A student essay reproduced without changes. The concept of a web page has been difficult for them so you'll notice the reference list at the bottom. This untitled one is by Michaal Jauhari Al Rayess.
Social networking sites are getting more and more popular by the day, and many people have really integrated them into their lives over the past few years. 1,2 Businesses can use social networking to enhance profits and employee productivity within themselves and projects due to better communication with workers in other offices. The articles have been split up into multiple themes such as employee productivity, HR related activities such as decrease in management levels to improve communications, advertisements, and statistical analysis. Looking at article summaries 5 and 6 it can be seen that educated articles believe that social networks can improve advertising techniques by targeting a larger variety of consumers and giving the consumer a brand to think about and install that image or name into them. Along with those two articles, article summary 7 shows how social networking sites help build a customer contact database and summary 10 shows the revenue that a company made through advertisements on social networks which falls under the advertisement and profit theme and article 12 shows the advertising done on facebook with the use of budget management . Moving onto the profit theme, article summary 11 gives a prime example of how companies earn profits through selling virtual items for real money, such as facebook and the gifts they have on there. HR activities can be found in article summaries 8 and 13 there are examples of how social networks are used to hire people, yet to be cautious of legal implications in doing so. As well as article 2 which show that hierarchies in organizations become flatter and have a smaller chain of command. Article summary 3 shows how a company and the HR department can work together in order to transfer knowledge to employees through social networking websites and use that as a way to get to know the employees better which is a benefit for the company when it comes to communicating at a mutual level with the employee. Data analysis falls perfectly with article summaries 4 and 14. In Article summary 4 it talks about how customers view the brand and what they might ask for which is a major step in enhancing brand image and improving the product. Article summary 14 talks about data provided to see what problems the company is facing and find new opportunities. This can be done with a poll to see what is the most preferred solution to match the customer’s needs as well as the company needs to achieve maximum profits.
Consequently, thought has been put into finding ways that social networking sites can help businesses:
1. Having strong personal digital social networks in an organization improve employee productivity by 7%. 3 This is probably due to the fact that when employees work on projects, 85% of employees end up working with co-workers from other offices. 4
2. Social networks distribute information without hierarchies, thereby flattening organizations and cutting out the need for middle managers. 5
3. Top consulting companies like McKinsey and BCG believe that the online social networks of their employees are useful in transferring knowledge amongst employees and act as a sort of secondary knowledge management system for their organizations, with similar benefits. 6
4. Social networks can provide companies with a channel to learn about how customers view their brand and what more they may ask for. 7
5. Companies can develop their brand and leave the customer with a brand impression that may be much harder to achieve through traditional media.8 Companies that require some help with this can hire virtual marketing assistants. 9
6. Different social network sites attract different age groups, so supposing your product is most meaningful to a certain age group, selecting the appropriate site to advertise can boost the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. 10
7. Social networks like LinkedIn allow people to build their contact base and network for the sake of achieving their business goals. 11
8. Social networking sites can also be used to find potential new recruits and to help with hiring. 12 That said, be wary of the legal issues that are involved in such a process. 13
9. The presence of a business on social networking sites has an indirect benefit towards the business; an increase of the business’s website’s ranking on search engines due to the extra name references and links pointing to it. 14
10. Popular social networking sites are generating a lot of revenue by hosting advertisements. Facebook is estimated to have earned 1.5 billion USD in 2010 off of advertisements, 200% higher than 2009. 15
11. Selling virtual items for real money has become another revenue stream for the networking sites and application/game developers for those sites. 16
12. Targeted advertising along with the pay per click model of advertising used by sites like Facebook and Google really go a long way in making sure that the marketing budgets of companies are well spent. 17;18
13. Second life, an online 3-D virtual world where each user has an avatar, is being used at Westpac to orient newly hired employees, a practice that can be cloned in any other organization. 19
14. The data that can be found on social networks can be used and mined in many ways to tackle business problems and find new opportunities. 20
As you can see, the list of things that can be done to help businesses using social networking sites is quite long. I hope this list helps convince you to use online social networks to improve and differentiate your business.
1. http://www.checkfacebook.com/
2. http://www.kaplaneduneering.com/kappnotes/index.php/2010/04/more-random-web-20-statistics/
3. http://blogs.hbr.org/hbsfaculty/2010/12/how-social-networking-has-chan.html
4. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2008-10-07-social-network-work_N.htm
5. Pentland, Alex. HBR 2009. “How Social Networks Network Best”. http://hbr.org/web/2009/hbr-list/how-social-networks-work-best
6. Gomez-Arias, Jose; Genin, Larisa. “Beyond Monetization: Creating Value Through Online Social Networks” International Journal of Electronic Business Management [Online], Volume 7 Number 2 page 79-85 (2009). http://140.114.53.122/IJEBM_Web/IJEBM_static/Paper-V7_N2/A01.pdf
7. http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/jul2010/bs20100726_143420_page_2.htm
8. http://www.inc.com/guides/using-social-networking-sites.html
9. http://ezinearticles.com/?How-a-Virtual-Marketing-Assistant-Can-Help-Your-Social-Network&id=1889866
10. http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/02/16/study-ages-of-social-network-users/
11. http://entrepreneurs.about.com/od/onlinenetworking/a/socnetsites.htm
12. http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/aug2008/sb2008086_346094.htm
13. Friesen, Norm. "Education and the social Web: Connective learning and the commercial imperative" First Monday [Online], Volume 15 Number 12 (27 November 2010). http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3149/2718
14. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Media_Targeting
15. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_per_click
16. Hamari, Juho; LehdonVirta, Vili. “Game design as marketing: How game mechanics create demand for virtual goods” Int. Journal of Business Science and Applied Management [Online], Volume 5, Issue 1, 2010. http://www.business-and-management.org/download.php?file=2010/5_1--14-29-Hamari,Lehdonvirta.pdf
18. http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/27099.asp
19. http://news.ninemsn.com.au/technology/379373/social-networking-sites-help-boost-business-expert
20. http://www.simplyzesty.com/business/facebook-data-changing-business/