Abstract
Social media is a collection of various sites and applications that enable each one to share, communicate and save the contents, photos, videos and much more. Social media can be used by a business to operate and share information across the world.
The research proposal aims to identify various advantages of social media for a business. The business uses this strategy to advertise, market, and allocate consumer lead. Social media like facebook, instagram are highly used sites. There are several uses of social media to a business organization. The research outcome will identify the various negative impacts on the organization and its employee, which can affect the operations of the organization.
This enables to convey a huge amount of information to the people in less time. Companies use social media as a strong marketing strategy to gain a huge market interest and in order to grow attraction and desire to purchase the product or service in such a manner that it can create its followers as in the form of consumer loyal towards the brand (Tsimonis ; Dimitriadis, 2014). Background Social media is a big platform where people interact with many others, including sharing of photos, videos, post and interesting links created by third parties. In the present world, popular social media can be identified as facebook, instagram, whatsapp and twitter. There are several uses of social media of different types of it (Schivinski ; Dabrowski, 2016). The social networking site can be used to connect with people across the world.
Media sharing networks like Pininterst enables to share photos, then other discussion forums online which shares new ideas and news (Lento, Smith ; Braginsky, 2016). Online shopping networks for shopping and consumer review networks help the company to view the customer reviews and other business reviews. Media helps the company to earn its potential customers and expand the growth and sales of the organization. Aim and Objectives of the ResearchThe aim of the research is to identify the advantages of social media on business. The objectives of the research are: To examine how social media is more advantageous than other means of media for business. To identify certain negative impact of social media to business To present various uses of social media in business Research questionThe following are the research questions of the proposal: What are the various advantages of social media in business? Is social media more beneficial to the business that other means? What are the negative impacts of social media in business? Literature ReviewSocial media can be one of the powerful tools for a business.
With changing trend the use of social media is increasing massively. More and more people are engaging in social media and connecting across the world. Social media can be a marketing strategy used by any firm. Small firm or a big firm can use this strategy to grab the customer attention. The statistics shows that people using social media figures are 2.307 billion globally in 2016 (Chaffey, 2016). Earlier social media was not taken into consideration by the business people.
However, with growing importance of social media the company started adapting this means in order to operate globally. Social media helps in creating brand awareness. It provides a personal level interaction with the customer. It is an added opportunity for the companies that are already established in the market, to pull customers. It is a practice to convert the potential buyers into followers (Gardner, 2015). In research it is found that the customers following the brand page strictly use the brand.
Social media are a way to keep updates the followers with its new product and other information. Many firms use social media to recruit people (Sunstein, 2017). Social media can be used to build relations with customers as well as other business companies, formerly known as business to business relationship (Jussila, Kärkkäinen ; Aramo-Immonen, 2014). Companies are choosing social media as a means to communicate with their employees as well customers, implementing in their marketing and advertising strategies.
The social media advertising are much cheaper and dependable as compared to other media print, radio or television advertising. It also helps to reach the certain specific targeted customers of the market such as students, working people who are mostly engaged in social media. Brand recognition is another factor that is created by social media. Brand recognition is a necessary element for a firm.
Customers can be created online by the company and the rest customers can recognize the brand while searching for their requirement. For example, official business accounts in instagram are a popular way to do business and increase sales. As in instagram it is easier to post photos and make followers and follow the other customers (Bennett ; Kunze, 2016). Hence, it also leads to create new customers. Many companies use social media as a promotional strategy by implementing advertisement campaigns.
For example, nowadays Facebook ads have become a popular strategy (Stelzner, 2014). A facebook page may have many potential benefits as because it is not much expensive strategy to use. It is a site where photos, videos, and messages can be shared across the world in different languages. It is easy to operate and a company can use to share its basic information about its product and services. The business firms also have a goal to grab traffic from the social media. If the company website is well organized and attractive then the customers will end up by purchasing.
This way growth of social media will increase sales. Customer feedbacks are an essential to build strong relationship and a competitive advantage in the market. With social media giving feedbacks and tweeting about the service and the satisfaction met are now easier for the customers. It also becomes important for the company now to notice and answer the enquiries of the customers (Levy, Boo ; Duan, 2016). This intends to fulfill the speedy customer satisfaction need. Firms can use social media as means to make informal relations with its audiences.
