The Impact Of Social Network On Business Growth: Benefits And Drawbacks Essay. (70 Characters)

Benefits of Social Network in Business

Discuss About The Decision Making Process Social Media Usage.

Social Network has become essential for the business growth as it facilitates to increase the revenues of the companies. It provides facilities to million people all over the world to interact with each other which increase the opportunity of growth in the business. Social network in business brings huge opportunities for the potential customers. The impact of advantages and disadvantages are dependent on the point of view of the customers and the followed techniques by companies. In the context of social media marketing, it focuses on people instead of products because the products of the company can be showed by adopting various qualitative features along with promotional tools. The really matters for the company is the comments and appreciations which are provided by the customers. The content is provided by people which being the cause of scary social network marketing and challenging for marketers. The benefits of social network in business will be elaborated in this research to provide the better understanding about the role of it in the growth of business. However, there are some negative factors of social networks that may influence the growth of the business significantly but it can be resolved by implementing various strategies to prevent them.

The objective of this research is to analyze the various factors of social network that influence the growth of the business. The key objective is defined below:

• To explore the impact of various factors of social networks that influences the growth of the business.
• To evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of social media in the businesses.
• To improve the better understanding of business benefits of social network.

The scope of this research topic is wide as it entails various factors that affect on businesses’ growth adversely or favourably. The better understanding will be made due to effectiveness of literature review. The social media has potential to increase the growth and success of business in an adequate manner. This section will comprise number of benefits and drawbacks of using social networks in business.

As per Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy and Silvestre, (2011), the social network can be explained in the term of platforms as it promotes the social interactions between various individuals. The business has changed rapidly due to amendments in the psychology that is why it is required for the business to adopt social networking strategy in improving the selling proportion of the business in a significant way. There are many organizations in the world that using social networking for different purposes such as attract to customers, increase the sales, make them aware about the products and many more. Social networking is being taken in use in the business for making better relationship with the customers for a long period. As per Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy and Silvestre, (2011), it has acted like drivers that enforce business to expand its operation all over the world.

Drawbacks of Social Network in Business

According to Aral, Dellarocas and Godes, (2013), the role of social networking is huge in the growth of business by providing growth and success. Along with that social networking facilitated in decreasing the efforts included for communicating with the various individuals of the society. There are number of social networking platforms such as YouTube, Skype, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and many more that used by various businesses for enhancing their performance. There are number of opportunities have been provided by social network to enhance the growth of the business. Social networking platforms have increased the level of information within the organization that facilitates business to communicate in an effective manner with others.

It has been found that the businesses are become capable to present themselves in the front of the community or society in sophisticated manner. The functions of promotional activities are carried out over social networking platforms due to its potential of decreasing the costs, efforts and time. There are many organizations that use social networking to attract number of customers for example Oreo that promote its product by adopting latest and interesting stories on social sites that attract customers towards purchasing the product. The hash tag is being used by this company for fun activity and motivating the involvement of consumers as well as potential customers (Vahl, 2014). It has been argued by Oyza & Edwin (2015), that social media has some negative impact over the business due to its open platform where people are free to comment and give feedback. For instance, Dell is well known company of manufacturing laptops and computers but due to ineffective quality in products, customer of the company posted bad comment on the website of Dell in which number of customers commented with their stories. Dell’s performance was quite good and calm and that situation company preferred to stay neutral and the company offered a repayment and a new computer to the customers.

It has been found from the research of Sarker, Ahuja,Sarker and Kirkeby, (2011), that more than 90 percent of market experts claimed that social media enlarges revelation of an organization. Social networking can decrease the time as well as resource spent by from multinational to small companies on marketing. There are various advantages of marketing like expansion of brand awareness, cost effective and customer satisfaction.

The business visibility and be increased by using a social networking marketing. The organization has become capable to define its strategy by using various promotional tolls over social networking. The online selling of the products can increase the ratio of potential customers (Kumar and Bansal, 2008).  The customer satisfaction is being improved with the help of social networking because today’s customers are free to post the query regarding the products on social networking where they get instant solution from the company, this strategy maintain the god relationship between customer and company. The most advantageous factor of social networking is reduction of unnecessary cost because due to social networking a company does not have to pay mediator which save the mediator cost and customers get products at reasonable price. Manthiou (2012), mentioned that there are number of companies that have used the social networking for attaining the goals of the company. These organizations are entailed Old Spice, Netflix, Staples, Pampers and many more that used these strategies to promote its product online. The specific promotion strategy is being used by these companies to attract number of customers. There is another example of fast food chain of Wendy’s, that used social media to make the well known image of the brand in the mind of the customers so that whenever they go anywhere, they prefer to have fast food of this restaurant.

