The Effect of Social Media on Businesses

The Purpose of the literature review is to provide an understanding of the initial views of the scholars, educators, researchers, and others about the topic of interest, in this case, the effect of social media on businesses. Basing on the proposal, the interest will be about highlighting the information about the social networking sites and their use in small, medium and large businesses. The growth of social media will also be an area of interest as well as the role that social media marketing play.

The social networking sites’ review, their scope and current users in small, medium and large organizations 

In the recent years, the use of Social Networking Sites has taken another direction as it has increased tremendously. The pace at which these social media sites; Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, and LinkedIn have proved the potential of small and medium organizations. The social networking sites have provided an extensive connectivity between the organizations and their associates thus creating a great impact on the business reputation. According to Barashi (2012), the usefulness of social media has been outlined as the only marketing tool that has replaced the traditional marketing approaches and tools. The author also emphasizes on the benefits that the social media offer the small and medium organizations such the reduction of costs and IT skills in undertaking the organization operations to reach the market target.

The social networking sites have broken the geographical and hierarchical communication barriers by providing an extensive platform for sharing, learning and exchanging information which has enabled the business to develop a community of common interest. A social network site as depicted by Nielsen Wire of the global information and Measurement Company is described as a virtual collection of persons within a given platform who have user profiles that can be shared with others. However, it has been emphasized with the inclusion of web-based services that provide the required connection for the sharing of the resources (Nielsen-Wire 2010). On the other hand, Boyd & Ellison (2007) provides another version of describing social networking sites but concludes outlining the attributes of having a connection that is used eligible individual within the system to the community. At this point, the social networking sites are typically reefing to the social media.

There are as many social networking sites across the global which are more than 100 and out of which as outlined by eBizMBA1 (2014), only fifteen social media sites are commonly embraced, and these include but not limited to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, MySpace, Skype, and Whatsapp. Facebook has just hit 2 billion users in this month of July 2017 which has given the people across the world to share. Facebook has given business a link of communicating with its customers and the best of all; it has provided the guide to marketing their products and grating the best customer experience which improves the reputation of the company.

Twitter is another microblogging service that has almost 1.2 billion users as at 2015. The Twitter platform does allow its users to write and read messages of up to 140 characters in length. These messages are referred to as tweets. The platform has been embraced by small, medium and large organizations by the fact that it has replaced the complaints and complemented boxes. The platform does not provide a friendly line of sharing videos and images like Facebook. According to Bennett (2012), the Twitter social site is great to the point that it enables the business to communicate and connect with their clients in real time. The scenario of broadcasting business gives the best understanding as the radio stations and television station presenter share tweets with their viewers and listeners making the shows live and interesting (Fischer and Reuber 2011).

The LinkedIn is a well-known network platform that is specifically described as for the professionals. This platform has enabled its members to connect and share with companies and professionals. Businesses have learned of potential skilled personnel via the LinkedIn platform which guarantees the business success as it links to the potential service providers. A user sets a public profile with the professional and academic achievements alongside the skills. A company can easily detect of the personnel they require base on their public profiles. At the same time, a company owner may set like a well a profile that provides their background details and the professionally related information they are interested according to their line of operations.

Google+ and Hangouts have taken another level in connecting individuals across the global. The Google+ created in 200 has an estimate of more than 70 million users. The best of this social media platform, it provides a training course for companies and business to create a page from which sensitive interactions are prompted between the legitimate associates to the business. In support to that, the Google Company embraced the Google+ by introducing the Hangouts which have been fully integrated with the Gmail accounts which allow users to share resources and brainstorm any concept and ideas as projected. There are many social media sites, but these are just a few that have been embraced by our various small, medium and large businesses.

Growth of social media

The human concern about interaction and communication over long distances began in centuries. In the past, human relied on the social animals for communication as they seek to strengthen their relationship ever. However, the face to face interaction was hindered, and thus the human had to seek a creative solution to the issue. The trends of social media are deeper from its roots of establishment unlike the only likes of Facebook as the natural outcome of the same. In 1792, the invention of the telegraph enabled the sharing of messages which were delivered over long distances faster than before. The limitation was that the messages were a little short and it marked a revolutionary manner of conveying information and news (Hendricks 2013).

