IT: Social Media applied to business - Research Paper Example

In every aspect of business proper two way communication is required between the organization and the stakeholders for the successful management of business. Marketing is one of the vital areas of business in which computers made lot of revolutionary changes. Earlier marketers had the limitation of targeting only a group or mass of customers. Such difficulties were an old story now with the introduction of internet, emails, and social networks. Now it is possible to reach any person in the world with the help of computers and interent.

Facebook, Youtube, Myspace, Cyworld, Twitter, Orkut etc are some of the popular social networks in the computer world at present which are being utilized by the marketing people to reach individual customers. According to Shih (2009), right this moment, 150000000 people are interacting with friends and talking about the brands on facebook (Shih p.i). Data from Forrester Research, 2007 showed that about 2/3rds of all North American youth use social networks daily, and about 1/3rd of NA adults use it as least once a month (What makes a Successful Marketing Campaign on Social Networks?). Moreover, 40% of businesses in Ireland use social networks to win new business, according to a new global survey commissioned by Regus.

This survey also showed that 41% of companies in Ireland plan to devote a proportion of their marketing budget to social-networking activities by the end of 2010 and 26% of these businesses have already allocated a part of their marketing budget specifically for social-networking (Irish businesses target social networking). The above statistics clearly show that marketers or big business groups across the world increasingly concentrate on social networks for marketing their product more effectively.

This paper briefly analyses the influence of social networks on marketing, communication and ecommerce strategies in today’s companies The above illustration clearly shows how well social networks can connect