Running head: HOW SOCIAL MEDIA IMPACTS BUSINESSES?

How social media impacts businesses?

Wilbert G. Baez Velez

Universidad Ana G. Mendez

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Abstract

Way back on the day the only form for the media to get to know your great business was trough
television, newspapers and radio, however in the early 2000s, a revolution in media was
witnessed and the world was introduced to Social Media. Like any other form of media, social
media is utilized as a tool for a larger scale of communication to enhance social interaction using
easy & highly accessible and scalable communication techniques. Positive impact and influence
its reachable thanks to the power of social media and its obvious impact on customers too. This
has led marketers to make social media there essential when it comes to marketing, and this is
thanks to its great return for investment and low cost. Consumers judge a company based on
their online presence; companies can innovate and simultaneously create strong social presence
by executing customers’ needs and concerns. Globally, companies have acquired Social Media
as an essential tool for their marketing campaigns; however, the same is not adapted in other
parts of the world due to lack of adaptation on which ever country possess this problem. What
are the benefits of Social media? What are the examples of Social media? This study understands
the benefits, impact and importance of Social Media on business performance & growth and
utilizing social media as an essential marketing tool.
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How social media impacts businesses?

The world has changed in many ways in the past few years on many occasions to the

great or good, whether we are talking about the evolution of cars, architectural structures or even

technology; one thing is for certain all of these changes have impacted the business world

significantly. According to David Meerman Scott, Marketing strategist/Author The New Rules

of Marketing and PR:

“You can buy attention (advertising). You can beg for attention from the media (PR). You

can bug people one at a time to get attention (sales). Or you can earn attention by creating

something interesting and valuable and then publishing it online for free.”

Until the late 1990’s the only form of media known to businesses were television, newspapers and

radio, however in the early 2000s, a revolution in media was witnessed and the world was

introduced to Social Media. Social Media is a just like any other form of media is a tool used for

communication but at the larger scale for social interaction using highly accessible and scalable

communication techniques. On this modern era and current technological lifestyle that we live on

now a days has opened the door for many new ways to make money online and reach more people

through different platforms and website that has lead business to take advantage of this new ways

to find new potential customers and this has led to establishing brand awareness, sales, business

growth & performance and utilizing social media as an essential marketing tool.
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Social media now a days is considered the essential marketing tool in this day and era

but, back then traditional forms of marketing included print media and broadcast media. This had

its own drawbacks, television advertisements, leaflets, direct mail and email no longer seem to

have the same impact as they used to. The major drawback was that they had the same

advertisement strategy or the same advertisement repeated over many years that led to customers

getting overwhelmed and tired of the same product due to limit advertising strategies. Businesses

utilizing social media as a means to market their product allow innovation and creativity and

more potential clients through paid advertising on different media platforms. Social media allows

the company to have a strong online presence by always reaching out to their customers and also

providing great service more easily and freely, so the potential customers love this because

presence is not needed to acquire the certain product that they wanted. Companies can adopt this

fresh never stopping growth approach to all their product innovation and increase awareness

among their targeted audience. Social tools can also help to strengthen brand perception by

communicating core values to a wider audience, brand perception can be the key to pushing that

customer to buying your certain product or service. This, in turn, opens up the opportunity to

start conversations, grow business partnerships and expand the online community to win new

followers and potential customers. Companies also need to keep up with other companies to fight

competition and cater to the demanding customers’ needs and wants, in order to stand out from

competition, companies must listen and learn from their customers to map their needs against

what else is going on in the social media domain. Efforts must be put to go beyond what is

already existing and convert their corporate objectives in to existing and original social media

activities. Dynamically using social media is one of the easiest ways to reach a large customer

base and get the company or brand name in the heads of existing or potential customers.
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Not only does an already established network help to create new contacts, it will also help

to deepen connections that have been formed. Even though this is very familiar to traditional

marketing techniques, social media has given it a new twist. Companies that fail to adapt to a

new more connected and interactive market, will unavoidably fall behind. A good example

would be companies like Kmart and Sears that due to the lack of adaptation to the new era they

ended up on the old times and bankruptcy. Social media has grown at a rapid rate over the years,

the impact of business & business of marketing has been tremendous. Social media helps build

logistics & tactics to acquire new customers and at the same way build awareness. Social

platforms like Facebook present opportunities for businesses to grab the attention of the

