Integrating Social Media into Business Practice - Assignment Example

The use of the three social media sites will be the first step in ensuring that the business has established a presence in the social media platforms. The business can also register an account with You Tube. This plays an important role in terms of ensuring that the marketing videos can be posted. The registration process is free in all the social media sites. It will take the company less than three hours to open the accounts and register its presence in the social media. Updating the social media sites is useful in the marketing process (Czinkota, & Ronkainen, 2012). The business should make updates on a weekly basis in all the sites. This is for the purposes of ensuring that its presence is felt. The updates has to be creative in order to ensure that it is engages the customers. A lot of creativity has to be applied during the process. Marketing videos should be posted on YouTube on a monthly basis. It is also important to note that the business will be required to interact with the customers once the posts have been made. This may go on for some period of time depending on the information being communicated to the customers.

Social media policy

High standards of ethics have to be maintained at all times when using the social media. It is for this reason that acceptable use policies for employees who will be engaged in the social media have to be developed. The following will form the social media policies that will be used by the employees.

• The company will not be held liable for any personal posts by the employee if it generates any negative opinions.
• The sensitive contents pertaining to the company should not be posted in the social media pages of the company.
• The employees making posts must ensure that proper copyright and reference laws are observed.
• The employees should not post dishonorable contents which may be racist or sexist as this has negative effects on the brand image of the company.
• Information regarding legal issues should not be posted online.
• All the posts should promote healthy and honest discourse with the audience.
• The principle of integrity and professionalism should be observed at all times when posting online.

The social media policy is mainly aimed at ensuring that the contents posted do not impact negatively on the brand image of the company (Ryan, 2014). The policy is also useful in ensuring accountability and professionalism by the employees who will be handling the posts and comments. The policy is also aimed at eliminating the incidences of misuse of social media by the employees.

Integration of accounts

The accounts have to be integrated in order to leverage the contents. This is a measure that is aimed at ensuring the same contents are posted in all the social media sites of the company. To achieve this, links will be provided through Twitter when contents that are detailed are posted. Posting the same contents in all the social media site is useful in enabling the customers using different sites to obtain the same message (Ryan, 2014). Editing of the information has to be carried out before the posts are made. This is for the purposes of ensuring that it is correct and in line with the policy and values of the company. The integration of information across all the social media sites is useful in terms of ensuring that the confusions are avoided among the customers. It is estimated that the process will cost less than $ 200.

Strategy for acquiring fans and followers

Acquiring the fans is an is an important aspect that ensures more people are able to interact with the company through the social media sites (Lee, 2014). In Facebook, the business will have to request the users to like the page. The site will attracts more people once it has received a thousands of followers. The employees of the company who are on social media have to be involved in requesting more people to like the pages. This will also be applied in Instagram and Twitter. However, the business will have to follower other people on Twitter in order to acquire more fans and followers. It may take up to one month before the social media pages has a acquired a high number of fans and followers.

Type of risks

Type of risk

Why it is a risk

Probability

Mitigation

Failure to acquire enough followers and fans

It will affect the marketing process.

Medium

Engaging experienced employees to handle the process

Lack of customer feedback and response

The views of the customers will not be known.

Medium

The posts will be interactive in nature

Misuse by the employees

Contents that are controversial or slanderous may be posted.

High

Training of the employees handling the social media will be carried out.