Social Media: Usage and Impact - Essay Example

? E-commerce of the Table of Contents Introduction 3 Social Media 4 Utilization of social media 5 Web 2.0 Technology 8 Web 2.0 for the book store 9 Companies providing Social media 10 Recommendations 12 References 14 Introduction Social media marketing is the use of selected media channels in order to understand the choice and preferences of the customers and engage with them to collaborate and communicate the ways that ultimate leads to achievement of business and marketing goals. In the past and even in the recent years, marketing is recognized as a process that is immeasurable. Marketing plans would invest into marketing communication with successful branding or the campaign efforts. However, in the last decade the scenario has changed with the advent of social media and now the marketers can utilize this new means for marketing their products and leaving the traditional methods (Tuten, 2008). Social media marketing is the promotional activity through which the business targets the prospect or potential customers via various social media sites in order, to increase the sales, enhance the brand loyalty and accomplish the business goals. It is very different from the traditional marketing, where promotion is highly dependent on the high-traffic Media, such as print and television. Unlike traditional means marketing through social media sites does not requires any paid placement that are charged to the business, but requires the marketer to devise methods in which information can be presented, so that the target audiences can assign value to the offerings. A social media marketing plan can take various forms like creating page of Facebook, developing a blog that focuses on issues related to the business segment in which the organization is dealing, new tools like Foursquare and reward on returning to visit the store through virtual badges (Powell, Groves & Dimos, 2011). This study focuses on the social media as a marketing tool for Book Bunker. Figure 1 Source: (Roberts, 2002) Figure 2 Source: (Roberts, 2002) Social Media Social media includes online tools that allow people with similar interest to share information and learn from each other or network over an open process. The information that is found on these sites are referred to as user generated content, which signifies that any individual can post their comments or suggestion on these sites with almost no or minimal restriction. This type of user-supplied content can vary over a wide range starting from bookmarked links to written posts, photos, original music and videos. It can be unstructured as well, such as family photos on Facebook or in a very formal and detailed structure such as article on Wikipedia. A partial list of structures that are available for a social media site includes combination of blogs, forums, micro-blogs, video-sharing, photo-sharing, customer reviews, online publishing, social and professional networking, or any other traditional website that accepts post from online communities. The media has become a significant element in driving the page visits and views and some sort of social media feature is always available on web (Wankel, 2011). It should be noted that the veracity of the contents that are posted on the social media outlets are not scrutinized. This may acts as one of the defining characteristics. This in turn also signifies a broad spectrum of mankind. It can be dull or insightful, biased or balanced, too revealing or guarded and most significantly outrageously libelous and verifiably true. False or accurate, anything can be posted on the websites or any other online sources with either a malicious intention or with the best intention. This makes it important for the readers or the users of these contents to scrutinize the validity and importance of the material that they read (Zarrella, 2010; Newson, Houghton & Patten, 2009; Al-Deen & Hendricks, 2012). Utilization of social media There are huge variations of websites and social media applications, which makes it impossible to list all the possible variations. However, a simple social media formats are as follows, which are utilized by various organizations to fulfill their marketing needs. Blogs: Blogs were originally termed as “Web Blogs” that was used as a platform of personal reflection such as capturing personal interests, hobbies or family events, but was soon transformed into a platform that supported and helped in accomplishing business and professional goals. Although there are huge numbers of websites and blog software both paid and free, WordPress is the most flexible platform that offers blog especially for the purpose of marketing promotions. According to the records of WordPress, over 100 million people have downloaded their software in order to achieve their marketing goals. Micro-Blogs: Time demand, limited scope and short posting have become very popular among the users. The challenge of creating readable essays for the blogs has been made easier by designing short format outlets. The most prominent players and notable competitors in micro-blogging is My Space, Facebook, Twitter. Local and Mobile Search Engines: When a individual is searching for either an Italian restaurant or any local dry cleaner, from his or her Personal computer or mobile phone, then they will be directed to a site that shows the lists of business, which meets the search criteria and the area specified. It is a significant sales funnel and the major players in this field are Yelp, Yahoo Local, Bing, Google, who have created local business search engines that captures the growing search fields. It contains user generated contents, which makes these sites valuable for the online customers who often refer to this place for reviews. Customer Reviews everywhere: Most of the stores who have online businesses are seen to include features that provide support for sharing product reviews. For some of the sites frequent reviewers are given high prominence and can develop their own followers. For instance L.L. Bean and Amazon provide facilities of product