Impact Of Social Media On Contemporary Business Communication: An Essay.

Traditional vs contemporary business communication

Question:

Discuss about The Impact of Social Media on Contemporary Business Communication ?

Communication is an integral part of organizations, as it assists in communicating vital organizational information regarding the products or services with the stakeholders (Aral, Dellarocas and Godes 2013). The study will discuss the impact of social media on contemporary business communication. The study will also select an example of suitable business organization, which uses social media platform in its business communication. The study will also highlight some examples through which the organization is utilizing social media channels for its business communication.

Business communication is the way of communicating vital business information with the internal as well as external stakeholders of the organization. It is used for promoting the products or service of an organization towards the commercial benefits of the organization. In the early days, the business communication was quite different from contemporary business communication. According to Trainor et al. (2014), traditional business channels are mostly included publications, billboards, face-to-face, radio and television and telephones. However, most of the business communication channels are able to target limited numbers of organizational stakeholders. Hajli (2014) opined that traditional communication channels are also having lack of timeliness towards reaching the valuable information to the right audience.

Over the last 20 years, the ways of business communication has completely changed. With the advancement in technology, modern business organizations are more willing to communicate with the customers personally. High competition in the market has raised the requirement of speed in business communication for beating the market competition. Moreover, personal information about the target audience is more accessible on the internet. In this extent, the concept of social media has come in the business operation and communication of the contemporary business. Contemporary businesses are more inclined to interact with the customers towards understanding their dynamic changes in their needs and demands (Ngai, Tao and Moon 2015). Moreover, with the globalization nature of the business, the contemporary businesses are more likely to reach timely and valuable information to the global customers and stakeholders.

Social media has become an integral part of almost every people in the world in their daily life. Paniagua and Sapena (2014) opined that the mobile-based and web-based technology of social media allows the contemporary business towards interactive communication with the customers. Rather than mere information sharing, social media allows the contemporary businesses towards enhancing customer relationship. With the interactive nature of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, the customers can easily share their feedbacks regarding the specific products or services. Hence, the organizations can understand the customer perspectives of their products or services. In this way, the organization can customize their products or services as per the needs of the customers towards gaining competitive advantage. On the other hand, Tsimonis and Dimitriadis (2014) opined that this communication medium also allows wide customer reach worldwide in a fraction of second, as social media platform is used by huge people in the world. It can also minimize the advertising cost of the contemporary businesses through positive word of mouth in social media platform.

Benefits of using social media for business communication

As per Gensler et al. (2013), social media channels allow the customers to share interesting image, important links and information about their preferred products with each others. In this way, contemporary businesses are more effective towards better promotion of their products or services. It can also be used for enhancing the customer base of the organization through electronic word of mouth on this platform.  

With the growing needs of beating competitive pressure of market, contemporary businesses face challenges in terms of speed in business communication. It is also a challenge for the global business to maintain timeliness in business communication. According to Tsimonis and Dimitriadis (2014), social media platform allows the business organizations towards communicating the products features in few seconds. On the other hand, Huang, Baptista and Galliers (2013) opined that business organizations have no control over the communication of the customers. Often, the negative feedback provided by the customers regarding a specific product or services can bring disastrous impact on the business operation.

With the decentralized nature of workplace management in global businesses, the organizations often face communication issues in the employee engagement. According to Huang, Baptista and Galliers (2013), social media platform allows the business to create strong employee network through sharing important organizational information. However, Wagner, Vollmar and Wagner (2014) opined that employee may share confidential information about the organization, which is actually not intended to promote. It can causes security breaches for the organizational information, which can lead to damage to the organization.

Contemporary businesses are having wide customer groups. They are to deal with wide range of customers in daily basis. In such situation, the contemporary businesses face huge challenges in maintaining personal relationship with wide range of customers. According to Gensler et al. (2013), social media platform has enhanced the customer interaction ability of the contemporary business. Hence, the organizations are highly capable of identifying the customer issues and resolving those immediately towards maintaining good relationship with them. On the other hand, Paniagua and Sapena (2014) opined that the cost per interaction in social media is practically zero. Hence, the web is getting more and more spams and irrelevant information. In this way, the contemporary businesses are facing it hard to communicating the informative message with the target audience to resonate.

Coca-Cola Amatil can be considered as the suitable example of organization, which effective use social media for communicating with its global customers. The organization post interactive and attractive images and videos on Facebooks and YouTube regarding their special products (Ngai, Tao and Moon 2015). Moreover, along with the images and videos, the organization also shares the important information regarding the products on the social media channels. In this way, social media can effectively promote the products of this organization. On the other hand, positive feedback posted against the product image of videos can actually foster customer attraction towards increasing product sales. On the other hand, the organization also shares some useful links reading the product discounts and offers on its Twitter account (Treem and Leonardi 2013). It helps the customers to get useful and attractive product information in terms of discounts and offers. In this way, social media has huge effective on the organization towards enhancing customer loyalty.

Apart from only sharing the organizational information, Coca-Cola also uses social media platform for establishing personal relationship with the customers. The organization asks the customers regarding any changes, which they want to include in the products for the improvement. It enhances customer value by providing more value to the suggestion of the customers. In this way, the organization is quite capable of building personal relationship with the customers and maintaining customer loyalty (Paniagua and Sapena 2014). Moreover, through incorporating the unique customer suggestion in the products, the organization is quite capable of gaining competitive edge over the rival organizations.

Conclusion

While concluding the study, it can be said that social media goes beyond just sharing organizational information to the customers. In this competitive business world, organizations have high needs to provide useful information to the customers in timely manner. Social media is an effective way of offer detailed useful information to the customers and getting reply of those customers. Apart from that, contemporary businesses are also quite capable of building strong personal relationship with the customers. Coca-Cola Amatil is effectively using social media platform towards enhancing its customer loyalty and customer base. Customer feedback on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube act as positive word of mouth for the organization towards attracting the customers.

Reference List

Aral, S., Dellarocas, C. and Godes, D., 2013. Introduction to the special issue—social media and business transformation: a framework for research. Information Systems Research, 24(1), pp.3-13.

Gensler, S., Völckner, F., Liu-Thompkins, Y. and Wiertz, C., 2013. Managing brands in the social media environment. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 27(4), pp.242-256.

Hajli, M.N., 2014. A study of the impact of social media on consumers. International Journal of Market Research, 56(3), pp.387-404.

Huang, J., Baptista, J. and Galliers, R.D., 2013. Reconceptualizing rhetorical practices in organizations: The impact of social media on internal communications. Information & Management, 50(2), pp.112-124.

Ngai, E.W., Tao, S.S. and Moon, K.K., 2015. Social media research: Theories, constructs, and conceptual frameworks. International Journal of Information Management, 35(1), pp.33-44.

Paniagua, J. and Sapena, J., 2014. Business performance and social media: Love or hate?. Business horizons, 57(6), pp.719-728.

Trainor, K.J., Andzulis, J.M., Rapp, A. and Agnihotri, R., 2014. Social media technology usage and customer relationship performance: A capabilities-based examination of social CRM. Journal of Business Research, 67(6), pp.1201-1208.

Treem, J.W. and Leonardi, P.M., 2013. Social media use in organizations: Exploring the affordances of visibility, editability, persistence, and association. Annals of the International Communication Association, 36(1), pp.143-189.

Tsimonis, G. and Dimitriadis, S., 2014. Brand strategies in social media. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 32(3), pp.328-344.

Wagner, D., Vollmar, G. and Wagner, H.T., 2014. The impact of information technology on knowledge creation: An affordance approach to social media. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 27(1), pp.31-44.