The Role Of Social Media In Building Strong Customer Relationships: An Essay For A Pastry Shop.

Write a social media plan for a business you are involved in or would like to be involved in. 

Food delivery is now a part of any restaurant's plan, but given the volatile nature of any internet business, once one has acquired a customer base, he ought not to lose them. The problem, therefore, arises in acquiring the customer base (Taman 2014, p. 8). Most businesses use social media and social networking sites to build a customer base. A study conducted in 2010 predicted that social networking will overtake email by 2014 (Nezzy 2010, p.60).

A pastry chef friend of mine and I have been planning to start a pastry shop that also delivers. The idea is to build a strong customer base and a good customer relationship. Social networking is a key way to connecting with customers at all times and is argued by many to have an actual quantifiable advantage to a business. Social networking has become a quicker way to connect with clients. 40% of businesses have profitably used social platforms for business advancement as stated in a survey by Regus (Nezzy 2010, p. 60). Social networking good investment since the benefits, if used correctly can give competitive advantage to a business. For example, ROI Investments Ltd reports to have expanded its market share as a result of using social media. The company has enjoyed increased brand awareness as it constantly appears on social media creating awareness to the public and staff. The business as also improved reputation and relationship with benefits and personal development. 

Even though the use of social media like Facebook is hard to quantify given that the benefits are not usually direct or immediate, if you manage and balance the money spent with your expected returns, then Facebook will surely be worthwhile.  The use of Facebook only requires a good strategic social networking plan, a tier of management and a good user strategy control to ensure that user consciousness of the business view is sustained. Accomplishing these goals will surely deliver a tremendous advantage to the business as proven by organizations such as Amazon that have increased their performance due to the use of Facebook and other social media platforms Dyrud (2011). Our business intends to use Facebook and twitter to build a relationship and create awareness of the business. In 2009, a study was conducted in the U.S.A, where aggregate monthly users time was condensed into one hour, it was determined that 13.5 minutes was spent in social media, which doubled the time spent on gaming and tripple the time spent on email, (Luca 2016), which is quickly coming to be known as "old" technology. Whereas email and the internet brought new frontiers to our way of communicating, social networks have changed and are reshaping our lives, both professional and personal and our way of thinking. A research designed by Sparrow, Liu & Wegner (2011), it was concluded that humans have become cooperative with their computer tools and they have grown into an interconnected system that know here information can be found rather than to remember the information itself (Dyrud 2011). 

One-Month Social Media Content Plan

Our business realizes that Facebook has grown to be a technological robust with an unparalleled effect on the modern life (Smith 2017). When coupled with other platforms such as Twitter, they offer personal motivation and similarly a safety in number which gives the average person confidence in the product they are considering/ purchasing. Christopher Carfi, the founder of Cerado Inc., noted that in an organisation or a business, online social platforms with the average profiles of individual background, region and passion ( which are provided by all social networks) can help a great deal in problem-solving, (Kho 2007 p. 25). Social networks have the ability to selectively target a large and engaged user base; this makes them attractive to advertisers and business start-ups. Businesses primarily based on customer satisfaction, like our own, depend on social networks because of their C2C (customer to customer) feature, depending on the customer to recommend your product to another customer.

The business should consider using yelp review as well as Facebook. Brink-Drescher (2010) stated that there is so much time invested in creating connections, users will not want to do it all over again. Most people signing in for the first time prefer to use those sites with the greatest user database.From the launch of Facebook ten years ago, it has registered more than one billion users worldwide. Recently, Facebook has allowed users to set up a detailed profile including skills and  work experience and also invite any and all of their contacts. Taman (2014) denotes that these profiles can be viewed by anybody, which makes it easier to hire employees, search for functional expertise and expands the reach of the business. 

Today's social networks are client-based, users are tired of corporate websites, social platforms provide a shift from a business-based relationship to an alternative where the client is in control, and these interactions boost a flourishing business-client relationship (Haley 2010). Social media sites like Facebook provide a shortcut to other web-based sites like Linkedin which deliver business applications and in addition to that provide connections that previously occured while logged off into an online platform. Linkedin has introduced an answer feature where users exchange questions and answer in their online networks. Kay Luo, corporate communications director for LinkedIn, says that this feature soon will let all users to consult in the whole user database, which would allow hr management to use progressive search pools to find most capable.

