Blog 3: Impact of Social Networking Sites on Businesses

                    Introduction 

Nowadays, Social networking sites have increased rapidly in popularity, as is the most popular online activity. For example, in 2016, 87% of Australians are using the internet every day, and Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat and Twitter are the most popular trafficked sites on the Internet as 95%, 31%, 24%, 22% and 19% (Sensis Social Media Report 2016 How Australian people and businesses are using social media, 2016). Social networks sites are defined as platforms of people for communicating online and socializing, professional interacting and exchanging information. Social networking sites also are a modern-day marketing way which industries and firms are using to promote their products and brand images, especially reaching and engaging to the large target market. Additionally, Industries and firms using social networking sites are increasing dramatically. For example, in 2016, there are 48% of small and medium Australian businesses and 79% of large businesses use social media as a marketing tool to communicate with their loyal customers and reach worldwide targeted consumers (Sensis Social Media Report 2016 How Australian people and businesses are using social media, 2016). Social networking sites are not only providing opportunities, but they were also providing challenges to marketers and business.

Literature Review

The development of social networking sites is providing many advantages to marketers and businesses for engaging and interacting with loyalty and potential customers, to develop and maintain meaningful relationships between business and customers promptly and at low cost (Vinerean, Cetina, Dumitrescu, & Tichindelean, 2013). Additionally, Social networking sites are an efficient technological platform for social interactions and exchanging information. They offer different values to businesses as facilitating word-of-mouth communication, increasing sales, sharing information business context, and improving brand reputation (Hajli, 2014). However, the transparency of social networking site has also provided challenges to marketers as User-Generated Content (UGC) and negative feedback. This is because, development of social media has given to customers more power about sharing information, their thought and opinions to their friends via the internet. For example, UGC allows social networking users to make comments in various forms such as photos, videos, podcast, ratings, reviews, articles, and blogs (Nadaraja, & Yazdanifard, 2013). Therefore, marketers are hard to control over contents which generated by users. Additionally, Negative feedback from consumers which are conducted through social networking sites can damage the businesses image and businesses sales. For instance, Nadaraja, & Yazdanifard, (2013) indicated that consumer-generated product review, images, and tags which as a valuable source of information for other customers, and users generated content have a high degree of trustworthy in other customers’ eyes.

Conclusion and Implications

Nowadays, Social networking sites have been developed rapidly, and it can be used anywhere with internet connections, it offers power to both customers and companies for communicating, exchanging information and generating content for online platforms. Therefore, Companies are utilizing social networking sites to improve their brand popularity and as a tool to reach out their worldwide target market, and consumers are playing a new role as User generate content and people who share their options, thoughts, and feedback online, instead of just consuming. As a result, the development of social networking sites is not only offering advantages but also it is providing disadvantages to marketers and business. For controlling the challenges, marketers need to consider involving the distribution of user-generated content through social media to control the content effectively. Moreover, marketers must manage social networks efficiently enough to immediately respond and neutralize negative or non-constructive feedbacks. Nadaraja, & Yazdanifard, (2013) have agreed main goals of using social networking sites of a firm is to engage customers, to keep its brand images safety, to offer good quality of product and service to satisfy customer needs.

            References:

Hajli, N. (2014). A study of the impact of social media on consumers. International Journal Of Market Research, 56(3), 387. http://dx.doi.org/10.2501/ijmr-2014-025

Nadaraja, R., & Yazdanifard, R. (2013). SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING: ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES (1st ed.). Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256296291_Social_Media_Marketing_SOCIAL_MEDIA_MARKETING_ADVANTAGES_AND_DISADVANTAGES?enrichId=rgreq-c63f5a71ca9ab7e11455336e459e59a0-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI1NjI5NjI5MTtBUzo5OTkwMzM0MjY0NTI1OUAxNDAwODMwMjIxMzEx&el=1_x_2&_esc=publicationCoverPdf

Sensis Social Media Report 2016 How Australian people and businesses are using social media. (2016) (1st ed.). Melbourne. Retrieved from https://www.sensis.com.au/asset/PDFdirectory/Sensis_Social_Media_Report_2016.PDF

Vinerean, S., Cetina, I., Dumitrescu, L., & Tichindelean, M. (2013). The Effects of Social Media Marketing on Online Consumer Behavior. International Journal Of Business And Management, 8(14). http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ijbm.v8n14p66