Social Media as a Business Communication Tool-Free-Sample for Student

Question: Discuss about the Use of Social media as a business communication tool. Answer: Introduction: The aim of paper would be to study the use of social media as a platform for business communication by the organisations. The business organisations use social media on large scale to communication with employees and customers. This use of social media has both disadvantages and disadvantages. The researcher would explore both the aspects from the side of the organisations and as well their employees and consumers. Impact of use of social media on employees of the companies: Leftheriotis and Giannakos (2014) state that social media has great impacts on the employees of organisations. The employees use social media as a platform to communicate with their superiors and peer in a semiformal way. This boosts communication among the employees in organisations and creates a sense of belonging to the company. Gibbs, Rozaidi and Eisenberg (2013) contradicts that social media also causes distractions among the employees and hampers their performances. This is because employees often misuse the social media to spread wrong messages and for unethical sharing of information. Advantages of use of social media among employees in organisations: The following are the advantages of employees using social media in organisations: Smooth communication and networking: Applications of social media in business organisations create a semi-formal environment, which enforces internal communication. The social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter enable employees to share information beyond work, which creates better understanding among them about each other. This enforces a sense of relatedness among the employees across departments and positions which boosts motivation and positive organisational culture (Aouragh, 2016). Innovation: Social media provides a platform for all the employees in the organisations to communicate with each other. This is more prevalent for the multinational companies who operate in multiple locations. The employees of various departments like research development and marketing can communicate with each other and exchange information. For example, a marketing manager of a company located in Europe can communicate with his colleague based on the US. This interaction can lead to generation of new ideas like new markets or new possible products. This analysis shows that social media interactions among employees of a company can lead to innovations (Lam, Yeung Cheng, 2016). Talent acquisition: Kaur et al. (2015) state that social media plays a very important role in organisations talent acquisitions and management roles. The companies today promote their brands and market positions on their social website pages. This helps them to enhance their employer brand image, which in turn enables them to attract more skilful and experienced human resources. Sparrow, Brewster and Chung (2016) state that organisations today regard their employees as a strategic advantage they seek to acquire and manage for business growth. Social media enables the employees of organisations to communicate information about new vacancies and job descriptions with hundreds of people acquaintances. The managers as a result are able to acquire appropriate candidates from among their acquaintances about whose eligibilities and experiences they know. This analysis shows that social media help organisations to acquire and manage employees. Disadvantages of use of social media by employees in organisations: The following are the disadvantages of use of social media on the job performances of employees in organisations: Distractions of employees: Brooks (2015) points out that social media has emerged as a major distraction to the employee concentration and hence hampering employee performances. The employees spend unnecessary time in surfing the social networking sites, which hampers their efficiency. This lowering of efficiency of individual employees impedes the high performance of the departments and ultimately the organisations as a whole. This has led to several organisations ban the use of mobile devices among the employees during office hours. Conflict between employer and employees: Excessive use of social media by employees during office hours has led to drastic fall in the performance of employees, which is creating conflict between the employers and employees. Several companies do not allow the employees to access social networking sites during office hours to prevent social networking sites from hampering their performances. McDonald (2014) contradicts this ban and states that some organisations offer training to their employees about Mobile device management to train them use the social networking sites responsibly. However, some employees view this training as a management intervention into the personal liberties and refuse to cooperate. These results in further conflicts between the employers and the employees, which make some employees, resign. Thus, excessive use of social media is resulting in organisational conflicts and high employee turnover. Unethical practices: Some employee use social media to share confidential business information with unauthorised persons which has become great concern for business organisations. The expanse of social media is so vast that no organisation can control spread of messages. Some employees use their personal social network accounts to share information without prior approval from seniors which is unethical and illegal (Gritzalis et al., 2014). Sharma, Khandelwal and Rathod (2014) add to the discussion and state that social networking sites add to the data theft in the multinational companies of today. The multinational companies hold a lot of data because they operate in multiple countries. Thus, when one employee shares data unethically on the social platform, it has manifold impact on the market image of the