Conclusion

Another advantages of social networking according to Stephen and Galak, 2012), is communications as it is able to increase the effectiveness of it between suppliers, clients and employees. The business contacts are increased with the help of social networking as it helps in linking various businesses to other businesses. Along with that there are some applications that help in improving the communication. These applications involve Socialists, Slack and Yammer that are being used by many organizations to enhance the security of internal communication. According to Lanubile, Ebert, Prikladnicki& Vizcaino 2010), the software of communication presents the amenities such as, easy life allocation and many more to increase the efficiency of employees. Apart from these advantages, it has been evaluated that companies can increase their sales by adopting the social networking strategy. E-commerce enables many businesses to import or export products from any country. The online shopping business is become the trend of today’s era in which number of people are engaged to do so. According to Robischon (2017) Amazon is largest electronic commerce all over the world that provides products and services of every sector at one platform. These facilities attract number of customers towards it as it provides gifs voucher as well which can be given by one relative to other on special occasion. To make the world digital, online shopping has huge role. It has been found that the revenue of Amazon was US$135.98 billion in 2016 and numbers of products are being sold by this company on peak season.

Every coin has two aspects in which one show the positive part and another is negative part and same condition is applied with the social networking. There are several drawbacks of social networking that become the hurdles for the growth of  the business in which cyber crimes, hacktivitism, daily monitoring, false advertising  and security issues are included. It has been found from the study that hacking process has attained the unauthorised access to information in system. There are number of cyber attackers who hack the system and gather the sensitive data for their benefits. In the paper of Collins, (2008) described hacking can be increased due to ineffective use of social networking in the business that can hamper the personal data of the employees in the organization. The organizations have to invest high amount in firewalls or security to avoid hacking. There are so many companies all over the world that are facing issues and become the victim of hacking such as HBO, Ashley Madison, Sony, JP Morgon and many more. The hit popular series of episodes of Game of Thrones of HBO was leaked for which company had to face huge loss. The cyber hackers leak the information of the company such as bank information and passwords (Culnan, McHugh, and Zubillaga, 2010).

It has been apparent that almost every companies of all over the world using social network for enhancing its growth appropriately, it is required for the businesses to check the social media accounts of the business as well as individual many times in a day because customer satisfaction is vital for the company and bad comments can be posted by competitors on the wall of the social media to decrease the image of the company in the view of customers. As per Rosenblatt, (2015), there can be insider risk which developed by inside person. There is an example of Morgon Stanley which shows the inside attack on the company, there was employee in the company who leaked the information and it has been found that these kinds of attacks could not be stopped by companies. It is required for the company to make the clear strategy for social networking. The role of social networking is huge in making reputation and spoil image of the company. It has been found that giant player such as Coca-Cola adopted wrong social strategy and promote the products of its company by covering the Russian Map with snow, in such situation, Russians get angry and started to pour the soft drink of this company. This advertisement has become the reason of not buying the products of this company in Russian market (Ciprian, 2015). Investment in huge amount on security software and firewalls should be done in an efficient manner to secure the social media accounts. The cost of company on this software is not limited up to installation but it has to be maintained by updating time to time. An average company invest on cyber security around $15 million which is quite expensive. It has been stated by Gartner, the investment of the companies on cyber security software has reached around $90 billion in 2017. It will be expected that it will reach around $113 billion by 2020. (Muresan, 2017).

However, there is various negative influences of social networking on the growth of business due to not following proper strategy but it can be seen that social networking are helpful to make aware people about the latest information about the business. It covers the huge area of marketing in fewer periods and provides the opportunity to those who are not enough educated and want to do business without going anywhere.  According to Qualman, (2010), this platform is being the reason of increasing employment as women are doing online business at home with the help of social networking. Along with that it provides the freedom to many customers to reveal their opinions about the products and services used by them which help company to get know about the view of customers. This platform can be used by the businesses to encourage customers for buying the services and products. There are various issues of social networking but it can be resolved in an adequate manner by considering the various factors such as regular update about the comments of the customers and take care of the social and emotional value of the people before uploading the products and quotation on the wall of the business. These things help business to enhance the trust of customers on the services of the businesses which increase the growth of it significantly.

In the context of gap analysis, it has been found that this research can cover information about several social networking sites. The discussion can be made on the opportunities of this platform for the growth of the business. However, advantages of social networking sites have been discussed in concise manner. It has been stated by Tat (2014), that traditional methods of shopping are being used by many customers that still have the same potential towards the growth of the business. It becomes the reason of distraction of customers towards the social networking platforms which outcome in wastage of endeavour of the business. There is an example of British Gatastrophe who asked about the analysis of the customers on the platform of social mdia after increasing teh price. This wrong stratgye of his brought the adverse situation for it and it had to face criticism from the customeers on the platforms of social networking (Kelley, 2013). It has been analyzed by consdering the various examples of difefrent companies on social networking that the use of social netwokring should be done in an effecint manner as it provides huge growth in the business and incorrect use of it may bring the adverse situation for the company.

Conclusion

It can be concluded that the role of social networking is essential in the enlargement of the business as it has the potential to bright future of the business. The discussion has been made regarding benefits and drawbacks of the social networking in the growth of the business. The business performance of the company can be increased with the help of using effective strategy of social networking but inappropriate strategy of it can distract the attention of the customers towards the products and services of the company. It is necessary for the company to make clear strategy regarding the usage of social networks. It has been elaborated under this research paper that the world is getting closed day by day and everyone around the world want to connect with more people. The role of social media in that strategy is huge as it helps in connecting people which increase the opportunities for the business in a proper way. With the help of this research topic, “the connection between cyber bullying and social media” and “the impact of social media policies in the workplace” can be highlighted for further research proposal assignment.

References

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