Managing of Information Resources

The impact of social media on company tactics is covered in the article. The most crucial element of business strategy is social media marketing. The conversation has gone on to further clarify the strategy's importance. The main social networking sites that are used as platforms for social media marketing have been described, and usage data has also been gathered on these platforms. The marketer has the option to choose a site that will be successful in meeting the needs of the business.
Finally, the essay has discussed social media marketing and its effects. The different ways how social marketers carry out advertisement in order to bring out the impact to the audience have been discussed in the segment. Generally, the paper is about social media impact on strategies for managers in the contemporary world.

Keywords: media, impact, management, strategy.

Managing Information Resources

“Social media” was coined form two words – “social” and “media”. “Social” depicts interaction between individuals, community, or even group with similar interests. Media, as the name suggests, is the medium or platform through which creation and exchange of ideas is made (Razmerita, Kirchner, & Nabeth, 2014). In 2003, LinkedIn was first launched, and then MySpace was implemented. They gained much more acceptance than other websites. In 2005 YouTube, Twitter alongside the other platforms as Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat appeared. The above social media channels have gained over 1 billion subscribers during 10 years of their existence (Razmerita, Kirchner & Nabeth, 2014). 

Social networking has been utilized to build relationships and interactions between individuals in the organization which leverages on the websites and applies them to interact with new customers. Actually, it is the paradigm shift from the old school of methods of interacting with buyers to better modern ways where the access from the organization consumers and products can be reached cheaply and easily through the Internet. Loyalty is created when the individuals are communicating on the personal level. The paper also seeks to unravel how social networking has brought about the social media marketing.

Social Media and Marketing

Tuten & Solomon (2014) explained that marketers were using social media to raise the visibility of the company’s products and services to the public via the Internet. Social networking sites are important to build social and business networks to exchange knowledge and ideas. The sites are becoming the go-to places for consumers who want to learn more about the products of the business. It can be viewed as the outcome of the up-to-date status of the sites which offer current information about services, products, or upcoming events of the business. Moreover, information posted by the businessmen in the social networks can be accessed by the general public since they can be attained through the search engines (Stelzner, 2014). When the person is looking for the solution to the problem, the organization is available to answer the questions. Social media marketing is trustworthy because the material is shaped within the peer groups’ work by either the ‘Retweet’ or Facebook comment about the certain product or organization. Companies or business organizations access the Internet via subscriptions to the service providers of their respective localities (Tuten & Solomon, 2014). Mobile phones, Internet, and social media must interlink to realize social media marketing. 

Benefits of Social Media for Marketing Strategy

The major benefits deriving from social media marketing are the company’s exposure rise in the huge traffic. Research indicates that 92% of social networking efforts made by marketers have helped to boost business exposure (Stelzner, 2014). The presence of the social media has been embraced by all the firms today.  In March 2015, there were 1.4 billion of Facebook active users and 280 million of Twitter subscribers.

However, the four essentials for the maintenance of the effective social media and online presence need to be taken into consideration by businesses wishing to take marketing seriously online.

Contents

Social media’s backbone is content (Walker, 2014). Unless the company is able to post fresh and relevant information regularly, its social networking and online platforms cannot attract traffic. 

Engagement

The second essential of conducting the successful online or social media campaign is engagement of the audience (Walker, 2014). Businesses or individuals that are perceived responsive and friendly involve with their audience well which translates to sales, loyalty , patronage, affiliation of brand, goodwill, and brand ambassadors that defend the company’s name, service, product, or brand. 

Skills

There is the range of talents that the businessman should possess in order to run the active online presence in the social media. Such skills are derived from the research, designs, graphics, analytics, monitoring, optimization, backend management. Being unable to understand where to deploy each of the abilities or wrongly using them, spells disaster for any organization aiming to establish online presence (Walker, 2014). 

Consistency

Consistency means the ability to learn how to win the online and social media presence and its implementation to run the business (Walker, 2014).

Benefits of Utilizing Social Media Marketing for an Organization

Improved Sales 

A lot of time needs to be taken to build relationships which can increase sales. However, marketers that make time for it reap great results. For instance, half of the marketers, who have been capitalizing on social media presence for at least three years in a row, now have reported improved sales (Stelzner, 2014). Approximately, more than half of the marketers who use 6 hours in social media per week have the same results. Over 74% of the individuals spending 40 hours gain new business from their efforts (Walker, 2014).