review. Bookmarking Sites: For the individuals who are having a niche interest, bookmarking sites are of great interest. Bookmarking sites allows leveraging the knowledge of the like-minded people to discover businesses and websites catering to their common interest. StumbleUpon and Digg are examples of some prominent bookmark sites. Video: Videos have emerged as a new way of marketing promotion. Previously videos were related to family events or for similar type of purpose. But now many businesses are using videos to provide value added features of their product and services, such as marketing videos, educational podcasts and instructional videos. YouTube is a very common media in this field. Podcasts: Podcasts can range from videos through webcam to online radio, with their production values moving upwards in order to match the traditional broadcast standards. Both online Apple store and YouTube are the two players who offer podcasts. Photo sharing: Through this site one can post photos that will be visible to the whole world or can keep them limited to be accessible only to the family members and friends. Flickr is one of such site that allows posting of photos. Location Based Media: There are some social media applications that allows an individual to check in to a local bar or restaurant, which in turn will help in getting badges or rewards for frequent visits. In this way, the individuals can win big deals. One of the leading competitors in this field is Foursquare. Networking Sites: There is not limit in this digital age. It is not important that who is known to whom but the thing which is important is to whom one can link in order to get advancement in job. Such a scenario is truly applicable in case of LinkedIn, where the business professionals try to connect with their former associates and friends in order to boosts their career prospects. LinkedIn is a great place and source, which shows the miracle of Social media marketing. User Created Content Sites: There are certain sites that allow users to write articles, post essays, produce videos and review products on their websites. These types of sites allow the content creator to leverage the Web host’s existing high authority with Google and potentially reach a web audience that ranges into the millions (Wilson, 2010; Bodnar & Cohen, 2011). Web 2.0 Technology Web 2.0 is the term that refers to various types of applications or websites that allow an individual to create and share materials or information over the web. A chief element of this tool is that it permits the people to create, share, work together and interact with the rest of the world. Web 2.0 is significantly different from other types of websites that are available, since it does not requires any publishing skills or web designing knowledge to participate in this process. Thus, making it easier for the users to produce and share or publish their work to rest of the world. The nature of the technology is as such that it makes it a popular and easy way to communicate information to either a much wider group of people or to certain selected people only. Any organization can make use of this application in order to communicate with the staff, customers and other people. It can be proved to be an efficient way to communicate the existing as well as the potential customers. There are a large number of Web 2.0 applications such as content hosting services, podcasting, folksonomies, social networking, blogs and wikis. Some of the most popular websites are web 2.0 sites such as Flickr, Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube and MySpace (University of Melbourne, n.d.; Musser, n.d.; Anderson, 2007). Web 2.0 for the book store Web 2.0 has been a revolution that has opened doors for many avenues. All forms of business operations are impacted heavily by the web 2.0 application. In case of e-commerce, any organization that is dealing with online business should understand and realize the power of web 2.0 that can collaborate with the business and can create profitable results. Such type of collaboration can become the mutual touch point of all the stakeholders whether it is customers, business partners or employees of the business. This also assists in collecting cumulative information related to the services, products and people as well as it also facilitates the organization in designing new services and products. It also helps in decreasing the amount of time spent in searching resources that would provide information and eliminates data redundancy, which finally leads to reduction in overloading of information. Thus, there has been an increase in the availability of relevant data, delivering the key information to places where they can be utilized effectively and also alerting the recipients of such information regarding the availability and presence of the product or organization (Carter, 2007; Schlie, Rheinboldt & Waesche, 2011; Mohapatra, 2012). Book Bunker can utilise this technology and offer information related to their organization, product and services they offer to the rest of the world through the web portals. Web 2.0 technologies have increased the depth of the business that is offered via online sites. The Web 2.0 technologies has helped in creating web based services and communities such as blogs, wikis, social networking capabilities etc. Through this application Book Bunker can facilitate in collaborating, creativity and peer-to-peer sharing among the different users. Using the new and advanced technologies, such as Java, Flex, Flash, Adobe and Ajax, the organization can succeed in improving the experience of the users via the web based applications. The RSS feeds from wikis, blogs and other news sites can send information to the recipients via emails to the mobile phones or desktop. Web 2.0 can create huge impact on the business of Book Bunker. Through this technology, the organization can sell services and goods via online transactions, which can create satisfactory experiences among the customers. Through this technology, before the order is placed by the buyer, the terms of sales and the price