Social Media Technology Essay Example for Free

Social Media Technology Essay 1.0Introduction Bhanot (2012) defined social media technology as the â€Å"media for social interaction that can be used in web based and mobile technologies†. In addition, web based and mobile technologies can make the communication into interactive conversation. The most popular social media among the users are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and so on. Besides, the social media technology is not for the public users to interact other user only but the social media technology provides internal social media to the organizations such as Salesforce. com (Andzulis et al., 2012). Social media is a new trend in this era. It is because social media is an easy way to get information, knowledge, news and others that useful to the users than conventional media such as newspaper, magazines and so on. In addition, the information in the social media is not expensive and easily to access compared than the conventional media (Bhanot, 2012). The statistic shows that the users of the social media had been increased year by year. Facebook has more than 175 million users that are registered in 2009 but has been increased to 845 million users that are registered while Twitter has over 465 million users that are registered. According to Kaplan and Haenlien (2010), the history of social media was starting 33 years ago. In 1979, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis from Duke University had been created â€Å"Usenet† which is social media that allowed users to post public messages. Besides, Bruce and Susan Abelson had created â€Å"Open Diary† which is an early social media. The â€Å"Open Diary† is a community of the online diary writers. Social media technology is closely related to Web 2.0 and user-generated content. According to Kaplan and Haenlien (2010), Web 2.0 is a platform where the social media is evolving. Web 2.0 allows the users to interact and collaborate among the users in social media. Web 2.0 is the platform where the users can share the information with other users and the other users can continuously edit or modified the information. According to Constantinides and Fountain (2008), Web 2.0 is a collection of open-source which has the knowledge and market power of the users in business and social process and Web 2.0 allow the users to share, disseminate and editing the informal content. User generated content is refer to media contents in the media technologies. Web 2.0 allows creation and exchange of user-generated content in a virtual community. Web 2.0 can be classified into five main categories which are blogs, social network, communities, forum / bulletin boards and content aggregators (Constantinides Fountain, 2008). Nowadays, the business method has been changed compared than the traditional method which is face to face in selling or buying. The world has been changing and technology was evolved. The method of business change into a virtual selling or virtual buying compared than traditional business method. In this information technology era, organizations are regularly to make their business using internet or online network. There are two types of business that use the internet or online network as a medium for running their business which is an electronic business (E-Business) and E-Commerce. E-Commerce is the process of buying and selling of product or services that use the internet or online network. E-Business is like E-commerce but E-business is more than E-Commerce. E-Business is not just buying and selling product or services using the internet but E-business are the wide perspective of E-Commerce. E-Business includes servicing the customer, cooperating with business partner, supply chain management, and process with electronic transaction. Nowadays, organizations are trying to identify the new way to maximize their profit using social media technology platform. The behaviour of the workers and the managers to maximized profit can be changed with the use of social media technologies (Turban Volonino, 2012). Social media technology can help organizations to maintain and improve competitiveness in the industry (Levin, Hansen, Laverie, 2012). In addition, social media are use by wide area of business includes human resources, supply chain management, marketing and sales and others area that used social media technology (Turban Volonino, 2012). The organizations also can use the social media technology to their marketing research plans. Nowadays, many organizations have realized the usefulness of the social media technology in running their business and they try to adapt this new technology slowly. According to Andzulis et al. (2012), the Ford Motor had hired 40 employees that are social media practitioners to promote their new car model which is Ford Focus. The employees had been given opportunity to drive test the car and the video have been uploaded in Facebook and other social media website. 2.0Risks of Social Media Technology in Business Enterprise The organizations or firms must understand the risk in using social media technology in their business. The risk using social media as a platform in business is greater than a business that uses traditional ways (Boz Unal, 2011). There are many hidden risks in using social media and the organization should realize the risks of the social media before implement it. The organization must realize that the employees can abuse the social media technology with access to their favourite social media and chatting all the time with their friends. From the recent research, 76 percent of the respondents had access their Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter at least once a day (Dutta, 2012). Some organization had blocked the social media and sacking their employees when the employees had been caught because of accessing the social networking sites at work. By blocking the social media make the employees cannot get the information and knowledge that are required in their job. In addition, the employees cannot access the social media communities and the employees cannot share and received any information, knowledge or experience in the social media. Thus, the productivity in the organization can be decreased. The risk that can make negative impact to the organization is when people start to say the negative or untrue things about the organization. People are easily trust to the untrue things from the unreliable source. According to Boz Unal (2011), word of mouth is the influential thing and its become more