In 1890 and 1891, the discoveries of telephone and radio were observed respectively, and these technologies are still in use up to date. However, the versions have made them sophisticated than their predecessors. These telephone lines and radio signals enabled people to share details, for instance, the sending of greetings via the radio programs was a famous mode of interaction. In the 20th century after the creation of the first supercomputer in the 1940s, the scientist began and later developed the networks for the computers which saw the birth of the internet such as the CompuServe in 1960s. By then in the 1970s, the networking technology had improved, and the Usenet enabled users to share information via the virtual newsletters (Riese 2017).

In the 1980s, the social media became sophisticated due to the commonality of computers and this saw the use of Internet relay chats (IRCs) until in 1997 when a social media site was developed called the Six Degrees. The site prompted the users to upload a profile and make many friends who were users as well. The blogging came into existence in 1999 which created the social media sensation. This invention of blogging resulted in the explosion of sites like the MySpace and LinkedIn which gained their prominence in early of the 2000s. The social sites; Flickr and Photo Bucket got the attention to image and video sharing which later saw the creation of YouTube in 2005.

At this point the social media had taken its own pace, in 2006, Facebook and Twitter were available across the global, and they have remained the most popular social networks. These sites so far left some niches and the likes of Tumblr, Spotify, Foursquare and Pinterest have just found their penetration to fill the certain social networking niches (Hendricks 2013). Therefore, the social media is growing greatly by providing a better interactive platform that has given the proof that the world is flat by making it a small village that can be navigated within the shortest time possible in a day.

Significance of Social media tools for promotions

Cisnero (2015), provides a good description of the benefits that the social media tools offer in marketing as far as promotion is concerned. The idea is to appreciate the various social media tools that are great when it comes to promotions. The likes of Nutshell Mail, lick to tweet, Canva, Facebook Advertising Opportunity Calculator, Pixabay and slide share among others gives an eloquent boost towards achieving the business marketing objectives (Marrs 2016). These social media tools will aid in an inbound marketing with the content promotion. The social media will keep on attracting new readers and retain the visitors which is an inbound marketing strategy. Therefore, it is essential to come up with a great contents promotion plan which is all provided and done by the support of these social media promotion tools.

Brilliantly, the content ideas can easily be found through the social media. It should be noted that there are more than 100 social media sites as well as social media monitoring tools which have proved in providing support when it comes to generating new content ideas. The discussion forums have remained the core social media when it comes to gathering content ideas. Supportively, the likes of Quora and Reddit are great when one intends to learn more about the content that the targeted individuals are sharing and more so talking about (King 2014). The monitoring tools will give ideas about the most shared content and the kind of content that is resonating on the social media.

The social media insights defined by the tools do provide the greatest understanding of the targeted audience. The point is that the social media contain massive and significant data that can be useful in understanding the potential of the audience. In this case, the knowledge obtains will be applied in creating the content that will garner for more visitors that are intended only that the content will be required to be written effectively. The social media analytic tools are applied in gathering the insights of the demographic and geographic representation of the audience and thus learning the appropriate content to be included. Subsequently, the content created will be friendly to the search engine since the Google, for instance, does praise the content providers for creating the great content that reflects to the audience search queries.

The role of social media marketing

Social media plays a critical role in today’s considered digital world as far as business marketing is concerned. The use of appropriate social media tools and a better understanding of how to achieve the desired results by the business people give the social media marketing a huge potential to increase the sales. Though some people consider social media as being a passing marketing interest due to its rapid emergence hence unprofitable, statistics show that most of the business owners acknowledge the positive influence this quick-growing online marketing platform has brought to their businesses (Gwern and Carr 2012). According to Hubspot, 92% of the advertisers agreed that social media marketing was important for their business as in 2014, with 80% pointing out how their efforts increased traffic to their websites. Social Media Examiner clarifies that currently, 97% of the marketers are participating in social media marketing, but 85% of participants are not that sure on what social media tools best suits their businesses to the extent of achieving even better results. Statistics from the two sites show how the world has accepted the new marketing platform. Social media marketing keeps on growing almost every other day. There are therefore various reasons that make this new marketing platform more popular among the entrepreneurs. They include but not limited to: increased brand recognition, improved brand loyalty, more opportunities to convert, higher conversion rates, higher brand authority, increased inbound traffic, decreased marketing costs, better search engines rankings, richer customer experience, and improved customer insights.

