In today’s business world, the social media plays a vital role in driving the success of an organization. Apart from being platforms for communicating and sharing photos and videos, social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest Whatsapp, WeChat, Instagram, and Tik Tok have been adopted as tools to help in advancing organizational strategy. Therefore, many business organizations have started leveraging the use of social media to boost performance and sales. To achieve its mission, an organization can use social media to market products, communicate internally and externally, increase website traffic, monitor competition, and serve and manage customers.
The success of a business organization may greatly depend on the size of its market share. On the other hand, the magnitude of the market share is proportional to the level of brand awareness. Due to the large volume of social media users, an organization can market its brand through social media (Icha & Agwu, 2015). Apart from marketing a brand, an organization can also market its products on social media because the advert will reach a wider audience than using word of mouth. For instance, Walmart updates its followers on the available products daily (Moth, 2013). Regular updates not only increase brand awareness but also persuades people to purchase what is marketed. Social medial also creates an opportunity for an organization to partner with influencers. These are people who have a huge following and can assist to bring the attention of their followers to your brand.
In any business organization, communication is very important. Leaders must communicate with the other employees, and the organization must get feedback from its customers. An organization can use social media to communicate internally with the staff and externally with other stakeholders (Icha & Agwu, 2015). For instance, a business can create a Whatsapp group for use in the workplace and even outside the workplace. Facebook, Twitter, and Messenger are also very useful when the organization wants to collect feedback from the customers.
In addition, social media helps to build website traffic, which is very useful in business. A company can share content from its website to the social media platform to pull customers to the website (Icha & Agwu, 2015). On the company’s website, people can get more information about the company, thus, building brand awareness. For example, organizations that participate in the weekly #HootChat on Twitter are more visible and may get the attention of new people who may want to know more about the organization.
The social media can also be used for customer service and management. For example, a company can use Twitter to respond to customer’s queries (Moth, 2015). Through the social media platforms, the organization can also make clarifications and take note of issues that may want to be addressed in the future. What is more, the social media platforms are perfect places to get customer reactions about a brand and its products. It is also a good platform to direct clients on where some products and services can be found. Some companies also use social media for crisis communication and reputation management. For example, when a company wants to send an urgent message to the customers, it can use social media since it is not possible to call all the customers for a meeting. The message can contain information meant to clarify on issues that can potentially ruin the reputation of the organization.
Social media can also be used during recruitment. A company can use social media to advertise an available vacancy. Social media followers are a ready audience for such announcements and react instantly. The company can also use social media to know more about an applicant. Apart from recruitment, social media can help an organization to keep an eye on the competition. The organization can monitor competition by taking note of the comments that users and followers are making about a competitor. That way, the social media helps on planning and sharpening the competitive edge.
Evidently, social media can be used to advance an organizational strategy. A company can use it during recruitment and for communication purposes both within the organization and outside the workplace. Social media can also be used for marketing and increasing brand awareness. In addition, social media platforms are also very useful in customer service and client management. The organization can collect feedback from customers on the products and services that are offered. In this era of technology, it is hard for a company to advance its organizational strategy without the use social media.
References
Icha, O., & Agwu, E. (2015). Effectiveness of social media networks as a strategic tool for organizational marketing management. J Internet Bank Commer, S2.
Moth, D. (2013). How Walmart uses Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Econsultancy. Retrieved from https://econsultancy.com/how-walmart-uses-pinterest-facebook-twitter-and-google/