Social Media Technology in Business Free-Samples for Students

Question: Discuss about the Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Social Networks in Business. Answer: The aim of the following paper is to pursue a literature review on the topic of the advantages and disadvantages of the utilization of social media and networks in business. The present paper would critically review a good extent of literatures related to the considered topic and thereafter would make critical evaluation of the contents presented in them. For accomplishing the aforementioned aim, the paper would identify the similarities as well as the dissimilarities between them and thereafter would attempt to synthesize the contents. It is significant to mention in the initial section that in the contemporary era of digitalization, social media and networks dominate the field of marketing in business organization. It can be said that the social media plays the role of a modern tool to address or approach the target market. As stated by Leonardi et al. (2013), over last few years social media and network has transformed from being a digitalized channel that is used for socializing from other media to a potential marketing tool or medium for operating business operations like marketing and increasing brand awareness. Prior to understand the advantages and disadvantages of the use of social media in business, it is essential to mention that according to Okazaki and Taylor (2013), social media is related with peoples interest in being connected with other people and information. Moreover, social media and networks have become a preferred place for the audience of the contemporary society for discussing about issues and collecting opinions regarding brands, products. As per Trainor et al. (2014), most of the people find social media a resourceful premise to get aware about a particular business organization prior to become their customers and it is one of the chief causes because of which organizations use social media networks in order to advance their business. The utilization of social media has fundamentally changed the way of interaction between business organizations and their customers (Trainor et al. 2014). Based on Laroche et al. (2013), at the initial stage, the use of social media in business has been considered as an innovative approach to business though gradually social media turned out to be a necessity for the business organization. According to the historical perspective of the utilization of social media in business organizations started with three different paths. First is the use of public sites like Twitter, G-talk and Face book, second has been individual private implementation of proprietary software through an organizations own server or through acquired cloud-based system (Tsimonis and Dimitriadis 2014). The third path has been the in-house proprietary solutions, which are created in form of prototypes for commercial offerings by software vendors. In the contemporary world of business, social media has become an essential medium for varied operations like customer service, public relations, brand recognition, brand awareness and most importantly marketing. However, as contradicted by Vinerean et al. (2013), besides making business operations smoother and more attractive, the utilization of social media in business is time intensive, difficult in time quantifying return on investment and its dynamic nature. The aforementioned statement is justified because social media is an interactive tool and therefore in order to accomplish business success through social media, it is required to establish long-term relationship with the external environment. Therefore, tasks like continuous monitoring, sharing information and responding to the enquiries are some of the essential responsibilities related with it (Kasemsap 2014). Henceforth, for smoothly making use of social networking in business, every business organization requires to hav e an individual or a group of individual for accomplishing all the aforementioned activities. Nevertheless, in the words of Badea (2014), it is true that the use of social media marketing is time intensive though there is no better way than social media to accelerate brand recognition. According to Badea (2014), it cannot be ignored that the application of social media in business is one of the most convenient ways for creating brand awareness as well as to stay in touch with the clients. Most significantly, a business enterprise can successfully share organizational news, business-related photos and can advertise any product that is going to be launched recently using social media. It has been identified that none of the considered article writers have contradicted the fact that the biggest advantage of using social media is its power of immediacy (Ooms et al. 2015). More precisely, with the help of social media business organizations can avail responses instantly from potential target market or other external stakeholders. Therefore, it is indicative of the fact that with t he utilization of social media, an organization can effortlessly determine whether the target market or other significant external stakeholders prefer their service or products, which have been advertised through social media and networks (Harrigan et al. 2015). Therefore, it can be said that two the biggest responsibilities that the social media can accomplish for an organization are market research as well as market study. According to Harrigan et al. (2015), the utilization of social media should be increased based on the reason that it helps to save a huge amount of cost of physical marketing. It is justifiable based on the reason that marketing become virtual through social media and networking and most of the familiar social media networking sites are nowadays free to access. Therefore, with the use of social media networking, marketing becomes a cost-saving operation where marketers do not need to invest cash or employ a huge extent of human force for promoting a business. On the other side, it has been argued by Kasemsap (2014), with the application of social media marketing business organizations bear chances of receiving negative feedbacks from external stakeholders and also chance of being hacked by malware, brand hijacking as well as viruses. Moreover, marketing through social media is often accused of being intrusive. As identified from most of the considered literary accounts related to the topic, most of the time, sharing information on social networking site proved to be unsafe. It is a considerable fact