Increased Brand Recognition

Social media networks are regarded as the new channels for business brand’s voice and content. Apart from making businesses easier and more accessible for new customers, the social media marketing makes businesses more familiar and recognizable for the legitimate customers. For instance, uploading videos or photos of a particular business brand on the Facebook page, a Facebook user could come across the company’s product for the first time hence be interested and go for it. Constant viewing of the company’s product brand on various online sites can make a customer have s detailed look at the product hence convinced to do business with the company (Neti 2011). Therefore, the more marketers constantly upload their company’s brand videos and photos online, the more their products are viewed by both new and existing customers hence bringing out the increased recognition of the brand among the target group.

Improved brand loyalty

According to Convince & Convert publication, a study found out that 53% of Americans who are keen with the brand's development on the social media are more loyal to those brands. The report published by the Texas Tech University shows that brands engaging on social media channels tend to have a higher loyalty from their customers. In its conclusion, the report reads ( De Vries, Gensler and Leeflang 2012)

More opportunities to convert

Every business post a marketer makes on social media site brings about an opportunity for customers to convert. The blog posts, images, videos or comments a marketer shares is a real chance for customers to react. This action could lead to the customer visiting the sites, hence conversion from positive responses. It should be noted that the more posts and image or video uploads make on the social media platform, the more people get to view them hence the more conversion.

Higher conversion rates

There are different ways in which social media marketing brings about higher conversion rates. The humanization element is the most significant way in which the marketer’s posts get higher conversion rates. On social media marketing, brands get more humanized by interacting in social media channels. A higher number of social media followers helps in improving trust and credibility in the company’s brand. This symbolizes a social proof. Therefore, by building marketers audience in social media, the conversion rates on such marketers existing traffic gets improved. This popularizes the brand among the audience hence a score for the company.

Higher brand authority

The use of social media marketing creates up to a higher brand authority whereby the company’s representatives get to interact regularly. This show new customers how the company is responsible to its customers. The moment the old users posts positive experiences with the company on social media, new audience individuals will be eager to follow the company’s link for more detailed updates hence the more valuable and authoritative a brand becomes (De Vries, Gensler. and Leeflang 2012).

Increased inbound traffic

Social media marketing has provided an advertising platform that is not confined to any geographical region. The channels have done away with the limitations that were brought about by the inaccessibility to some other parts of the world due to poor infrastructure. Good use of relevant social media marketing tools will lead to big website traffic on the marketers’ account. The traffic comprises of customers from different continents of the world hence boosting the company’s product worldwide. Every social media profile a marketer adds creates another channel that links back to the marketer’s site and all the contents syndicated on those profiles brings about another opportunity for the new visitors (Lange-Faria and Elliot 2012). Therefore, the more quality contents a marketer syndicates on social media, the more inbound traffic generated hence more leads leading to more conversions.

Decreased marketing costs

Use of social media marketing is not as expensive as other marketing campaign types. This is because signing up for accounts on social media marketing tools such as Facebook and Twitter is free. The cost of paying search engine machines is not as much as the cost involved in printing out billboards and paying the town council authority to post such billboards. Social media marketing is cheap and covers a very big target population within a short period unlike outdoor advertisements and personal selling (Evans 2010).

Richer customer experience

Direct communication between the marketer and the customer strengthens their relationships. Social media marketing plays a role in ensuring instant clarifications and assistance from the marketer. For instance, if a customer discovers abnormality in a certain product, the information will be posted on the official marketers’ site hence the issue will address instantly and publicly. In such a case, the marketer will be able to apologize to the public. Hence customers will feel being valued and appreciated (Evans 2010). Similarly, the marketer will use the social media online platform to thank all those customers who post compliments about their brands. The richer customer experience a business enjoys, the more the customer's such businesses get hence their rapid growth.

Traditional business and social media business

Schmaltz (2011), in his blog, “From traditional business to social business” outlines what it means when a business goes n demand for social media strategy. The article gives an overall description of how the traditional business aimed at producing and getting the products to the market without taking care of who buys and who will buy the next product that is in the production phase. Indeed in traditional business, the view of the social web in a miracle since there is a mindset of doing a given activity. It does not mean that marketing no longer exists with traditional business, other approaches are considered.