They can raise contests, giveaways in order to attract customers. The companies using social media can enjoy a number of benefits such the use of social media enables the company to target a specific group of people in the market (Nascimento ; da Silveira, 2017). For example, the rate of using facebook, instagram, and twitter can help the company to focus mainly the youngsters, school and college students and the different age group of people including the senior citizens, political people, and all other groups that can be targeted. This media also enables the company to target a specific region or a country or across the world. It is a fast and quick mode of distribution of information in a less period of time to many people.
It can even give quick responses from the target group in some cases. Companies use coupon websites to make profits by offering various kinds of daily deals, group buying (Man, Hu ; King, 2015). This coupon websites earn income by keeping a certain amount of share of each coupon sold. For example, the sites are catch of the day, living social. Social media can provide a platform to the business companies to first observe the results taken by a trail of marketing the concepts before launching its new advertisements in the market.
Research MethodologyResearch methodology is a systematic plan of representing the taken approach. It is a process to conduct research in a systematic manner. This process of research methodology allows various kinds of methods such as quantitative and qualitative both, including experiments, primary and secondary data (Flick, 2015). The research can also be defined as a scientific and systematic search for pertinent information on a specific topic.
In fact, research is an art of scientific investigation. The methods used in the research is to be taken and analyzed carefully. Data Collection MethodTo conduct a research sufficient data is needed. There are mainly two types of data, primary and secondary data (Bryman ; Bell, 2015).
Primary data is the data collected by surveys, questionnaires by the research conductor itself. Secondary data, by contrast is data collected by someone else and used in the analyzed research. Therefore, the collected method for this research is primary data. The primary data is to be collected from 20 people and 2 managers working in 3 different organizations.
A set of 15 questions to be provided to the 10 employees of each organization and their appropriate answers are to be taken into consideration. The questions will be of mixed comprising of both open and close ended. The employees can express their own judgment and can answer in alternatives as yes or no. Data Analysis MethodThere are mainly 2 types of method to analyze the data, quantitative and qualitative method. Qualitative methods are concerned with measuring the behavior of the interviewer (Taylor, Bogdan ; DeVault, 2015). Quantitative method is concerned with measuring the fact of assumed data.
Data can be in the form of statistical analysis (Brannen, 2017). The analyzing method of data in this research is quantitative. The reason behind analyzing the research with this method is the insufficient amount of money required for the collection of primary data. The questionnaire is consisting of 15 mixed questions, to be answered from 20 employees and 2 managers of the different organizations. The chosen organizations are xyz restaurant; hgf beauty products and an online instagram shopping account. However, quantitative method of analysis is chosen because it will provide the real view of individual working in the organization and achieving the goals.
The real time experiences of people operating in the organization. Ethical issuesDuring a research, it is necessary to maintain the ethical issues in the whole process of the research. It is important to not to share the information collected from the different organizations. In addition, it is necessary to protect the collected data and not even to disclose with any other employee of the same company.
However, harming of any lives including human and animals is unethical. Maintaining and keeping all the issues the research is to be taken place. Time HorizonActivity Months M Feb M March M Mar M April M May M June M July Finalizing the topic Collecting data from primary sources Forming a layout of the research work Conducting Literature review Forming the research plan Selecting appropriate research methodologies Collecting data from primary sources Analysis of collected data sets Interpretation of collected data sets Concluding the Study Designing a rough draft Submitting the Final Work Table 3.1: Time Line of Research The research topic and few gatherings of primary research will be completed by February. Forming the layout and literature review and forming research plan will be completed by the month of April. Researching of different methods and analyzing and collected data and interpreting will be complete by June. Finally, submitting the research by July.
Expected OutcomeThe expected outcome from this research can be the better use of social media in daily business operations. In addition, identifying of various negative effects on the business practices and on employee working in the organization. Accordingly, recommendation to be framed on the use of social media. Different situations faced by the company mangers while advertising on social media. Competitor’s product description and reviews on social interaction with the customers.
The rate of followers of the company on social media can show the impact of the company website. The social media is the cheapest and easier of all the other media.
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