Increased Exposure 

According to the research marketers who spent over 6 hours per week came to the conclusion that their social media presence and efforts had raised levels of business exposure (Stelzner, 2014). Also, approximately all the individuals who employed social media marketing for at least one year or more reported that it created exposure for their businesses or organizations. 

Business Partnerships Grow

More time the marketers spend in social media network, the higher growths of business partnerships are gained (Walker, 2014). Approximately half of the marketers who have spent at least a year in social media marketing reported that they had implemented new partnerships. In addition, people who were offering their products to the other organizations and business appeared to be more than likely to reap the benefit than the ones selling explicitly to the consumers. 

Marketing Expenses Cut Down 

Comparatively half of the marketers who spend nearly 6 hours plus on social media determinations saw that marketing expenses had been slashed down. At least 57% of the organization’s business comprising of 10 or less employees totally agreed that the marketing expenses were reduced when social media was used, while there were only 40% of business organizations with over 1000 employees who took part in the research (Stelzner, 2014).

Improved Search Ranking 

There are improved search engines ranks if the business marketers are utilizing social media platforms for the year or more with nearly 58% or more of the individuals who are reporting the increase (Stelzner, 2014). 

Increased Traffic

The companies that have used social media platforms for a year or more reported that substantial improvements in results took place. They compared it with the businesses with small experience online. 

Developed Loyal Customers

Marketers utilizing B2C were more likely to capture  bigger loyal fan base through the social media than marketers using B2B. 69% of companies that had been utilizing social media for more than a year found out that social media good tool to create a loyal fan base (Stelzner, 2014). Time invested by marketers was also pivotal. Out of the marketers who spent at least 6 hours and more in week doing social media marketing, approximately 78% realized the benefits of social media, compared to 56% of them who spent 5 hours or less per week. 

Impact of Social Media in Businesses

In today’s world, the internet is the fastest method to attract customer’s attention and in a wider coverage, this is the reason why organizations are connecting their consumers through social media (Walker, 2014). Social media singlehandedly builds the brands image through capturing the attention of consumers. There are some existing ways through which businesses have been educated on how to use social media platforms as stepping stones to creating awareness of brand or the campaign mission to customers. 

Word of Mouth 

Social media sites issue a perfect ground to gain from the word of mouth and to make sure it is spread. Many people are connected to the internet in developed countries thus social media is advanced in such places. When a certain brand is “liked” in Facebook, it can virally spread very quickly throughout social media platforms available (Walker, 2014). It has been researched that consumers are more comfortable with opinions that come from their peers than advertisements that are paid by businesses. Videos also used as review or references points for products and services via YouTube. Such information is later shared to other social media platforms. The reviews serve as customer bases when making buying decisions. Subsequently, the reviews make the company issue products to popular users of YouTube to review them for their subscribers. Some companies create their own YouTube channels that are branded with videos of their products. 

Communicating with Customers 

Social media can be used to communicate with dissatisfied customers of the organizations in a more direct manner hence taking full advantage of the media platforms and promise change or an improvement of the product on offer (Walker, 2014). Many organizations have gone a head in this sector to seek for the customers’ opinion about upcoming events related to their brands more so consumer based business organizations. 

Considerations and Influence 

The major influence that social media has had on organizations is marketing and engagement of business with target markets. As use of social media platforms to engage and share about the market continues to soar, it would be necessary for any organization to come up with a sustainable social media strategy and implement it in order to take advantage of the dynamic environment successfully. 

Another major influence of social media is the emergence of “trending topics” (Walker, 2014). A trend refers to a topic driven by a hash tag and is popular immediately at a specific time. These topics assist the organization to understand the things that are acceptable and those that are not at a particular time in the business environment. 

