Syed Umar Ahmed

Business Expansion Made Easy, Thanks To Social Media The Do's And Don’ts Of Business Growth There has been an expeditious change in the advertising techniques employed over the past many decades. Due to the ease of accessibility to latest available technologies, consumers can now be reached quite easily by various companies. Nonetheless, it encompasses higher investments into the available resources, in order to access a large audience for advertising campaigns. The expansion of many non-profit organizations and small businesses could be achieved by the appropriate use of social media platform, that offers various advantageous and cost effective applications and tools. The social media websites can play a vital role in maintaining synchronization of business professionals with various organizations so as to keep them updated about the latest available employment opportunities and providing them with corporate advice from time to time. Many potential opportunities could also be explored by various industries by means of such social media websites, that were inaccessible in the past before the evolution of social media platform. Therefore, adaptation of effective guidance and strategies by an organization could lead them to acquiring a brand new advertising platform that could deliver in a productive manner by promoting their services and products to a wide range of audience. A revolutionized outlook could well be in place by the corporations by incorporating such effective platform. Social media supplies such a platform that is directly in line with the consumers, incorporated by a feedback channel for its consumers, and permitting the companies to actively advertise their products, that greatly enhances the chances of sales. The feedback received by the consumers, can greatly help modify the products, enhance company’s horizon of operation, and upgrading of products. The users present their information online, which can then be used by organizations to effectively re-strategize their marketing campaigns, to achieve a net profit as a whole. The organizations can make their presence felt, by promoting their products and services on a global scale. There has been quite a few businesses that weren’t able to advertise their services effectively during the times social media was not introduced. Besides, all of the benefits of using social sites for advertising, some of the drawbacks associated to it cannot be ignored, that mainly includes malware attacks and loss of productivity, thus it can be concluded that employing social media advertising tactics may not be suitable for all the businesses out there.  The Advent of Social Media The terminology of social media has still not been comprehended correctly to date. Individuals are not fully aware of its benefits as a whole, as it comprises of various techniques of people interaction as well media content sharing. Even though, most of the people are ignorant about the complete advantages of using social media, social media does make itself a unique platform, thanks to its countless valuable attributes. It permits a wide range of platforms such as text, .PDF, photos, videos and audios, thus allowing people to effectively interact via email, news feeds and social sites sharing. It must ensure availability of multiple communication channels for the ease of their consumers. Last but not the least, an unbiased approach should be adapted while using social media platform. Subsequently, now we will explain here the ideas of expanding social media platform in the advertising campaigns.  Advantages of Using Social Networks in Business A productive approach could be adapted by the businesses, by increasing the income and thereby cutting down costs. Social Media believes in such productive approach as it employs only electricity and an electronic device, thus featuring a low cost, yet at the same time executing a large-scale profit by means of advertising. Contrary to paid advertisement, where you pay and promote your product, you don’t need to invest anything for promoting your product. Social Media serves to act as a cost-saving medium for companies, as advertising is free over here, which greatly reduces the costs that might have been invested in marketing strategies, agent salaries, as well as various other expenses to say the least. For businesses like Twitter, Telegram channel and Facebook page, social media can effectively utilize the advertising tools without actually meeting the potential consumers in person. The introduction of high power camera phones into the market, has greatly helped consumers taking the pictures, and thus getting it uploaded on social media for the purpose of advertising. Having said that, there seems to be no such need of launching costly marketing campaigns nowadays, since all the required marketing tools are already incorporated within the social media. Advertising your product, is deemed essential for the growth of your business, word of mouth being the most common medium of advertising is much more cost-effective as well. Word of mouth is defined as the features of a product being conveyed by a person to another person. For instance, a woman informing a family member about a great place to purchase clothes and a man informing his friend about a great place to have some burgers. So instinctively, the more advertisements we create, the more happy clients we get. Take the example of Facebook only, that achieved huge milestone in terms of monthly active subscribers, as on 31st Dec, 2011 it was reported to have around 845 million users and was expected to reach a landmark of around a billion users within next few months, these numbers indicate that social media marketing, could be a great tool in business growth and profits, if executed properly. An organization, whilst providing a good standard product to its clients, can easily increase the chances of getting more potential clients, if they start using social media, to advertise their products efficiently. Finding and interacting with the right customers, that can help grow your business, is indeed a daunting task. Understanding the wants of people of different age groups can help organizations restructure their advertising campaigns as per their client’s requirements, that would ultimately result in service/product improvement. Unluckily to say, wants of the people change so quickly, that it become quite tedious to cope up with it. Facebook is yet