influential to the people in the social media technology. The customer or the competitor may review the organization in negative writing about their product or their services. For example, people give their negative opinion about Proton and their car new model which is Proton Preve in the social media network. A picture of Proton Preve was uploaded in the social media. The picture is about the people that are not satisfied with the quality of this car. Furthermore, this issue discussed on the forums on the website and many of them give negative opinions about the quality of this car. This may affect the persons decision whether to buy that car or not. Indirectly, this may affect the organization in terms of sales or profit. The other risk of the social media technologies is the sharing information with other users on social networking sites (Boz Unal, 2011). Besides, the employee may make a mistake by giving their opinion about their organization in social media. The confidential information about the organization can be leaked when the employees share their opinions in the social media. Besides, the competitor can learn the relationship between the clients and the organization (Giamanco Gregoire, 2012). The competitor will know the early-stage opportunities and try to snatch the client from the organizations. 3.0Productivity of Work by Using Social Media Technology One of the power using social media is the social media technology can enhance productivity in business enterprise. Using social media technology such as Facebook or twitter can enhance productivity among the employee by sharing the knowledge and experiences. The knowledge that the employees get from the social media can help others employees to solve problems (Iyer et al., 2011). From the research that had been conducted, the employees used the social media at work are objectively to support their organization’s goals and build up the name of their organizations (Dutta, 2012). After that, a research had been conducted, 72 percent of organizations are using social media as medium in their business and 90 percent of the organizations had reported that they had benefited by using social media technology (Social Media Enhances Productivity, 2012). This result can be a sign that the social media can be a channel to communicate among the employees. From Dutta (2012), the advantage using social media is easy to access to the information because of the speed to get the information had been increased It is because the social media can save time to seek information and then can enhance productivity in the workplace. Besides, the social media such as Twitter can help the employees to choose an alternative way to go to the offices when there is a traffic jam. This can help the employees to go to the office on time and indirectly can enhance the productivity of the organization. The relationship with the customer can be built by using social media technology (Iyer et al., 2011). This will help the organizations to analyse and learns the problems of the products or services when the customer tells their experience when using the products or the services. After that, the organizations will know the customers experiences when using the organization’s products or services. The relationship can make the customer loyal to the organizations. It is because with a strong relationship between customer and the organization, the customers will satisfied with the products of the services of the organizations. Furthermore, in the customer service department, the social media technology can save cost and time the organizations and the customer. The customers just use their social media such as Facebook to ask question or make a complaint about the product or the services. The customer does not waste their time to meet the customer service face to face but the customer services can answer or explain the customer problem easily using social media technology. For example, Celcom Axiata Berhad is a Malaysia’s mobile telecommunication company that uses this social media channel to interact with their customers. Celcom Axiata Berhad had two types of online customer service which is on their website and in their Facebook. Celcom customer services can answer directly to inquiries from the customer using their online customer service. By using social media technology, Celcom customer services spend less time answering calls from the customer. In addition, the Celcom customer services can reduce their time to read and composing email by using social media technology. From the research that had been done, the customer service can reduce 25 to 30 percent of their time by answering emails from the customer (Bughin, Chui, Manyika, 2012) and can free their time by 7 to 8 percent to do other works (Social Media Enhances Productivity, 2012). 4.0Social Media Technology as the Promotion and Marketing Strategy Normally, the conventional advertising is in one way conversation (Wetsch, 2012). Nowadays, it has been changed in the advertising on the social media. Advertising on the social media can allow two ways conversation compared than conventional advertising that involve one way conversation only. The customer can give their opinion straight forward to the organization about the advertising using social media technology. The customer can communicate directly to the organization about the promotion or advertising (Mangold Faulds, 2009). Today, the organization had realized the benefits using social media technology. Social media technology is the new marketing for the organization to reach the communities of customers that they are targeting. Instead of that, the organization had used social media strategy in their marketing plan. According to Boz and Unal (2011), it is a powerful strategy when the organizations use social media platform to promote the organization business. Nowadays, many organizations use social media technology to promote their new products or new services. The organization use social media to promote their business because it can save a lot of money and can save time. Before this, the organizations promote their business or advertising their business in mass media such as television, radio, newspaper, magazine and others. The advertising or promotions that use mass media actually more costly compared than using social media. Besides, the advertisings that use television, radio, newspapers and magazine is not really relevant anymore in this modern era. For example, Al-Ikhsan use Facebook platform to promote their new products. Recently, Al-Ikhsan had their warehouse sales and they use social media technology to tell the people about the warehouse sale. Thousands of people were coming to the Al-Ikhsan warehouse sales. This situation occurs because the customers have wide access to the information by using social media (Mangold Faulds, 2009). Besides, the word of mouth communication is the most powerful thing in social media to influence someone. The users of social media have the capability to tell hundreds of the people at the same time. Face to face communication and mouth of word communication had less impact compared than social media (Mangold Faulds, 2009). This will be the proof how the social media technology can successfully help the organization to make publicity and their promotions. 