customers and at the same time build brand image. Also other of the key components of social

networks is that they allow businesses to use many tactics and create a brand profiles like fan

pages, contests & similar marketing events that make the customer feel comfortable and secure

when following along your brand. Also these social platforms show really what people really

enjoy and are hoping to get to solve a certain problem that they may face and accordingly decide

on the product based on their peer’s preference over glossy magazine advertisement and this

makes the process seamless and more effective. When people aren’t happy about something in

particular they usually go express there felling on blogs and write about it on the many social

networking sites, with a strong online presence, any company can tackle that situation by using

their own unique way of innovation the product and its customer service. When creating a social

media marketing strategy, it is very important to put on a strong thought on who we should go

after and target because we don’t want to be presenting our dog company to cat lover’s. There

many people that aren’t mainly customers on social media but they can go ahead and make a
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strong impact on the marketing efforts by simply by following your Instagram page or just

giving great feedback about your company on the social networks.

In conclusion, on this modern era and current technological lifestyle that we live on now

a day has opened the door for many new ways to make money online and reach more people

through different platforms and website that has lead business to take advantage of this new

ways to find new potential customers and this has led to establishing brand awareness, sales,

business growth & performance and utilizing social media as an essential marketing tool. The

social networks aren’t just to tweet about your day or sharing a funny video, business have been

using them and are going to keep using them to generate more traffic to their websites and

generating more leads. The future of businesses and financial freedom is here, don’t use what

can be a life changer for memes and sharing stupid stuff. We Are Social’s Digital in 2018 Global

Overview reported “17% of the world’s population makes online purchases and pays their bills

online. Strong economies like the UK (78%), South Korea (74%), Germany (74%), Sweden

(70%) and the U.S. (69%) have the highest e-commerce penetration, or percentage of the

population that has purchased online” with this you can see business are changing and have

changed substantially over the years. The most successful and risk free business plan that is

currently our there is creating an online business, is more cost efficient and you can reach more

people by the different social networks as you generate income in a blink of an eye. Transactions

are seamlessly now a day thanks to all the paying methods like “PayPal, credit cards and debit

cards, you can even by a car now a day through the internet a CAR. The most interesting topic is

that the highest percentage of user are between the ages 18 to 34 years old, this are the ones

considered by the industry to have the most buying power, they’re more likely and often do

make a purchase online with the influence of social media. Having said all these facts, data and
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statistics, it’s pretty impossible to deny the influence social media has on the consumer’s

decision when the time comes to make a purchase. Whether it’s through something simple as

brand awareness or brand loyalty that equates to sales, social media has a big impact. If you

haven’t given much thought to your social media marketing strategy, now is the best time.

As consumers spend more time on the social networks, the platforms have become the

go-to source for product and brand information. With the average 70 million Facebook Pages

that are currently on the network, brands are reaching millions on the social media platform. We

Are Social also reported that “Posts on a brand’s Facebook Page reach 10.7% more people than

its current number of followers. Also 4.2% of all Facebook users who see a Facebook Page’s

post engage with it — be it by reading a status, liking a post, watching a video or clicking a

link.” Other similar social network can and do also this, I personally think this research paper

will make people really understand the true power of social media and hopefully opens their

mind to go ahead and create something that in the long run will provide for the and their loved

ones. All of these can be achieved by utilizing what we currently have on the world of

technology and implementing that to their ideas.

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References

Nordmeyer, B. (2017, November 21). The High-Level Business Impact of Social Media.

Retrieved April 8, 2019, from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/highlevel-business-

impact-social-media-38816.html

Shaw, A. (2018, May 11). How Social Media Can Move Your Business Forward.

Retrieved April 6, 2019, from

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2018/05/11/how-social-

media-can-move-your-business-forward/

Schmid, V. (2019, January 24). Why Social Media Is Important for Business Marketing.

Retrieved April 8, 2019, from https://marketinginsidergroup.com/content-marketing/why-

social-media-is-important-for-business-marketing/

Vize, R., & Sherrett, M. (2017). Social media marketing for B2B.

Contemporary Issues in Social Media Marketing, 46-59. doi:10.4324/9781315563312-4

Williams, G. (2018, January 5). Weighing the Impact of Social Media on Business.

Retrieved April 5, 2019, from https://www.americanexpress.com/en-us/business/trends-

and-insights/articles/weighing-the-impact-of-social-media-on-business/
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