that with the use of social media or network for marketing or other business purpose, risks in the field of privacy increases (Kasemsap 2014). It has been also understood that the emergence of the confidentiality controversy and offensive reaction have become frequent in the organizational practice or application of shaping advertisements and campaigns on product or service launch and about any service related information. In such case, in place of getting brand recognition and a profit-based marketing, an organization earns bad reputation, which sometimes leads to huge financial loss (Tsimonis and Dimitriadis 2014). On the other side, it has been agreed in almost each of the reviewed articles that the use of social media and networking are helpful for flexibly pursuing as well as managing communication among the employees and internal stakeholders. Specifically, with the use of online social media like Face book, Twitter and electronic mails and other online messaging applications, it has become easy for management as well as for an organizational authority to inform employees on any kind of organizational decision and policy (Okazaki and Taylor 2013). Therefore, it can be said that with the help of social media and social networking business organizations can save time from organizing meeting and workshops in physical level. According Ooms et al. (2015), nowadays more than pursuing communication with the target market and other external stakeholders, business organization employ social media for accomplishing the purpose of internal communication. As per Vinerean et al. (2013), unlike the use of social media for external communication, for the purpose of internal communication, most of the organizations do not use varied media platforms as they prefer to integrate an unique social media platform that contain numerous functions. For example, business organizations nowadays design customized individual online portals for both managers and employees along with creating individual websites. Through this, organizations share information related to organization and do social tagging. One of the most commonly used social media and networking platform is emails through which in the contemporary business sector, workers as well as management get aware of any upcoming meeting, policy or authorial decision (Tsimonis and Dimitriadis 2014). Thus, following social medias contribution in the internal organizational premise, it can be said that social media and networking assist an organization to make visible communicative activities. In the context of identifying the distinct advantages of using social media in business organization, it is to require mentioning that in recent times most of the multinational companies like to use social media for enabling employees access to the knowledge experts inside an organization. It is an important aspect of every organizational culture to provide employees easy access for acquiring significant knowledge as well as information regarding the work field. For example, multinational and IT giant IBM prefers to maintain an impressive extent of social media aspects for integrating one large social media platform for pursuing a flexible internal organizational communication (Vinerea et al. 2013). It has been identified that the organization has built a blogging community for the internal stakeholders as well as blog central. On the other hand, organizations like Microsoft maintain an internal blogging community that is activated through the organizations own intranet platform. How ever, in terms of disadvantages of the process included in the installation and integration of social media platform is the chance of getting prohibited for not to undermine the brokerage position (Vinerea et al. 2013). Besides, the aforementioned disadvantage, it has been also identified that excess utilization of social media for bringing ease to internal communication is considered as a potential source of creating a low stakes environment. Moreover, with frequent use of social media for facilitating flexible internal communication, the organizational boundaries between private communication and work-related communication gets blurred (Harrigan et al. 2015). Consequently, in an organization, the impact of personal similarities upon work communication increases. Most significantly, in terms of disadvantage, use of social media for enabling internal organizational communication can encourage the aspect of strategic self-presentation to avoid being tracked and quantified. Additionally, the excessive use of social media for enabling easy internal communication may compel employees to refrain from the communication in social platform (Ooms et al. 2015). Henceforth, various time social media and networ k is called as a leaky pipe for business enterprises. However, as contradicted by Leonardi et al. (2013), social media is also considered to be an aspect enacting echo chamber in business organization. It is because, internet as one of the most convenient element of social media platform possesses the ability to link an individual with other. Internet is one of those user-friendly elements of social media that connect people and help them to express individual views regarding a particular subject. In organization, with the help of internet, internal blogging premise is created through which employees share varied information related to organizational culture. The particular procedure helps the new joiners in getting accustomed with the organizational culture as well as to cultivate the sense of belonging within the workplace (Okazaki and Taylor 2013). Therefore, it can be determined that the use of social in business organization is act as social lubricants that fruitfully help an organization to advance social capital within the workpl ace. At the same time, it should be also considered that organizational application of social media and networking helps to stimulate any kind of development of the disingenuous relationships in workplace (Traino et al. 2014). Therefore, the above discourse it can be interpreted that in the contemporary world of digitalization, the use of social media in business organizations do carry both advantages and disadvantages. The above paper is indicative of the fact that in terms of advantages, social media and networking helps in pursuing the activity of brand recognition, marketing and flexible communication with the external stakeholders. On the other hand, for the purpose of internal communication, use of social media proves most convenient. 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