Advantages of Social Media over Business-Free-Samples for Students

Question: Write a Reflection on advantages and disadvantages of social media over business. Answer: It has been observed that social media plays crucial role in the success of business. While comparing the traditional approaches for increasing the efficiency of the organization with social media networks, I have learnt that social media networks have the capability to uplift the customer base and it also leads to increase in the opportunities to attain the sustainable growth in the dynamic business environment. These platforms are used for the purpose of promotion and marketing. These are also effective in terms of attaining competitive advantage. Unique roles of social media and its related networks are effective communication, effective decision making process and it covers a large area of the target market in terms of promotion and advertisement techniques. Major focus of this reflection will be based over the limitations and benefits of social media network in business context (Eriksson Kovalainen, 2015). I have realised that social media has been considered as an effective tool for communicating amongst the subordinates and with the other stakeholders. With the help of social media platforms, organization could easily spread information and awareness amongst the target audience in relation to their products and services. After analysing the previous tasks, I realised that social media is a useful element for business entities and at the same time, it also leads to certain losses or disadvantages. Activities like market research, analysing customer insights, building interaction amongst team members, building team coordination and determining the demands of customers could be done in an effective manner through which organization could be able to attain its goals adequately. Apart from these advantages, application of social media leads to sundry disadvantages such as it affects the decision making process of the organization and according to the analysis conducted, it has been observ ed that social media and its related platforms leads to cyber-attacks, hacking, negative feedbacks and reviews from customers, etc. (Bharati, Zhang Chaudhury, 2015). I have learnt that social media and its related platforms could be utilised in various manners. These are mainly accessed through internet and are capable enough to transfer information from organization to the customers easily and effectively (Bryman Bell, 2015). I have observed that business corporations are using social media networks with the motive of uplifting the demand of organizational products and services in the target market (Bryman, 2015). Apart from this, these networks are also used for attracting the target audience towards the organization and its products. While experiencing the process of social media, I personally found it bit complicated as it has two sides i.e. positive and negative. Positive side of the social media is quite beneficial while the other side of the process leads to sundry disadvantages. Thus, while adopting social media networks into business, it is necessary to evaluate all its factors so that expected outcomes could be gained. With the help of social media platforms, organization could adopt effective communication systems which plays crucial role in order to increase the efficiency of the organization. Communication system will allows all stakeholders of the company to share their views, opinions and feedbacks to the company regarding their services, products, etc. Stakeholders views and opinions will help the organization to develop their strategies on the basis of those feedbacks and views which will direct the company towards sustainable growth and development. Social media platforms have generated big opportu nities for business entities as expansion of the organization in the overseas market has become quite easy (Jones, Borgman Ulusoy, 2015). For trading in the overseas market without establishing the separate outlet in the target market, organization could use social media platforms. It has been observed that social media has developed an important position in the modern corporations business model. In the previous assessments, impact of social media has been analysed on Manhattan Mocha which is a small caf situated in Manhattan, New York. Since, its opening in 2015, company has set up 15 stores across the United States. This has majorly been done with the help of social media platforms. Organization has utilised this platform in an appropriate manner in order to gain competitive advantage as well as to expand the business. With the objective of increasing the presence of caf in other parts of United States and in the overseas markets, management of the caf adopted various trending and effective social media platforms so as to increase their efficiency. Along with these advantages, social media networks also lead to huge risks. Hacking, cyber-attacks, leakage of companys secret information and negative reviews obtained from customers over social media platforms, etc. All these factors could affect the organizational performance in negative manner, thus, it is required to adopt certain strategies which could help the corporations to execute their functionalities in appropriate manner. I have learnt that social media is responsible for the success of the business entities whereas it is equally responsible for the failure as well. This is because after a certain point of time, it is necessary for an organization to expand its business in the further domestic and international markets which could generate positive outcomes. In my opinion, management need to impose certain restrictions over usage of social media platforms in order to increase the efficiency of the organization as well as for gaining the desired outcomes. I have learnt that this will help the organization to improve its communication procedure and it will also help the organization to attain its desired goals and the objectives along with increasing the market share and customer base in the overseas market (He, et. al., 2015). Social medias growth could be measured with the help of analysing the marketing strategies adopted by the organizations. I have realised that most of the companies have adopted social media as their primary marketing tool for attaining the desired outcomes along with setting up an effective position in the target market. Market of social media is increasing continuously and the major rise in the social media platforms was noticed from the launching of smartphones. From then, smartphones demand is increasing rapidly and according to a research conducted in 2017, it was observed that approximately 2.14 billion smartphones are available in the market and it has also been observed that most of applications installed in the smartphones are related with social media. With the help of social media platforms, users could easily communicate with each other (Khatri, et. al., 2015). References Bharati, P., Zhang, W. and Chaudhury, A., 2015. Better knowledge with social media? Exploring the roles of social capital and organizational knowledge management.Journal of Knowledge Management,19(3), pp.456-475. Bryman, A. and Bell, E., 2015.Business research methods. Oxford University Press, USA. Bryman, A., 2015.Social research methods. Oxford university press. Eriksson, P. and Kovalainen, A., 2015.Qualitative methods in business research: A practical guide to social research. Sage. He, W., Wu, H., Yan, G., Akula, V. and Shen, J., 2015. A novel social media competitive analytics framework with sentiment benchmarks.Information Management,52(7), pp.801-812. Jones, N., Borgman, R. and Ulusoy, E., 2015. Impact of social media on small businesses.Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development,22(4), pp.611-632. Khatri, C., Chapman, S.J., Glasbey, J., Kelly, M., Nepogodiev, D., Bhangu, A., Fitzgerald, J.E. and STARSurg Committee, 2015. Social media and internet driven study recruitment: evaluating a new model for promoting collaborator engagement and participation.PloS one,10(3), p.e0118899