WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA?
• Social media describes online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other.
Why does the social web matter to the contact center?
Your customers are talking about their experiences and opinions of you—to other customers and prospects. Social media sites like Face-book and Twitter have drawn a critical mass of consumers. Their comments about your products and services are easily shared and visible to more and more people which can carry a lot of influence. In short, the social web empowers everyone to be an author. Social media has emerged as a prominent platform in the Web revolution and has a direct impact on how companies engage with their
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Contact centers can find and engage super users in order to get feedback, tap into ••customer expertise, crowd source incidents, and thereby reduces the contact center’s workload and creates word of mouth marketing.
BARRIERS TO ENGAGEMENT WITH SOCIAL MEDIA
• Despite this growth and success, there are barriers to engagement with social media, which tend to be similar to obstacles to using the Internet more generally. Understanding and confidence in using technology, access to technology and attitudes to learning all have implications for the degree to which people use social media. In the UK, 19 million households had access to the Internet in 2011 – about 77 per cent of the population. Those that didn’t have access cited a number of reasons, including the cost of equipment (19 per cent) and a lack of skills (21 per cent).3 Language can also impact on Internet usage, but especially on the use of social media, where users are required to not just access information but add content
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There is a wealth of research about the ways in which print and broadcast media shape attitudes. Mass media can influence an individual’s opinions about other groups, especially minorities and particularly where there is little or no offline contact between groups. Comparisons between online and offline media have always been challenging, but are becoming more so with the advent of social media. While editors, journalists and television and radio commissioners decide what makes it into the public realm via traditional media, social media challenges these hierarchies, allowing ordinary citizens to create and post content. These
platforms also tend to take a much more hands-off approach to regulation, with the exception of interventions in relation to criminal activity (e.g. phishing scams) or extreme cases of hate speech, bullying and impersonation. As a result, much of the theory about attitude formation and influence through mass media is of limited relevance to social media.
USING SOCIAL MEDIA TO CREATE
A survey carried out by a professional Social Media Company, involving 998 small and mid size businesses in North America, revealed that around 94 percent used it for marketing purposes. They found it the best way to maintain the organization's identity and existence online (Yeung, 2014).
Before social media, people accessed the internet mainly to check their e-mails; they were physically social by meeting other people personally to communicate. Businesses were focused on using traditional mediums, such as TV, print, etc. to advertise their product and services. Nowadays, people have become virtually social; social media have made it easy for more meetings to be conducted through social networking rather than just meeting face-to-face. More and more businesses are investing a considerable amount of time and money to understand the use of social media and how it can benefit them.
The rapid growth of the social media networking makes life different. According to the real time internet live statistics, the internet users in the world are now more than 3,338,000,000 and keep rising every day (Internet Live Stats, 2016). Social media like Facebook, Sina microblog (Weibo), Twitter, Instagram and YouTube are defined as the online communities which allow users to create and share their own content (Bolton et al., 2013). The faster and easier information exchange brings a new trend of marketing communication established and makes traditional peer to peer word of mouth spreading go online. Social media provides a platform for consumer to engage in electronic word-of-mouth. It can be either positive or negative statement on the product brand or service which made by potential, actual or experience users on the internet (Themba & Mulala, 2013). Facebook is one of the fast developing social media. It brings up a new trend of social media marketing. Facebook influenced customer behavior and suggested to be one of the most critical metrics of social media usage (Schultz, Schwepker & Good, 2012).
According to Joyce Kasman Valenza (2014) - Social media is an internet platform that allows individuals to share instantly and communicate continuously with their communities.
Social media start as a very personal tool for users to communicate with their friends and closely related people. Soon after, business area have also take the advantage of this innovative way of exchanging information.
Social media is the fastest communication platform… It is a two-way communication channel so we can communicate with our customers to provide solutions in the fastest manner. In contrast, traditional [media] is more of a one-way communication tool that the customers can only read without any [conversation to verify or compare the information]. – Participant 1D, an in-house practitioner with three years of experience.
It is proved that developing social media has improved the marketing platform. According to many marketing consultants, social media marketing efforts get up to 50% better return than tradition average tv or radio spot (Horovitz). These reviews show the growing connection American has with social media. Also, according to my research, “more than 80% of small companies use social media to promote their businesses list Facebook as their top marketing tool, followed by LinkedIn and Twitter, according to a recent survey of 2,292 small businesses by Webs” (Loten). This information shows the impact of social media on small businesses. According to Penenberg, “ Social networking sites, a component of social media, was responsible for more than 13.8 billion display advertisements in August 2009, which accounted for at least 25 percent of all display advertisements viewed via the internet” (Penenberg 125). This shows that, social media has changed global marketing, where marketers are not only depending on just communicating to a target audience, but also discovering new methods to impress people through Social
Social Media can be described as innovative tools that connect people or so called users all around the world and give them the opportunity to interact with them. But not only on a personal level Social Media got more important over recent years, also companies have found more and more interest on Social Media as a business tool. One can see a continual growth over the last years regarding the usage of Social Media in business operations. Social Media offers numerous opportunities and possibilities to companies concerning communication developments and new marketing strategies while increasing competitive advantage towards competitors.
Among the billions of social media users, there is a percentage dedicated to businesses who use social media as part of their marketing strategy. The sheer number of people who use services like Facebook and Instagram on a daily
Social media is an imperative public relations tool for companies to utilize in their business practices. Social media cannot be regulated so anyone can say what they please about the company, whether it is good, bad or ugly. Social media is developing rapidly and there are new platforms
Social media helps in creating relationships with people who might not otherwise know about the products or service or what the companies represent.
Social media avenues are a new, upcoming, and popular way to advertise for businesses and for people to connect to each other. Alexis Ohanian once said that "Being effective at social media, whether for business or personal use, means capturing people who have short attention spans. They 're only a click away from a picture of a funny cat, so you have to make your thing more compelling than that cat. And that can be a high bar." (Ohanian) Powerful usage of social media can have a big impact.
We can now connect with each other instantly over the internet. It is quicker and easier to communicate and share with each other now than it has ever been. Massive amounts of people access the internet every day, and a good number of them are using social media. This means that the ability to use social media and use it well is crucial for modern businesses. Whether for public relations or advertising social media is now one of the best ways to access consumers. Especially when it comes to younger generations, if you aren’t online you don’t exist. Social media is an excellent way to establish a presence in the minds of consumers. They can interact and establish a connection with an organization instantly. Social media is cheap and its everywhere. If a business hopes to compete in the modern world having a social media presence is absolutely
The first advantage of using social media in business is increasing brand awareness. Social media can help business to build their brand awareness by increasing interactions with a business brand. Brand awareness means the total percent of a target people who know the company exists and what the company offers of products or services. When the brand awareness is increased, the possibility of buying is increased. Thus, efforts should be made to make the brand a part of the consciousness of customers. For example, Coca- Cola is one of the best companies that enjoy unusual...
According to Stelzner (2011) 93% of the companies reported using social media in marketing. The benefits of using social media as mentioned in the report are improving sales, lowering marketing costs, working with new business partners, increased business exposures and many other benefits. The report also identifies top 3 social media marketing tools which are Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. (A.Stelzner,