Social Media for Small and Medium Businesses - Literature review Example

Social Media for Small and Medium Businesses: Anoto Group Social Media for Small and Medium Businesses: Anoto Group Abstract The use of social media by small and medium business enterprises (SMBs) has gradually been on the increase over the previous years. These business enterprises have now taken to using social media as an additional means through which they can be able to engage with their customers and other prospects in a structured and strategic manner (Meske & Stieglitz, 2013). This is in addition to their using social media to support their various internal collaboration and communication. According to emarketer (2012) the integration of social media within the basic company processes has emerged as one of the latest communication trends as companies work towards improving their sales, customer service as well as their research and development. This paper will seek to critically evaluate why a number of small to medium enterprises such as Anoto are now increasingly adopting the use of a social media strategy as well as examine an analysis of the probable risks and benefits that come with these companies developing a social media presence. The paper will also suggest a number of recommendations as to how these companies can be able to maximize the potential of social media while effectively minimizing the associated risks. Introduction Over the past few years, web 2.0 technologies and other associated social media applications such as microblogging, weblogs, social network sites (SNSs), wikis and content communities have increasingly become incorporated into the organizational environments of small to medium sized enterprises like the Anoto Group. While the use of the various social media applications is noted as positively improving service/product innovations as well as the collaboration and communication between an organization’s employees, a number of companies have now started establishing social media based networks with some of their business partners so as to engage the public in social media for the purpose of improving their recruitment processes, their marketing, product and service innovation, reputation management as well as customer relationship. Meske & Stieglitz (2013) point out that data from a recent survey indicates that an approximated 72% of large companies have been noted as having deployed at least one social media tool while 40% are reported as claiming that in addition to social networking tools they are also using blogs. SMBs such as the Anoto Group have taken to the adoption of social media strategies so as to effectively compete against the larger companies and organizations (Collin et al., 2011). The ability of these larger companies to be able to spend large amounts of resources on technology to improve their customer relations is seen to pose a real threat to the SMBs. However, by using social media, SMBs can be able to effectively mitigate the threat and counter the considerable resource advantage that these larger enterprises have for sales, marketing and other informational purposes. There are a number of social media platforms that are available for use by SMBs, the use of these platforms is seen to greatly vary based on the current target market as well as the products/services that are seen to be offered by the particular business enterprises. Some of these platforms variously include LinkedIn, Facebook, Bebo, Orkut, YouTube and Instagram (Lindsay, 2010). New social media platforms are increasingly being launched by the day and it is important for SMBs such as the Anoto Group to carefully analyze exactly which platforms will be able to best suit their purposes (Cross, 2014). There are some significant benefits that can accrue to SMBs like the Anoto Group as a result of their adoption of a social media strategy. Some of these benefits variously include: The adoption of a social media strategy can help in providing SMBs a prominent online presence. A good social media presence is able to provide excellent exposure for a company’s brands (Hjorth & Arnold, 2013); this is a factor that serves to bring the SMB, its services or products to a wider audience in an efficient and effective manner. In addition to this, by using the various tools that the social media platform and tools, such as SMM and web analytics, avail for reporting and formulating market analyses and searches, a SMB such as the Anoto Group is found to be better placed to easily target the right audience for a specific promotion or campaign (Bradley, 2013). Another key benefit that can accrue to companies such as the Anoto group as a result of the adoption of an effective social media presence is that a social media presence generally equates to traffic. Regardless of whether a SMB is able to sell online, consumers will always use the internet in researching services, companies and products. By having a company website designed with an embedded social media platform such as a Twitter feed, a company can be able to establish its credibility as Facebook and Twitter can be used to link back to the actual corporate website (Taylor, 2013). These links can be used in the promotion or mentioning of the company’s products or services and these strategies can have the effect of increasing traffic to the company website. Social media is a great resource for SMBs like the Anoto Group as its is quite economical for them to use social media to conduct and track social media campaigns (Bodnar & Cohen, 2012; Brown, 2008). These social media campaigns can also be used in successfully bringing down the marketing expenses for SMBs. Social media campaigns are seen to be particularly relevant for regional businesses as they can be able to use various social media such as Twitter and Facebook to target a specific demographic in their given markets. Another benefit of social media strategies to SMBs is that unlike the more traditional marketing campaigns, social media efforts are relatively easy fair and quick to implement as the mechanisms necessary for the campaigns are already in place. These campaigns also have the advantage of being measurable in real time a quality that makes it possible to make adjustments to the campaign in the event that such adjustments are required (Safko, 2010). Of note however, is that having a relevant, current and credible presence on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter requires some effort in regards to the generation of relevant content. In the event that SMBs find content generation to be too challenging or that they don’t have to have the specific know-how on how to do this, they can be able to use any of a number of cost-effective and user-friendly tools to assist them. These include content creation services and scheduling platforms. The use of social media strategies by SMBs such as the Anoto Group can be of help in increasing their market authority. In making a decision on whom to buy from, many social savvy customers will tend to check on a company’s social media channels. By frequently posting industry tricks, trivia and tips, a SMB will be able to improve its industry authority in addition to helping increase its website’s conversation rate. If a SMB embeds a busy social feed on its website its industry authority is seen to improve even much further (Kabani, 2010). A successful social media strategy can help an organization in improving its search engine optimization (Barker et al., 2012). By making good use of multiple social media platforms that have