Hc1021 Interpersonal And E-Communication For Assessment Answers

You are required to write an essay on “The impact of social media on contemporary business communication. How have these changes impacted the way modern business operates today? Research, discuss and explain the fundamental opportunities and challenges that this creates for modern businesses.

Answer:

Communication is the very important and integral part of business. Every business needs to communicate in order to conduct its activities. This is because business cannot be run alone and needs the support of different stakeholders (Bovee and Courtland, 2012). These stakeholders are suppliers, distributes, shareholders, Board of directors, employees, customers etc. there are two types of business communication. First is internal that requires the business to communicate with all the internal stakeholder such as employees while the other one is external that requires the business to communicate with external stakeholders such as customers (Crews and Stitt-Gohdes, 2012). In earlier times, this communication at internal level is done through mediators or through phone calls and meetings and the communication through external stakeholders is done through radio, television, pamphlets, broachers, television ads, print media etc. As the time have changes so as the methods of business communication. The factors that can be considered as the major driving force of change in business communication are technology advancement. Technology or the advancement in technology has brought social media into picture and involvement of special media has the changed the way the business communicates these days (Curtis, Edwards, Fraser, Gudelsky, Holmquist, Thornton and Sweetser, 2010). Transformation in the business communication processes is the results of social media tool involvement in the process. Social media has brought up many opportunities for the businesses but also brought up many challenges as well. To understand the impact of social media on the business communication, it is necessary to understand the meaning of social media and the tool available. Social media can be defined as the platform that allows the individual as well as the business to communication with each other with the help of internet. Social media companies such as Facebook and integral are influencing the businesses and the companies to promote their products through these mediums. The transformation that has been seen in today’s business communication because of social media is such that it seems to be more open and transparent as well as participatory. This is because anyone can participate in the conversation and this transparency allows the customers to know about the business’s internal processes well (Econsultancy, 2017). The business that are identified as slow in updating the communication methods are expecting that they are lacking in reaching to the customers and deteriorating their brand image by not being an updated organization. The old technique of business communication can be measured that how much louder can one business yell and how much eyeballs are looking at you but now the scenario has changes. Now, the success of communication can be measured by the depth of the network the companies have in the market (Edosomwan, Prakasan,  Kouame, Watson and Seymour, 2011). Social media has not only changes the communication pattern with the external stakeholders but also replaced the paper work communication inside the organization. Earlier when the employees need to send the application or report on paper can only be sent through emails of internal communication portal by sharing their screens.

As far as the opportunities of social media are concerned, there are many opportunities for the business in order to enhance their communication with the help of social media that has already been explored by most of the organization these days. The first opportunity that has been available in from of the business by social media is that the tool of social media acts as the informator for the business (Eyrich, Padman and Sweetser,  2008). Informatory is the one who informs the people or share any information to large masses. The earlier television or print media tool help the business to inform the people about the products or the company. Now social media has replaced those methods. Most of the companies these days use the social media tool to inform people or the customers about the new products or nay type of information that needs to be shared. In terms of internal communication, these social media tools help in making groups of the employees or the team working for same goals (Griffin, Crossman, Bordia, Mills, Maras, Pearse, Kelly and Shanahan, 2010). The team lead or nay of the member can share nay information through social media tools to each other. These tools also act as connectors, this is because the too, allow the companies to connect and interact with the customers directly. Earlier the sales person of the companies can only contact the customers and even the customers do not find any way to keep in touch with the companies (Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy and Silvestre, 2011). Social media tool, such as Facebook, twitter, Instagram etc. are used by the companies to interact with the customers directly. A team has been specialized in the companies to support the customers and to develop the content in order to make contact with the customers. This helps the companies to know about the reviews of the customers regarding the products and helps the customers to resolve their issues of using the products by the customer’s service operators. Woolworth is one of the companies that have been identified to have the social media presence at large scale (Lietsala and Sirkkunen, 2008). This is because the many wants to communicate with its customers and wants to be the firm that is customers oriented. This company has formed the team of social media networking that takes care of all the activities related to this operation. The realization of the company that technology has the power to attract the customers forces the company to brig changes in their communication pattern. This company has explored al the possible opportunities associated with social media use in business communication. Socialbakers is the exclusive social media tool that has been used by the company to target the customers (Socialbakers, 2017). This tool helps the company to acquire the data of the customers as well as their needs. In addition to it, the company used to communicate with customers by this tool and help them in any requirement. The customer’s service of the company has improved after launching this tool in the company. The use of company's website is another medium of social media only that is supported by internet to make the people aware of the company’s processes and offers, these acts as the informatory that informs the people with some of the major details that the company wants to show to the customers. The company has integrated its website and the social media sites of the company such as Facebook and instagram. This integration helps the customers to directly reach to the company’s social media website. This convenience to the customers helps the company to have more attention of the customers on internet.

