Impacts of Social Media on Traditional Marketing and Communication among Stakeholders - Coursework Example

The paper "Impacts of Social Media on Traditional Marketing and Communication among Stakeholders " is an outstanding example of marketing coursework. The advent of social media has seen a number of changes being adopted into various fields. The internet and the World Wide Web have given impetus to such changes. Marketing has massively been influenced, with the shift from traditional communication channels among the stakeholders being equally registered (Wolfe & Snyder 2003). The internet presents access to information by such stakeholders and the customers to give brands from manufacturers, which necessitates such changes. Utility of the internet has been undertaken by both consumers and the manufacturers, with novel channels of communication being developed (Wolfe & Snyder 2003). Traditional forms of marketing as advertisement through traditional communication channels has therefore undergone an evolution, with the same message being communicated to customers in novel ways. This paper looks at the impacts of social media on traditional marketing and communication among stakeholders and the novel channel critical evaluation from the consumer perspective.

• Introduction

Social media has had massive impacts on the forms of traditional marketing and communication among stakeholders of business organizations. This is as a result of the growing access and utility of the internet. In the past one and half decades, the trend of people accessing and utilizing internet resources has been increasing (Ottman 2011). Such users have been identified to either visit the internet to gather information, use social networking sites or search for the information they consider relevant to their topics of concern.

As the ways in which consumers change the manner in which they utilized the internet, so did the business organizations. Soon, the business firms realized that the internet presented a number of resources which if utilized could afford organizations great potential. This forced business firms to, therefore, adopt the internet and use it to develop appropriate means of interaction with their customers through their marketing departments using online platforms. The manner in which stakeholders communicated equally underwent significant change. The initial developments by business firms in the adoption and utilization of the internet for communication purposes with the customers and the relevant stakeholders included the development of websites (Abrams & Vallone 2008). This adoption became popular among organizations with the introduction of the web 2.0.

In the first step, this paper critically and reflectively discusses the impacts of social media on traditional marketing and communication among stakeholders. It then carries out a critical evaluation of emerging channels from the consumer perspective while showing engagement and representation of channel output with due consideration of the evolution of the theory of marketing communication.

• Impacts of social media on traditional marketing and stakeholder communication

It is apparent that social media has greatly contributed to the changes experienced in traditional marketing through increased customer engagement in business activities (Wolfe & Snyder 2003). A number of research studies have identified that proper execution of social media changes marketing strategies adopted, and realized overall positive results in marketing and stakeholder communication. Herein discussed are the impacts of social media.

3.1 Active user participation

With social media platforms in place, customers have been noted to partake significant communication with their suppliers. Social media allows users to follow and like a product or brand, post comments and leave reviews about the same brand (Safko & Brake 2009). It is important that the business does develop its interactions with its customers on a generation of customer-behaviour data. Analysis of such data enables the business to ensure that its efforts are duly noted by the customer, and that such efforts trigger a customer to actively be involved in the communication process. A business that has adopted social media ought to ensure that its information metrics are on two levels: diagnostic and behavioral (Wolfe & Snyder 2003). Such models enable the business to accordingly take note of the customer behavior towards the business activities of sales, information sharing and social media usage.