Social Media in Business, Outline Example

“Social Media in Business: How Social Media Can Help Small Businesses and Non-Profit Organizations,” by Carl Jefferson and Shannon Traughber

Introduction

• Acknowledges reality of how social media has altered advertising landscape.
• Emphasizes numerous advantages to be gained from Internet forums: providing direct consumer contact; establish multi-generational image; ability to act on consumer feedback; reducing expenses of other modes of advertising.
• Brief recognition of downsides to the practice: productivity loss from employee misuse; spyware and malware intrusions.
• Concludes social media enables vast opportunities, yet may be equally unsuitable for a variety of businesses.

General Discussion of Media

• Provides criteria typically identified with social media: multitude of access forms, from video to texting; variety of user platforms, news feeds and email; communication must be transferable to all devices.
• Reinforces concept: people seeking to communicate as the cornerstone for the popularity of social media.
• List of most frequently used social media outlets: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
• Entertainment concept: import to business of widespread attraction of public to the media for entertainment purposes covering wide range..
• Qualification that immersion in social media frequently has the ironic effect of negating actual, person-to-person contact.

Advantages for Businesses

• Virtually unlimited audience potential; contact with millions globally is enabled.
• Minimal to no cost factor.
• Word-of-mouth as most effective advertising asset; cites Facebook’s projected user base of one billion by August of 2012.
• LinkedIn noted as more professional resource and networking outlet.
• Further advantages in gaining better understanding of consumer interests put forward: tracking changes in trends; enabling exposure through stronger search engine results; concept of exponential reinforcing of business presence through social media.
• Research opportunities of social media to build client bases through applications such as Feedburner and Gydget.

Disadvantages

• Comment on pitfalls to unprepared usage of social media for business.
• Potential dangers for business credibility due to universal access to social media: harmful opinions regarding the business from consumers; negative or inappropriate messages from employees.
• Further employee misuse: documented evidence of employees taking company time to conduct personal media; difficulty for business to monitor such abuses.
• Security issues enabled by social media: probability of employee/users revealing work-related information within sites; vulnerabilities enabled through employee autonomy on social media.
• External threats: deception through “spear-fishing,” in which business access is manipulated through social media contact.
• Advanced Persistent Threats (APT): calculated strategies in which exploiting personal preferences from management allows entries into more secure spheres of the business’s online presence.

Conclusion

• Social media for small business endorsed; qualification that knowledge of arena is essential beforehand.
• Awareness of potential issues strongly urged; business requires high level of employee/consumer satisfaction as guard to social media negativity.
• Note that article or “study” was unable to locate any business right for its investigative purposes.
• Landscaping company not involved in social media targeted by authors; encouraged to commence social media campaign; expectation that landscaping company will provide solid study subject in future.
• Final remarks advising preliminary research for businesses before engaging in social media; stressing preparedness and awareness.