marketing strategies, Social Media Marketing (SMM) offers three clear advantages. One, it provides a window to marketers to not only present products or services to customers but also to listen to customers’ grievances and suggestions. Two, it makes it easy for marketers to identify various peer groups or influencers among various groups, who in turn, can exhibit brand evangelism and help in organic growth of a brand. Nonetheless, this lies done at nearly zero cost. This is as compared to conventional customer outreach programmes, which have underlying charges whereas most of the social networking sites remain free (Smith, 2011). Social media can do many things for business. Developing an approach for using it means that the firms need to think about what they want to accomplish this year and determine how social media fits into the plan. One of the advantages of a social media strategy is the fact that the available tools can customized for their particular needs. The firms may choose to focus their efforts on the sites that seem to offer the best return on investment, while engaging in taking a wait and see stand on the others. Whether you run a small business, a large corporation, or an individual, a startup online presence and an ongoing conversation with your constituents is a baseline requirement. It takes time and expertise to incorporate everything. Companies are diverting resources and rethinking their traditional outreach strategies. As the social media wave dissipates into the vast ocean of connected experiences, the term itself ends up becoming an entry in dictionaries and encyclopedias and we will embark on a new era of knowledge, accessibility, and experiences, which lie unbound by time, distance, or physical walls. It is high time that every business adopts social media and takes it seriously (Smith, 2011). Despite their advantages to workers and business processes, many organizations are reluctant to adopt social media technologies because of security concerns. Over half of organizations worldwide prohibit the use of social media in the office. However, increasingly, workers are demanding to stand allowed to use these technologies to conduct business and collaborate with coworkers. When organizational policies prohibit the use of these technologies, workers simply circumvent the policies. Organizations feel powerless to prevent this behavior (Capriotti, 2009). Moreover, companies cannot continue to ignore the clear benefits that social media provide in productivity and worker morale, particularly as more of their competitors start adopting social media in their business processes. There needs to be a shift in the view that many organizations have toward social media and security. Instead of attempting to develop new policies specifically for each new technology, organizations can develop and implement proper security policies and end-user training programs that are broadly applicable. The same general behaviors that protect end-users in when using the traditional Internet and email are effective in mitigating major social media threats as well. Organizations also need to enforce their policies by investing in updated security tools that are suited for the social media environment. References Capriotti, P. (2009). Economic And Social Roles Of Companies In The Mass Media: The Impact Media Visibility Has On Businesses' Being Recognized As Economic And Social Actors. Business & Society, 48(2), 225-242. Smith, N., Wollan, R., & Zhou, C. (2011). The social media management handbook: everything you need to know to get social media working in your business. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley. Tini, T. (2011). Friends In Online Places: Business And Social Media. Strategic Direction, 27(10), 19-22. Read More