5.0Recommendations The organizations must have a backup plan to prepare the risks in implementing social media technologies in their business. The organizations must not avoid using social media technologies in their business because of the risks. But, they should think to overcome this problem. In addition, a social media technology gives many benefits to an organization and it can maximize the profit and revenues of the organization. There are several recommendations to the organization to overcome the problems of risk in using social media technology and to improve organizations reputation. The organization should develop a strategic planning to overcome this problem. The organization should understand how to interact with customer or clients when using the social media. It is because the reputation can be affected by how the organization interact with the social media. Besides, the organization should advise their employees to communicate ethically and show respect to others when using social media technology. The organizations can enhance their employee’s productivity by using social media as a platform to interact with their customers. The organization should improve the system of customer services using the social media so that the productivity can be enhanced. The productivity can be increased when the employees gave their feedback quickly to the customers that ask a question in social media. The customers will satisfied and they felt that they are appreciated by the organization. So, the customers will be loyal to the organization. The communication will be improved between the organization and the customer when the organizations implement the social media technologies as the platform to approach their customers. The social media are new channel to make promotions or to advertise a business. The cost to advertise in mass media is actually higher and very expensive. The organization should consider using social media as a new channel to promote their business. It is because the cost is very cheaper than using mass media to promote their business. Besides, the organization can directly interact with the customer and can directly ask the customer opinion. When the organizations use the media mass as the channel to promote their business, they do not know how the readers or the viewers respond when seeing their advertisement. Thus, the organization must realize the advantages using social media as the channel in promoting their business compared to other channels. The organization should analyse whether the social media are successfully implemented or not. Besides, the organization can analyse their target market using social media platform. The preferences of the customer can be accessed easily with social media technology. Thus, the organization would understand the preference of their customer. In addition, the organization enables to get new market target and stay focused to the existing target market. It is important to build the relationship with the customer. In return, the customer would be loyal to the organization and try to promote to their family and friends when they are satisfied with the services of the organization. Instead of analysing the customers, the organization should analyse about their competitor and their competitor target market. It is useful information to make the organizations survive in the business and to maximise profit and the revenues of the organization. The important thing is the organization should make su re that social media aligned with the goal, objectives and vision of the organization. 6.0Conclusion In the information technology era, the users of the social media had increased year by year. Thus, the organizations should use this opportunity to implement the social media in business. Furthermore, social media is the important platform for an organization to survive in the business. Many organizations had been realized the importance of social media in their business and they try to implement social media technology in their business. The traditional method in business is not relevant anymore in this modern era. The organization cannot ignore the how powerful the social media technology because the social media contain the knowledge, information and experience of the people. All the information can be sought in the social media and it is faster to get the information. Besides, the social media give many benefits to the organization compared to conventional media. The benefits using social media technology include in recruitment, customer relationship, enhance the organization productivity, enhance decision making among the employees and in the marketing plan of the organization. But, the organization should realize the risk in using social media. The organizations must have a backup plan to prepare the risks in implementing social media technology in their business. The organizations must not avoid using social media technology in their business. Thus, the organization should develop a strategic plan to avoid the risk. The risk using social media just like a small part but the organization can get a huge of return by using the social media technology. References Andzulis, J. M., Panagopoulus, N. G., Rapp, A. (2012). A Review of Social Media and Implications for the Sales Process. Journal of Personal Selling Sales Management, Vol XXXII, No. 3 , 305-316. Bhanot, S. (2012). Use of Social Media by Companies to Reach their Customer. SIES Journal of Management,Vol. 8 (1) , 47-55. Boz, M., Unal, D. (2011). Successful Promotion Strategy in Destination Tourism Marketing Through Social Media; Queensland, Australia Case. Regional Science Conference with International Participation , 467-472. Bughin, J., Chui, M., Manyika, J. (2012). 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