Social Media Analytics 

They are commonly referred to as social bakers. They are usually companies that offer social media management of services and analytics of deep data for the many brands that carryout marketing on Facebook, Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn, VK and instagram pictures (Walker, 2014). They give the organization the chance to monitor and optimize on the social media campaigns effectiveness, benchmark with the competitors and the standards of the industry, and finally keep track of the right social media (KPIs) in order to move ahead in their marketing efficiency and success. The sites offer data about the quickest growing social media presence i.e. brands, celebrity, entertainment. 

Social Media Marketing 

This is a modern phenomenon which has begun with the emergence of the internet and social media dictating online communication. Generally, it is a form of internet marketing which implements the vast available social media platforms. It primarily involves activities that pertain sharing of videos, content or images the purposes of marketing (Ashley & Tuten, 2015). Social media marketing platforms are usually centered on creating contents which attract the viewer’s attention and encourages him to share it via his social media, resulting to (EWOM)-electronic word of mouth. 

Some of the marketing techniques implemented by social media marketing are targeting, EWOM and COBRAS (Ashley & Tuten, 2015). All these techniques are used to advertise company products successfully online. Social media platforms such Twitter and Facebook provide advertisers with information about their likes and dislikes about certain products resulting to creation of a target audience to the company. Consumer online brand related activities denoted as (COBRAs), is also vital for the advertisers in their promotion mission. A picture upload of a product via Facebook is an example of COBRA (Valdez, Guterbock, Thompson, et.al 2014).

Social Media Operating Strategies

Forming closer relationships with customers 

The strategy is the best way to form a good image of the business and to make a good close relationship with the customers. Through social media, businesses are able to have an interaction with customers and by making their content interesting and useful, they become well placed in the market. 

Driving website traffic and encouraging recommendation

It is good strategies aimed at placing the company’s profile on major social media websites then later begin publishing its own content on such platforms after gaining followers. When the content is interesting, people using the media will share it with other people, which will ultimately generate interest in the company and many clicks to the business website. 

Another great way to generate traffic is through blogging. Interactive blogging tends to attract more incoming links. Ultimately, the business becomes easy to spot even when searched through search engines. 

Make your site attractive through broadcasts, news and offers.

The only way to be on the edge of competitors is through differentiation in how you undertake social media presence. Many companies today offer special broadcast articles in their sites or give news and ideas. Here are some of the ideas that can a company can make their sites attractive:

Issue ‘how to’ videos and articles which will demonstrate knowledge on products and other vital information which users need to know. 

Give competitions to the subscribers of the site: such are known to be entertaining and fun and attract a number of people to participate. 

Publish company news: subscribers to the company’s site should be treated with interesting news and major developments about your company. News published may for instance be about awards won or a post with a picture caption about a fundraiser. 

Publish special offers: Customers love bargain products; it should therefore be company’s ultimate goal to frequently give them special offers. 

Post about product launches and reviews: the essence of this strategy is to ensure that the customers remain updated with latest product launches and to make recommendations to them. 

Conclusion

In summary, organizations will benefit a lot from the use of social media. Organizations will reap much profit by implementing social media marketing. The strategy is a new technique to create awareness of the company’s product to the public via different social media platforms in existence, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Linkedin. Managers or marketers have a variety of social media platforms to select from in order to take advantage of the vast importance of social media in businesses. Proper utilization of social media by business will increase sales and exposure of the company. The manager must apply his skills and leverage on the best social media techniques in order to realize the overall success of the business. 

References

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Razmerita, L., Kirchner, K., & Nabeth, T. (2014). Social media in organizations: leveraging personal and collective knowledge processes. Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, 24(1), 74-93.

Stelzner, M. (2014). 2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report. Social Media Examiner, 1-52.

Stelzner, M. A. (2013). 2013 Social media marketing industry report: How marketers are using social media to grow their businesses. SocialMediaExaminer.com.

Tuten, T. L., & Solomon, M. R. (2014). Social media marketing. Sage

Valdez, R. S., Guterbock, T. M., Thompson, M. J., Reilly, J. D., Menefee, H. K., Bennici, M. S., ... & Rexrode, D. L. (2014). Beyond traditional advertisements: leveraging Facebook’s social structures for research recruitment. Journal of medical Internet research, 16(10), e243.

Walker, S. (2014). Social Media Marketing Tips: Essential Strategy Advice and Tips for Business Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram and Much More!. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.