a popular channel of people interaction, also incorporating multiple useful tools for business growth. It provides the organizations a chance to collect relevant information on changing trends and help them connect with audience. It is pertinent to mention here that, growing audience, leads to increased revenue. Who, in the world wouldn’t want his product/business to get famous among masses? (William & Ferell 2017) stated that “Posts on Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter have the tendency of reaching around 500 million, 110 million and 313 million respectively, whereas Facebook alone has got the potential of reaching over 4 billion users”. A wide range of followers, could be gathered both locally and internationally by use of social media. Contrary to media houses, that places a limit on their marketing by just airing advertisements, social media doesn’t have such limitations. You may create a simple online page, a large number of people can approach you via your page from across different countries, thus contributing vigorously to the business growth and revenues. Similarly, employing multiple channel advertising tactics may result in airing of an advertisement to multiple channels, thereby increasing brand reputation and visibility globally. Posting appropriate and appealing content while advertising your product through your web page, can result in increased brand visibility and reputation and apparently more people attracted to your product. Proper brand marketing, creates a lasting effect onto the minds of consumers, thereby increasing the chances of leads converting to potential buyers, as people like to buy those products, which are displayed in trending pages. To the say the least, having at least one account in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and similar sites like these, can cause your product to be visible among huge masses all over the world. When a good amount of followers have been achieved on a social media channel, internet search engines start recognizing that channel.  The social content displayed on online pages, could help generate links to various companies, as a result of which the content can successfully appear in different search results and also on official webpages of different companies, thereby increasing the chances of sales and getting more potential clients. Increased brand visibility is achieved by such links as when a client opens up the link; he is directed to the company’s website, where he may learn more about the services and products being offered. Social media is a great place to help your business expand and for better brand recognition. Twitter and Facebook, two of the giants in social media channels, have a built in feature of client feedback as well. Client’s feedback is considered very important, as it helps businesses realize their shortcomings and also keep themselves abreast to trending products. Having acquired this information, product optimization can be executed by the companies to achieve client’s satisfaction and attain greater sales numbers. Complaints can effectively be addressed as there is a user-friendly platform in such social media channels, that encourages interaction with customers. Feedback system can help businesses adapt themselves to changing trends of the competitive market. Comments by the clients are also valuable as they make you realize about client’s wants and requirements, as a result of that businesses can modify their products according to the desires of its consumers,  These platforms offer different channels of interaction, people can interact with like minded people and with multiple companies having same business interests. These platforms provide a way for idea exchange that helps grow a business. You could become more knowledgeable by having active interaction with fellow businessmen. For instance, useful manufacturing tactics can easily be learnt by going through similar post, published by some other manufacturing organizations. One can voice his opinion effectively, by the use of social media, similarly a business can flourish the same way. If one has an adequate following on his business page, that serves to act as a beginning point for online interaction. Such interactions then convert into trends, which greatly inspires people from different communities to look at your product and eventually buying it. Active customer participation has become much easier with the advent of social media. Social media therefore focuses on providing enhanced brand reputation, it also has served to become an important tool in creating brand identity. 53% of US nationals were reported to remain loyal to the product that they had liked or followed, in a research conducted on social practices/habits. Social Media is productive in a way, that it allows a two way interaction medium, where a seller could build relations with existing as well as prospect clients, unlike to the old fashioned public advertising channel, which has many limitations. Such relations can help customers develop faith in your products/business, which in turn increases the chances of your business expansion.  Disadvantages of Using Social Networks in Business The protection of freedom of speech by US, has been considered to be the main obstacle in using social media. Social media allows anyone to post anything; the free rein offered in the 1st amendment was largely used and enjoyed by a good number of audiences, as they had freedom of posting anything online. There exist both the satisfied and unhappy clients, you will see comments from both of them online about your product. In some cases, negative comments may even be generated by some annoyed clients from within the organization, they do it as a revenge as they aren’t satisfied about their company’s policies, this practice may eventually result in harming the integrity of product and your business. Such cases of client’s annoyance, make it difficult for a business to grow, eventually tarnishing their brand reputation and causing it to suffer a loss. Your business reputation is everything! A whole lot of efforts are made to build up your brand reputation, which could easily be tarnished by one bad feedback. It goes even worse, if such negative comment finds a place on Facebook, which is by the far the largest social media platform. So, choosing to integrate your business with social media, is a wise decision, as it depends upon the resilience of your