Introduction
It is considered that social media tools have gained a lot of popularity as well as increasingly used in day to day operations of many business organizations or companies, from start-up to small medium as well as large multinational organizations. Despite the fact that social media has gained popularity over it use, little has been known for their values to the business world or industry. The tools and technologies support for social media on business performance as productivity have not yet been exploited in the contemporary age (Asur & Huberman, 2010). The purpose of this paper is to determine the listing of the merits and the demerits of social media technologies and to analyse the extent to which their employment has a measurable effect on business production and performance as a marketing tool. The business impact of social media tools may be on management, strategic competitiveness, and governance and on knowledge management.
It is evident that emerging technologies can gain popularity because they allow creation of corporation among the businesses in the business networks, while the application of the tools is used as a marketing concept aimed at improving the ease of sharing information as well as data from the business to the consumer as well as the reverse. Therefore, it has to be ascertained that social media is a good marketing tool that has been used by businesses today and is still to be used by the same business and others in the future (Evans, 2010). However, research shows that there is a need to determine the extent in which they affect business as well as the consumers. Networked companies are denoted to have benefited or are still benefiting from social media because they can easily link with each other and share content bearing the same meaning on the internet via social media. With this, they can reduce cost and increase the level of efficiency. In this context, it is clear that social media have specific impact on marketing on each and every business (Evans, 2010).
The research objective of this paper is to determine the impact of social media advertising as a central marketing media role (Evans, 2010). The current study is there to ascertain the impact of social media technologies and tools used in advertising practise as well as an understanding of the central role of social media in marketing as a marketing tools.
Social Media as a Marketing Tool
Over the years, it had been seen that social media has always changed the marketing industry in various ways, positive and negative. On the same way, it has had the same level of impacts to the clients or customers. First, social media has changed distance convergence since its inception as a marketing tool. As opposed to the traditional tools that were supposed to share information manually or physically from one place to the other, it is clear that today’s business enjoy the value as well as the benefits of social media (Evans, 2010). Messengers were used to sending messages from one organization to the other, print media was used to send a message to the customers, and it took time before such message could reach the intended audience. However, the introduction of social media took care of all the above problems and was able to reduce distance coverage of the advertising content (Hoffman & Fodor, 2010).
Secondly, it is noted that social media as an advertising tools can change the costs incurred in marketing (Hoffman & Fodor, 2010). There was the cost of airing TV and well as print media ads. Today, the changes have been accepted, and social media only needs delivery of content and well as the ease of airing content to the customers. There is no cost incurred with the use of social media as a business to customer advertising apart from one need to purchase or rent internet supply and the experts who design the content shared (Evans, 2010).
Thirdly, social media as an advertising tools has been able to meet the needs and the demand for the current customer base. Change in technology has not only been felt by the businesses alone, but its impacts have been felt by customers. Today clients have smartphones as well as other equipment that support better sharing as well as transmission of advertising content. The clients have opted not to use TVs as well as print media as their primary advertising tools and opted for social media because it is cheap and easy to use. Besides, the customers have opted to use social media because they can be able to get media content and marketing content as their door steps. Therefore, it is important to consider that there are various values that contemporary clients have opted to use their hence over-dependence on social media today. This is the main reason for the shift as well as the positive and negative impact of social media as an advertising tool.
Lastly, social media has been able to bridge the gap that exists between customers and business information deficit. Today clients or customers can get immediate, and ready information concerning products so does the feedback about certain products they wish to adopt or use. As such they can come up with the best business strategies to use to get quality products on the market. Likewise, businesses are also ready to use social media because most of their clients use social media to ask about products and make an order for their products. As such it has turned out to be the best marketing or advertising platform in the current business marketing age.
The impact of social media as a marketing media
Social media has played a central role in marketing media. To ascertain the truth of the above statement, it is vital to evaluate it impacts:
First, it is clear that social media is called mass medias tool because it can reach many people. Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp has many users as compared to other marketing media tools (Evans, 2010). As such it is being used by today business organizations to be able to meet the needs of the organizations as well as the customers. It is wise to note that social media as an advertising tools has made it possible to change the marketing platforms that were previously used hence able to reach many people. This is therefore and positive benefit to both the business organization and the customers. Most intensions of business entities are to make sure that is a message on products and services can reach as many people as possible. Via the use of social media, it is clear that the world is not able to share marketing content at as ease of a button in the home yard (Stelzner, 2010). Marketing managers can denote the significance of a certain marketing content by seeing the number of likes and comments on the content shared (Hoffman & Fodor, 2010).
Secondly, social media has been able to change the face of marketing on it values (Stelzner, 2010). Despite the fact that many think that social media content does not meet the needed regulations and laws that government the same, there is a need to state that social media like other marketing tools can define the interest of the customers by meeting the laws and regulations. It is wise to note that social media has been on the forefront to ensures that marketing is done easily and effectively. Hence it has promoted changes in regulations and laws (Hoffman & Fodor, 2010). Therefore, it can be started that were it not of social media, and there could not have been the changes that have taken place in media marketing laws and regulations. The regulations are now supportive of all levels of business as compared to before whereby only big businesses could be able to market via TVs and print media.
Social media has made it easy and cost effective way of marketing. It is clear that social media has been able to change marketing media because it is cheap. Even a start-up business can market its products and services via social media. It can, therefore, be ascertained that social media has made it possible to share marketing content in an easy and cost efficient manner as compared to other marketing tools and platforms. In Australia, it has been noted that more than 20,000 new business can market via social media because it is cost efficient, considering that this business did not market before. The companies use Business Process Performance (BPP) which is the most effective way of converting the available inputs into outputs. Traditionally they create a set of Key performance Indicators (KPIs) which is used to analyse business process performance associating it with each process of the company (Hoffman & Fodor, 2010). Setting the goals values by the management board for each KPI and comparing it with those target of actual and historical standards is very vital. Business Process performance has a numerous methods of measuring it, which includes the self-assessment, balanced scorecard, the traditional controlling approach, process performance measurement systems. Statistical process control and workflow based monitoring, in this based case approach research we used the self-assessment method which fits this survey easily.
Conclusion
It can be concluded that Social Media has changed consumer purchasing behaviour to the better. A business using social media are today smiling to the banks because clients have responded to social media advertising in a positive way. They can make sales as compared to the time they were using other marketing platforms. For example, Coca-Cola Company increased its sale by 15% because it marketing strategies changed from TV to social media. Today almost five billion people in the world know the company brand as well have once used its products.