are negotiated over the internet. During such online transactions the data only passes between the relevant parties such as the logistic partner, the supplier and the banker who issues the credit card. The transfer of data takes place via EDI networks, online integration systems and electronic mail. Thus, the data of the customers are fully secured. Book Bunker can even store this data and use it for future decision making. Using these data the sites can suggest what the customers can buy. Companies providing Social media The companies who provide such social media facilities are of great help to Book Bunker. They can mark their presence through these medium and conduct their online business. Following are names of the companies, whose applications can be used by Book Bunker to conduct their business. Table 1 Name of the Company Website Application applied to Book Bunker Wikis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki Wikis cover a specific topic under a certain subject area. It helps in searching and browsing. Book Bunker can include text, images, videos or film related to their store and business. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ In these social networking sites Book Bunker can create profile based on the services and products that they provide and share it with other users having a similar interest. Here also the organization can upload photos and video related to their business. MySpace https://myspace.com/ Orkut http://www.orkut.co.in/PreSignup Twitter https://twitter.com/ LinkedIn http://in.linkedin.com/ Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/ Meetup http://www.meetup.com/find/ Xing http://www.xing.com/ YouTube www.youtube.com The organization can upload the videos or their photos on these sites to make the people aware of their presence. Flickr www.flickr.com 5by5 Studios http://www.5by5.fi/en/studio Book Bunker can prepare podcast related to their business and share it over the web. These podcasts can be audio or video podcasts. WordPress http://wordpress.org/plugins/powerpress/ Liberated Syndication http://www.libsyn.com/ Generally Speaking Production Network http://gspn.tv/ Yelp http://www.yelp.com/ These are local business search engines that capture the growing search fields. If Book Bunker uses this local people will get to know about their book store. Yahoo Local http://local.yahoo.com/ Bing http://www.bing.com/ Google https://www.google.com Amazon http://www.amazon.com/ Book Bunker can make their books available to the users through these online stores too. These sites also accept regular reviews from the customers, which can be of great help in generating popularity. L.L. Bean http://www.llbean.com/ Recommendations Starting the online business along with making their offline business promoted through various mediums enhances the service performance, makes information available to the customers and increases the revenue of the business. The processing cost for the orders reduces, delivery becomes faster and the business can access multiple locations at the same time. Thus, it is highly recommended to Book Bunker to not only promote their business online but also conduct online business. The first and foremost thing that Book Bunker should implement in order to promote their business is to create their profile in the social as well as the professional networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn where they can posts photos and videos related to any event they have organized or any news related to launch of any new book can be also shared on these sites. When introducing any new book, Book Bunker can invite the author of the book for launching the same. The whole event can be captured and the video can be shared on YouTube and other video post casting sites in order to make create popularity of the store and make people aware of the store. Apart from online presence, Book Bunker will be also present physically in various parts of United States. In order to make the local people aware of their location, the organization can use Yelp, Yahoo local and Google. References Al-Deen, H.S.N. & Hendricks, J.A. (2012). Social media: Usage and impact. Maryland: Lexington Books. Anderson, P. (2007). WhatisWeb 2.0? Ideas, technologies and implications for education. Retrieved from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/techwatch/tsw0701b.pdf. Bodnar, K. & Cohen, J.L. (2011). The B2B social media book: Become a marketing superstar by generating leads with blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Email, and more. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. Carter, S. (2007). The new language of business: SOA & Web 2.0. New Delhi: Pearson Education. Mohapatra, S. (2012). E-Commerce strategy: Text and cases. Berlin: Springer. Musser, J. (n.d.). Web 2.0 Principles and Best Practices. Retrieved from http://oreilly.com/catalog/web2report/chapter/web20_report_excerpt.pdf. Newson, A., Houghton, D. & Patten, J. (2009). Blogging and other social media: Exploiting the technology and protecting the enterprise. England: Gower Publishing, Ltd., 2009 Powell, G., Groves, S. & Dimos, J. (2011). ROI of social media: How to improve the return on your social marketing investment. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. Roberts, M.L. (2002). Internet marketing. 3rd Ed. Connecticut: Cengage Learning. Schlie, E., Rheinboldt, J. & Waesche, N. (2011). Simply seven: Seven ways to create a sustainable internet business. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Tuten, T.L. (2008). Advertising 2.0: Social media marketing in a web 2.0 world. Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group. University of Melbourne. (n.d.). Wikis, Blogs & Web 2.0 technology. Retrieved from http://www.unimelb.edu.au/copyright/information/guides/wikisblogsweb2blue.pdf. Wankel, C. (2011). Educating educators with social media. London: Emerald Group Publishing. Wilson, S. (2010). Social media and small business marketing. Alberta: Sell Photos on IStockphoto. Zarrella, D. (2010). The social media marketing book. California: O'Reilly Media, Inc. Read More