Many Businesses Still Think That Social Media Is A Fad-Do You?”



Many Businesses Still Think That Social Media Is A Fad-Do You?”

Introduction

It has been observed that mainly businesses have the perception that social media is fad. However, according to me social media is not fad. New media or the social media as we say brings a new world of communication in the history of human life. The change which occurs through the invention of the blogs, pictures, twits, comments, webinars, and podcasts etc is impeccable (Wasserman & Faust 2004). The advance of Internet and Web technologies has had such profound influences that we have witnessed significant evolutionary changes in our social, economic and cultural activities. In recent years, the new social media sites blogs, micro-blogs, and social networking sites - emerge as the standards for the second generation of Web-based services that emphasize on online collaboration, networking, and user generated contents. According to Forrester Research, 75% of Internet surfers used Social Media by joining social networks, reading blogs, or contributing reviews in 2008. In December 2009, over 25% of Internet page views occurred at one of the top social media sites in U.S.

Social Media And Business

Social media may be defined as a group of media that have the following characteristics:

It encourages participation in that it erases the demarcation among media and its audience.

It promotes openness in that sharing of views and information is much easier.

It is different from broadcast in that broadcast presents one way views whereas the social media entails two-way communication.

It facilitates the formation of communities.

It offers increased connectedness for businesses.

Social media have six types. These are as follows:

Social networks - for example, Facebook, Google+, Orkut, Twitter etc.

Blogs - for example, online journals

Wikis - an encyclopaedia such as Wikipedia where people can add content and can even make changes to the content available (Wasserman & Faust 2004). Wikipedia is the most famous of all the Wikis and has around 2 million articles in English language alone.

Podcasts - subscription based audio and video files. For example, i-tunes by Apple Inc.

Forums - online communities designated for discussion on a specific topic.

Content communities - for example, Flickr, YouTube, Picasaweb etc. that are used for uploading videos, photos etc.

Micro blogging - this is a combination of social network and content sharing. For example, twitter

Other types of social media include live casting, social calendaring, social bookmarking and life streams.

Enormous Growth Of Social Media Sites

The enormous growth of social media sites and users' participation in these platforms has attracted considerable interest from business and marketing practitioners. It is widely recognized that firms should be engaged in this revolutionary trend, in order to maximize their business opportunities and competitive advantages (Sun 2011). Despite the widespread interest shown, it is crucial for firms to fully understand this new information ecology before the engagement.

Social media is a very active and fast moving domain. It provides numerous innovative features as well as a wide ...