SOCIAL MEDIA

The Rise of Social Media and Its Effects on Business

Table of Contents

Introduction1

Goodbye to conventional marketing2

Social media optimization3

Mastering the art of social media conversation4

Organizational Change5

Myths of social media7

Social media intelligence and information overload8

Negative effects of social media10

Conclusion10

References11

The Rise of Social Media and Its Effects on Business

Introduction

The unprecedented growth of social media has changed the way businesses operate. As a successful organization, each business wants to get it noticed and develop a better understanding of its consumers. Social media have changed the marketing, advertising, PR, promotion and research dynamics for businesses. It has an impact on business processes, systems and communication. Social media presence has become mandatory, and more companies are convinced of the benefits accrued from it. The Social Media Marketing Industry Report for the year 2011 presents interesting statistics to reaffirm the claim made above. Social media have affected the society world over. When used effectively, social media increases traffic on the website, improves sales, generates customer interest in the company and its products and reduces cost of marketing.

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. 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.

Nine out of ten users in the United States visit a social website every month. Research statistics show that approximately 4.5 hours or 12% of all the time they spend on the internet is spent on social websites. This time distribution is more visible among youngsters than it is among the middle aged. This increase in trend is also seen among the elderly who are 55 and above (McDonald, 2004).

Goodbye to conventional marketing

Social media have transformed the way businesses operate, and there is no going back. It truly marks an evolution in the marketing industry and this evolution is the biggest of its kind. It has changed the way companies communicate with their ...