business. Once brand image is tarnished, it become very hard to regain it. Also, involvement of employees into their own company’s social media platform could be a bad decision, as you never know, if your employee could take revenge, by posting bad remarks about company’s product, as he might not be happy with company’s policies, or he may disclose confidential information about the product to various other competitors. Or an employee, who got terminated from his job, may write 160 characters easily on Twitter against his former company and get revenge in this manner, or he might even leak some private and sensitive data of the company that could do significant harm to his former organization. There exist some other ways as well, to create hurdles for one organization using social media. For instance, if the unfair treatment of employee by an organization is being displayed over the social media, the organizations would then take strict action against their employees. Similarly, an applicant may raise objection against organization, if he is not hired by an employee of that organization, although he had viewed his profile. A big potential for embarrassment is due to the presence of big audience!. Usually it is quite easy to go to social media and write anything without having a knowledgeable insight. If this happens, it can adversely affect your business reputation, as large number of followers won’t spare you for your silly mistake. For example, take the case of Digino Pizza, hash tag of “#why I stayed” was brought to notice by one of the social media channel controllers, it was successfully trending on platform like twitter, and eventually got further promoted by using hash tag “#why I stayed You Had Pizza.” In normal situations, this is considered to be ideal remarks used for marketing. But when it was discovered, that this hashtag actually had its meanings directed towards toxic relationships due to domestic abuse, company was widely criticized for using that hashtag. Whereas, some others, thought it of as if company was feeling happy by seeing others suffer, other users believed that it was merely a mistake encountered due to lack of information and some carelessness on company’s part. As a result of this event, company faced a huge embarrassment. Enough time and dedication is required in order to maintain an impressive social media presence. A business that has fewer number of resources, the required resources can be grouped together and linked to social media for better results. Close and continuous monitoring of social sites, is deemed essential for an active social marketing site to grow in revenue, where clients could get their questions answered in time, and audience can view the latest trend changes quite effortlessly. Social media subscribers use dynamic approach, as they are aware of the fact, that they should be proactive in finding the best possible post and place on social media to get best products. This requires vigilance and diligent approach while searching for better products online. Even though, it might be taken as a limitation, spending time on social media, could help a business expand its horizon and yet achieve greater milestones, as it is vital in building up long lasting ties with your customers, that will ultimately bring in more customers with the passage of time. The main aim of adding social media into marketing strategies is to enhance networking infrastructure and improving organization’s brand image. But mostly the aim is to expand profits and productivity. It becomes considerably difficult, where most of the employees spend time on Facebook rather then working, Almost a total of 1.5% of productivity of employee is lost when they are free to use social sites during working hours, a report suggested. Out of 237 employees, 87% of which were surveyed, did not have a convincing answer to justify their 15 minutes of use of social media such as Facebook. 6% out of those 87% who were on Facebook, remarked that they didn’t go online on their profile from anywhere else. This proves that out of 33 employees, 1 employee had created his Facebook account while on work. Information leak, cyber bullying and hacking could well be experienced by businesses if they are provided with a great exposure to online medium. If one doesn’t exercise caution, whilst being online, their shared information could easily be exploited by anyone causing the tarnishing of their entire brand reputation. Online medium channels are also unsecure, as hacking has become quite common nowadays. Either ways, a customer is unaware about the authenticity of the post, whether it is an original one or a hacked one. Misleading information are found wide-spread throughout the online medium, mainly contributed by third parties, also hackers play a vital role in bringing the business down by stealing useful information pertaining to a business.  Concluding Words The platform of social media serves to be a blessing for any business. Nonprofit organizations and small businesses can expand their business infrastructure by adequately employing tools offered by social media websites. Most of the organizations could plan and develop their business strategy in such a way so that they get maximum benefits and revenues out of it, whilst comprehending the pros and cons effectively. Although, use of social sites can never be problem free, yet the drawbacks of it can be considerably minimized by following some general steps. Firstly, organizations should work to build a strong customer database, who is extremely satisfied with the methodologies of the company, this would help alleviate the influence of negative feedback against the product, or the company should have such a system that would automatically mitigate such negative comments and promote the positive ones. Businesses should be developed in such a way that the entrepreneur is fully conversant about the business norms and is able to publish most relevant and genuine information on his company’s profile, that would not only attract the existing clients but would also result in getting a number of potential consumers as well. Finally, the confidentiality of personnel and company information, description of employee’s online time distribution while he is at work and what pattern needs to be followed in using the organization’s profile for obtaining productive results, are some of the further more aspects that should be detailed within a company’s policy.