Conclusion

Kirkpatrick (2011) denotes sites like Yelp offer users to review, rate and recommend services. Yelp allows people to refer to  reviews as well as create their own reviews. Once written, a review can be viewed for free by anybody (with or without an account). Consumer reviews are created by an abstract wiling reviewer who has no relationship whatsoever to the reader. Therefore, for a user to find the review helpful, they have to regard the review accurate, admissible and conceivable. This is done by certifying the aspect of the reviewer. Yelp does a reviewer credentialing program, in which they accredit reviewers with the most written reviews that has been regarded as helpful. The certified reviewers are called 'elite'. If an elite member reviews the reputation of a restaurant, then their review will have a large impact on the revenue for the restaurant. Yelp reviews have a large effect on revenue of independent restaurants (Kirkpatrick 2011). Yelp is clearly not the only reviewing website, but yelp leads in providing the majority of restaurants that consist of non-trivial number of reviews. Michael Luca proves that in Seattle alone yelp reviews 70% of the restaurants as compared to the Seatle Times which consist of even less restaurants as does their local journal Food& Wine. 

The business identifies Facebook as our major social networking site. As of November 2016, Facebook had a total user base for 1.86 billion monthly active users. Broken down by age is 18-29 (88%), 30-49 (84%), 50-64 (72%), and 65 and above (62%). Our business also hopes to attract more customers by showing the process of making the pastries by showing live video of the kitchen. Research by Pew research suggests that Facebook users view as much as 100 million hours of videos  on the Facebook platform every day (Brink-Drescher 2010 p. 116). Since the launch of Facebook Live, a recorded 700% increase in video views has been recorded with people spending three times as much time watching live stream than they spend on documented video. Using Facebook to collect data, the business intends to engage the user in live conversations to determine what they are interested in consuming (Haley 2011 p. 40). This can be done by conducting online polls. Finally, within the month, the business intends to start a blog with transactional, navigational and informational keywords to help navigate customers to the restaurant. Find the one-month social media content plan for the business.

In conclusion, social media has taken a key role in connecting many people across the globe, all over the world people are sharing their data online. Businesses involvement in social networking has helped ease the process of advertising and hiring. Companies are looking at social media because of its benefits such as increasing employee productivity, attracting, hiring and retaining top talent, improving the process of decision making and keeping vital corporate knowledge. It is clear that social networking is here to stay, that it brings with it good customer relations and improved organizational communication. Businesses are obliged to bring to bear their web-based customer base so that they present to them best possible services and produce high-quality goods that make it justifiable to the clients to keep coming back. 

List of References

Brink-Drescher, J 2010, 'Social Networking for Business: Choosing the Right Tools and Resources To Fit Your Needs', Library Journal, 135, 1, p. 116, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 25 April 2018

Dyrud, MA 2011, 'Social Networking and Business Communication Pedagogy: Plugging Into the Facebook Generation', Business Communication Quarterly, 74, 4, pp. 475-478, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 25 April 2018.

Haley, K 2008, 'Social networking in business', NZ Business, 22, 4, pp. 40-41, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 25 April 2018.

Kho, N 2007, 'Networking Opportunities: Social Networking for Business. (cover story)', Econtent, 30, 4, pp. 24-29, Education Full Text (H.W. Wilson), EBSCOhost, viewed 25 April 2018.

Kirkpatrick, D. 2011, 'The Facebook effect: The inside story of the company that is connecting the world. New York, NY' Simon & Schuster, EBSCOhost, viewed 25 April 2018.

Luca, M 2016, 'Reviews, Reputation, and Revenue: The Case of Yelp.com', working paper 12-016, https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/12-016_a7e4a5a2-03f9-490d-b093-8f951238dba2.pdf

Luca, Michael and Jonathan Smith, 2010. “Salience in Quality Disclosure: Evidence from The US News College Rankings,” working paper, viewed 25 April 2018.

Nielsen Company, 2010, 'What Americans do online: Social media and games dominate activity. nielsenwire' https://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/ online_mobile/what-americans-do-online-social-media-and-games-dominate-activity/, EBSCOhost, viewed 25 April 2018.

Nizzy, P 2010, 'Social networking for business: Risk or ROI?' 2010, NZ Business, 24, 8, pp. 60-61, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 25 April 2018.

Taman, T 2014, 'Social Media in the Workplace - Are We Nearly There?', Workforce Solutions Review, 5, 4, pp. 8-10, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 25 April 2018.