organisation. For example, the failure of the company to protect the confidential piece of data has detrimental effect on its market image. Thus, social media encourages unethical spread of data, which has devastating effect on the companies and their brand images. Impact of use of social media on customers of the companies: The social media today plays a very significant role in the business communication between business organisations and their customers. Similar to the employees of business organisations, social media plays very significant impact on the customers. Business communication between companies and their customers has both advantages and disadvantages. Advantages of using social media by companies to communicate with customers: The following are the advantages, which companies can enjoy by using social media to communicate with customers: Brand promotion: Business communication between companies and their customers using the social media help the companies to promote their brands. The multinational companies inform the consumers all over the globe about the new products and strategies (Turban, Volonino Wood, 2013). The number of followers of a company on the social media platform acts as an indication of the size of its consumer base in the market. The consumers on the other hand give their reviews about a particular product. These reviews and ratings help the companies to study consumer preferences while making product strategies. Thus, social media interactions with customers allow the companies estimate the brand equities of their products and make marketing plans accordingly. Earning revenue: The multinational companies today use the social media platforms like Facebook to advertise their products all over the world before millions of customers. This large-scale advertisement generates huge demand in the market. The multinational companies as a result are able to sell their products all over the world to earn huge revenue (Lartey, Antwi Boadi, 2013). Thus, social media provides a platform for the companies to promote their products and earn huge revenue. Liquidity and risk management: Social media helps companies to promote and sell their products globally, which in turn generates huge revenue and provides liquidity to their funds. The multinational companies today have to invest huge amount of capital to manufacture their products. The promotion of products worldwide enables these companies to earn robust profit. This allows them to recover their investments, which they can again channelize into production of goods. Thus, social media plays a significant role for the companies to earn huge return on their investments (McNeil, Frey Embrechts, 2015). The multinational companies today advertise their products on the social media sites and sell them, thus earning huge revenue. This huge revenue enables these companies to diversify their risks, which boosts of risk taking capacity (DeAngelo Stulz, 2014). Thus, social media indirectly strengthens the liquidity and the risk taking capacity of the companies. Disadvantages of use of social media to communicate with customers: Social media, when used by the companies as a tool of business communication with customers has the following disadvantages: Negative promotion of companies: Social media platforms of business communication give opportunities to negative promotion about companies, which affect their brand values devastatingly. As discussed above, the social networking sites like Facebook allow the companies to promote their goods. The platform can also be used by customers to give their feedbacks about the products in form of reviews and stars. The positive reviews are made available to millions of customers over the social networking space which establish the strong brand images of the companies before these customers (Turban, Volonino Wood, 2013). Similarly, negative reviews of customers can be viewed by millions of customers and repel them from buying products of companies (Pfeffer, Zorbach Carley, 2014). This analysis shows that social networking sites provide the platform for negative reviews, which result in companies losing their customers. Unethical practices: Unethical practices like spreading of fake news about the companies on the social media have impact on the companies. The unethical customers spread fraudulent news about various business strategies of the multinational companies. Such fake news also includes crucial business information like financial decisions of the company management bodies. These fake pieces of news spread very fast on the social media and have dire impact on the business organisations in the long run. For example, fake news about the business strategy of a company can result in investors withdrawing their investments. This would result in weakening of the long-term equity base and ultimately the financial strengths of the companies. Thus, unethical practices like spreading fake news on the social have devastating impact on the companies. Conclusion: The above discussion clearly reveals that social media plays an undeniably significant role in business communication of business organisations, their employees and their customers. The social media develops a semiformal environment, which promotes healthy communication and networking. It has even emerged to play a significant role in innovation and talent management. However, it is also capable of distracting employees and lowering organisational performance. Social media also provides platforms to promote products but can also lead to loss of market due to negative promotion. It can be recommended that the employees and the customers should use the digital platform ethically and responsibly. They should not use it to spread fake or confidential news about the company. References: Aouragh, M. (2016). Social media, mediation and the Arab revolutions.Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism, 482-515. Brooks, S. (2015). 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