Social media not only brings opportunities but also brings challenges for the companies. The major challenge that has been faced by the companies in order to use social media as the communication tool is the reputation of the company. It is fact that social media is the open tool to be used by anyone. Anyone can comment and write anything about any company. The companies need to maintain the brand image on social media (Mangold and Faulds, 2009). In addition to it, the employees of social media team of the organization need to politely give the replies of the harsh word use by the customers about the company as they cannot afford to criticize any comment of the customers. Along with tis there is another challenge for the companies in order to implement social media tools for communication process; this challenge is training and knowledge of the employees regarding the tool. Any content that is generated on social media by the company needs to be such that it does not hurt the sentiments of others and thus the content team at the organization should be educated enough in the field. Woolworth is one of the companies in Australia that has faced such issue because of wrong content generated on the internet by their team (Qualman, 2010). The company has used a picture of soldier for marketing purpose Anzac Day and this developed a trouble for the company as it was not appreciated by the public at all. So, these are the cases that need to be considered at the time g generating content for the internet medium. This is because it is a medium on which anybody can criticize the company.

Social media tools are playing very important roles in business communication these days. The above discussion suggests that most of the companies are using these tools such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter etc. in order to communicate with the customers. The internal business communications as affected by social media advancement these days because the traditional paper method of communicating inside the organization has been replaced by the intranet and internet methods. Social media tools are helping the companies to connect as well as to inform the people around the world about the firm (Safko, 2010). It is a very cost effective method of promoting the products along with reaching the large masses at one go. Organizations these days are having benefit by the use of social media tools. Social media has been used as the tool for communication because most of the people are using these sites to have the information about the world. Advertising from the social media tool helps the companies to have the feedbacks from the customers. These feedbacks results in improvement in the company’s practices according to the needs of the customers. This also brings a feeling of trust among the customers for the company because customer has access to the internal information about the processes of the company. The customers get to know about the products that are being offered them and the detailed information about these products (Evans, 2010). In earlier times the mediums that have been used by the companies to communicate with the customers were interviews and surveys but these medium has the limitation that they cannot provide them information frequently and the people responsible for conducting the surveys may alter the data or the information thus exact and true information cannot be access. As everything have two sides so as the social media use. At one side it offers so much of opportunities to the companies in the field of communication and nth either hand brings challenges for them as well. Some of the challenge is reputation, maintenance of company's image on social media; proper educated social media team formation etc.  

References:

Bovee and Courtland, 2012. Business Communication Today, 10/e. Pearson Education India.

Crews, T.B. and Stitt-Gohdes, W.L., 2012. Incorporating Facebook and Twitter in a service-learning project in a business communication course. Business Communication Quarterly, 75(1), pp.76-79.

Curtis, L., Edwards, C., Fraser, K.L., Gudelsky, S., Holmquist, J., Thornton, K. and Sweetser, K.D., 2010. Adoption of social media for public relations by nonprofit organizations. Public Relations Review, 36(1), pp.90-92.

Econsultancy., 2017. How Australia's Woolworths delivers the goods on social. [online] Available at: https://econsultancy.com/blog/66990-how-australia-s-woolworths-delivers-the-goods-on-social/ [Accessed 26 Apr. 2017].

Edosomwan, S., Prakasan, S.K., Kouame, D., Watson, J. and Seymour, T., 2011. The history of social media and its impact on business. Journal of Applied Management and entrepreneurship, 16(3), p.79.

Evans, D., 2010. Social media marketing: the next generation of business engagement. John Wiley & Sons.

Eyrich, N., Padman, M.L. and Sweetser, K.D., 2008. PR practitioners’ use of social media tools and communication technology. Public relations review, 34(4), pp.412-414.

Griffin, E.A., Crossman, J., Bordia, S., Mills, C., Maras, S., Pearse, G., Kelly, P. and Shanahan, D., 2010. A First Look at Communication Theory, Em Griffin. Details: Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2009., pp.230-265.

Kietzmann, J.H., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I.P. and Silvestre, B.S., 2011. Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media. Business horizons, 54(3), pp.241-251.

Lietsala, K. and Sirkkunen, E., 2008. Social media. Introduction to the tools and processes of participatory economy.

Mangold, W.G. and Faulds, D.J., 2009. Social media: The new hybrid element of the promotion mix. Business horizons, 52(4), pp.357-365.

Qualman, E., 2010. Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business. John Wiley & Sons.

Safko, L., 2010. The social media bible: tactics, tools, and strategies for business success. John Wiley & Sons.

Socialbakers, 2017. Woolworths: Great Results for a Small Team with Socialbakers Solutions | Socialbakers. [online] Available at: https://www.socialbakers.com/social-media-content/client-stories/woolworths-sa/ [Accessed 26 Apr. 2017].