their content constantly updated several times each day, a SMB’s website can be identified as being a socially active website. If the social media feeds are correctly embedded into the company website, this will greatly increase Google crawler’s interest in the website as well as help the company’s SEO team in making positive improvement’s to the organization’s organic search engine rankings. Social media strategies can help a company such as the Anoto Group in networking. The building up of a network of suppliers and clients using social media websites is an integral part of doing business for SMBs. The opportunities that a good network is able to provide to these businesses are tremendous. A number of social media networks are seen to comprise groups that have people with common interests. By joining such groups and especially so, those that happen to be related with the SMB’s specific industry, a SMB can be able to gain a lot of new insight into the niche in addition to obtaining new ideas on how its products can best be marketed (Bellamy, 2010). Although the adoption of a social media strategy does have a number of benefits to SMBs like the Anoto Group, there are a number of challenges/risks that such a strategy can pose to SMBs, some of these risks include: Social media is designed to be very interactive and for it to be successful, two-way exchanges must be engaged in and these exchanges at times take a lot of commitment. As opposed to traditional marketing, social networks tend to focus on the establishment of long-term relationships that can on turn eventually convert into increased sales. The monitoring of each social network so as for the business to respond to comments and questions, as well as post product information that will be deemed by customers to be of value can at times be quite challenging (Funk, 2013). Social media marketing by SMBs has been criticized as being intrusive to the privacy of social network members. According to Abrons (2013), in a recent survey conducted by Web Pro News, eight out of 10 social media users felt uneasy with sharing personal information and placed social network low in their security confidence. The practice of attempting to shape campaigns and ads based on the information collected from social networking sites is seen to have stirred up a wide-spreading wave of confidentiality controversy as a result of which some marketing efforts have been met with offensive and bitter reactions by consumers. Social media networks are seen to also pose a challenge to companies such as the Anoto Group in that there is a general lack of appropriate feedback control. Negative responses to posts can prove to be particularly damaging to a company’s social media campaigns (Wollan, Smith & Zhou, 2010). By using social media Industry competitors and unhappy customers are afforded the opportunity of offensive or disparaging posts, videos or pictures and it is nearly impossible for SMBs to be able to prevent this occurrence. Social media marketing by SMBs has been noted as posing the challenge that it often serves to only attract the current loyal customers without significantly increasing the number of new customers that a business enterprise has. Although it provides and excellent strategy via which businesses can be able to rouse their existing patrons into making repeat purchases it is important for these businesses to try and focus in obtaining new customers (Brookins, 2014). Conclusion and Recommendations on how Anoto can be able to Maximize the Benefits while concurrently Minimizing the Risks of Adopting a Social Media Strategy Constantly engaging in two-way communication via social media can generally prove to be very challenging for the marketing departments of SMBs to engage in as these departments are seen not to have the ability to spare excess manpower to constantly engage in monitoring and updating their social media. To effective tackle this problem, companies such as the Anoto Group with its limited manpower of only 103 employees can employ the use of content management services through which it will be able to hire professionals to help it in engaging in this very important task or use content management tools. An example of the effective use of content management services is seen in the case of HubSpot. HubSpot uses its Inbound software to generate traffic through their websites in addition to helping to convert these hits into sales. According to Barker et al. (2012), when HubSpot started its social media campaign, it constantly adapted its strategy by conducting a careful analysis of the quality of each social media site’s traffic. It was also careful to ensure that it tests the effectiveness of each content management tool in allowing the firm to satisfactorily address each specific need. The use of these social media tools and a dedicated social media marketer drawn from the New York Times saw HubSpot successfully grow its customer base to an approximated over 4,000 customers. Negative feedback from social media is seen to potentially be quite damaging for companies such as the Anoto Group and it is important for companies to ensure that they are well prepared to effectively handle negative feedback immediately before this feedback is able to ruin the company overall brand reputation. According to Bernoff & Li (2008), an example of just how negative social media publicity can affect a business is seen in the 2005 Dell social media disaster. After purchasing a Dell laptop, a blogger experienced some problems with the machine and took to social media to complain about the problem. The blogger Jeff Jarvis complained how the company’s after sales services was also not effective as it would entail his having to part with his laptop for between 7-10 days because if the company were to send technicians to his home, he would not be carrying the necessary parts to repair the laptop. Dell did not respond immediately to the blogger or to the thousands of its customers who were reading this blog. This allowed for Jarvis’s criticisms of Dell to become widely circulated triggering thousands of people and other bloggers to leave negative comments about Dell. Dell eventually learnt from this experience and launched a social media operations that could be able to effectively monitor conversations in real time (Bart, Shankar, Sultan & Urban, 2005). To deal with the problem that social media is only able to help it in attracting its current loyal customers; the Anoto Group can use a number of radical new strategies designed to try and increase its customer base while maintaining its loyal customers (Brookins, 2014). An example of the use of such an innovative strategy is seen in the example of Nike’s social media campaign during the 2012 Olympics. In the strategy, Nike opted to feature average Olympic athletes as opposed to using the high profile athletes. This interesting strategy resulted in Nike gaining 166,718 fans during the course of the games (Miganelli, 2013). References Barker, M. et al. (2012), Social Media Marketing: A Strategic Approach. Cengage Learning. Bart, Y., Shankar, V., Sultan, F., & Urban, G. L. (2005). Are the drivers and role of online trust the same for all web sites and consumers? A large-scale exploratory empirical study. Journal of marketing, 69(4), 133-152. Bellamy, D. (2010). 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The Social Media Management Handbook: Everything You Need To Know To Get Social Media Working In Your Business. Hoboken : John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Read More