Traditional businesses will distance themselves from their customers as they ought to believe that that in their ivory tower where their businesses are believed to stay. The businesses have considered the introduction of call centers as the option of shielding themselves from the complaints of the customers. It can be noted that the traditional business does embrace the use of print and digital channels very much to do their marketing and that marks the end of their transition. Tubbs (2014) emphasizes. The social business is all about interaction. The business is ever convincing and attracting customers since it knows, it is after their money, and it will remain committed to giving an advanced customer experience. Whenever a negative feedback is applauded, the social business will acknowledge and address the matter transparently and honestly this has been the great thing about the social business. The marketing of new products is enduing since they no longer believe in their business ivory tower (Culnan, McHugh and Zubillaga, 2010). The social business will ever embrace the likes of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and all corresponding social media tools.

Summary

The social media has the effect to the businesses, and the prompt of the research has deliberately chosen the positive related attributes of social media to the businesses. The literature review has been constituted the outline the possible understanding of what it outlines behind the social media to the success of and growth of small, medium and large organizations. The possible understanding of the social media development has been defined with the aim of understanding how the world has improved as far as communication is concerned. The review has extended towards giving details about the role that the social media do play in business marketing. It is enticing that the mentioned aspects show why the business should extend their efforts of embracing social media.

Furthermore, it can be deduced that the social media trends depend on the technology advancement and the research that developers undertake to refill the niches. The key interesting aspect of the review is how the business is investing in various approaches so as to reach their target audience regardless of the geographical, cultural or the social barriers. The social media has broken these barriers as well depicted from the discussion by the various benefits that social media provides to business from management to marketing and other related sections. The social media will remain to stay no matter what, and business will ever seek to obtain the best from it in regards to meaningful marketing.

References

Barashi , R., 2012. The Impact of Using Social Networking Site (SNS) on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) Comparing to Large Enterprises. Flinders University Ð Adelaide, Australia ,School of Computer Science, Engineering, and Mathematics in the Faculty of Science and Engineering.

Bennett , S., 2012. Twitter On Track For 500 Million Total Users By March, 250 Million Active Users By End Of 2012. 

Boyd, D., and Ellison, N. B., 2007. Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship.Computer-Mediated Communication , 13 (1), 210-230.

Culnan, M.J., McHugh, P.J. and Zubillaga, J.I., 2010. How large US companies can use Twitter and other social media to gain business value. MIS Quarterly Executive, 9(4).

De Vries, L., Gensler, S. and Leeflang, P.S., 2012. Popularity of brand posts on brand fan pages: An investigation of the effects of social media marketing. Journal of interactive marketing, 26(2), pp.83-91.

eBizMBA1, 2014. Top 15 Most Popular Social Networking Sites. [Accessed 10 Jul. 2017], from eBizMBA1.

Evans, D., 2010. Social media marketing: An hour a day. John Wiley & Sons.

Fischer, E., and Reuber, R. A., 2011. Social interaction via new social media: (How) caninteractions on Twitter affect effectual thinking and behavior? Journal of Business Venturing , 26  (1), 1-18.

Gwern, H., and Carr., 2012. An investigation into the use of Social Media by SME owners. University of Aberystwyth, School of Management and Business.

Hendricks, D., 2013. Complete History of Social Media: Then And Now [WWW Document]. Small Business Trends. 

Hubspot, n.d. THE ULTIMATE LIST OF MARKETING STATISTICS. [WWW Document]. Hubspot main page. 

King, C., 2014. 14 Social Media Marketing Tools Recommended by the Pros : Social Media Examiner [WWW Document]. Social Media Examiner main page. 

Lange-Faria, W. and Elliot, S., 2012. Understanding the role of social media in destination marketing. Tourismos, 7(1).

Marrs, M., 2016. 24 Best Social Media Promotion Tools [WWW Document]. WordStream. 

Neti, S., 2011. Social media and its role in marketing. International Journal of Enterprise Computing and Business Systems, 1(2), pp.1-15.

Nielsen-Wire. 2010. Led by Facebook, Twitter, Global Time Spent on Social Media Sites up82% Year over Year. Retrieved from Nielsen: 

Riese, M., 2017. The Complete History of Social Media [WWW Document]. The Daily Dot. 

Schmaltz, C., 2011. From traditional business to social business :: Blog :: Headshift. [online] Headshift.com. 

Tubbs, D., 2014. Traditional vs. Social Media Marketing - Chamber of Commerce KW. [online] Chamber of Commerce KW. 

Carolyn Morgan is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in custom research paper services. If you need a similar paper you can place your order from urgent essay writing service.