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Social Media in Business
Taken from (riserr.com/Social-media-marketing April 26 )
- Contents.................................................................................................................................. Contents
- Introduction............................................................................................................................
- Purpose of the report.............................................................................................................
- Interacting with customers through social media..............................................................
- Real-life example: Nike on X..............................................................................................
- Promote business products and/or services......................................................................
- Real-life example: Chanel on Instagram............................................................................
- Targeting a specific audience and their profiles on different social media sites............
- Real-life example: Nike on TikTok......................................................................................
- Risks and Issues of Using Social Media..............................................................................
- Case study: Burger King incident.......................................................................................
- Conclusion..............................................................................................................................
- Recommendations to small businesses..............................................................................
- Bibliography...........................................................................................................................
Introduction
Social media has become a vital asset in business, enabling businesses to exchange information, images, videos, and other content within social networks. Its strategic application can greatly increase brand visibility, customer satisfaction and sales growth. Platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and X allow businesses to connect with their customers through various content formats like images, videos and live broadcasts. Businesses can maintain a competitive advantage by using each platform’s unique features. Each platform has benefits for example Instagram focuses on strong visuals and TikTok on dynamic, interactive formats, which helps businesses create high-level engaging content. Despite all these positive aspects of corporate collaboration with social media, some risks and challenges can arise.
Purpose of the report
This report is for learners studying Unit 8 on social media in business to write a report for a local chamber of commerce with many members who own small businesses. These members want to start using social media but need to learn more about it. The learners need to illustrate the purpose of social media in business to deliver to the chamber of commerce members. By writing this small business owners will have beneficial knowledge for introducing social media into their businesses to improve customer engagement, increase visibility, and drive their business growth.
Interacting with customers through social media
- Get reviews and respond to them : encouraging customers to leave feedback and reviews on social media provides businesses with visual insights and builds trust. Reviews serve as genuine social proof, to boost your brand’s reputation, encouraging customer loyalty and potentially attracting more audiences. For example, Ledbury in London invites customers to submit reviews on Google Reviews and TripAdvisor(these are the platforms customers rate, and review about hotels, restaurants, and other travel-related services but on Google Review there are normally star ratings from 1-5)can highlight favourable feedback on their social media pages. Responding to these reviews, even the negative ones, shows that businesses' attentiveness and dedication to customer satisfaction, help attract new audiences.
- Host contests and giveaways : Hosting contests and giveaways on social media is a compelling method of driving engagement, making customers feel appreciated, rewarding customer loyalty, and generating user-generated content. This enables a sense of community and advocacy around the brand, which excites customers to participate and share experiences. For example, a small business can use Instagram to host giveaways where followers must tag friends and share posts to enter.
discussions that resemble human contact. This capability enables businesses to respond to enquiries, and guide customers through their purchasing journeys. adopting chatbots not only makes customers happy with fast replies but also provides businesses with important insights that can be used to optimise future marketing campaigns. For example, chatbots can answer detailed product-related questions, which builds customer trust and loyalty through consistency and responsiveness.
- Use multiple platforms : As there are probably many social media platforms, as a business, you need to choose a set of two to three reliable platforms to boost your productivity. Each platform offers unique capabilities and user satisfaction, making it suitable for businesses to customise their message accordingly. For example, Instagram is known to be used by younger viewers because of its visually appealing content, which matches the brand's aesthetics and stories. LinkedIn is better suited for professional educational posts establishing a B2B relationship and highlighting industry expertise. By choosing these main platforms, you can master your audience's behaviour and where they spend most of their time, which gives you insight into what content you should create and how to target them with custom campaigns.
- Share your content : sharing content on sites like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube increases brand awareness and encourages customer engagement. You Should create visually appealing, eye-catching, and relevant content suitable to each platform’s users. For example, TikTok uses short videos with user-generated content, whereas Facebook uses comprehensive posts that stimulate engagement and conversation. Businesses that use each platform’s characteristics can effectively expand their visibility and engage customers.
- Paid social ads :
Paying to boost your post is a great way to attract more followers while engaging with other users. Platforms like Facebook provide extensive ad targeting options, allowing you to broaden your search audience using smart algorithms. Businesses can use targeted campaigns to increase brand awareness while measuring company
effectiveness, allowing them to customise their tactics for better outcomes. Paid advertising is a strategic tool for businesses to raise awareness and achieve goals.
Real-life example: Chanel on Instagram
Chanel has maintained persistent engagement on Instagram through collaborations with influencers and content updates about its luxurious brand identity. Chanel’s consistency in high-quality, visually appealing images and extensive product presentation maintains its reputation for exclusivity and beauty which targets a wide audience in fashion. The brand's partnerships, which occasionally feature high-profile personalities, reflect its outstanding appearance, establishing a flawless connection with its followers who value luxury and elegance. This approach has helped Chanel maintain awareness, encourage meaningful connections, and increase brand loyalty among its main audience.
Targeting a specific audience and their profiles on
different social media sites
- Facebook : has over 2.9 billion active users primarily aged 25 to 60. This platform appeals to audiences who enjoy various videos, articles, and active engagement in group conversations. Businesses should prioritise sharing educational content, establishing community-focused interactions, and preparing live Q&A sessions
2010s) community. Nike, for example during the pandemic COVID 19 when everyone was urged to be indoors engaged its TikTok users through viral challenges like #Playinside #Prayfortheworld. Similarly, brands like Starbucks have benefited from TikTok trends by offering barista recipes and behind-the-scenes content, which helps them build a personal relationship with their followers. These examples show how user participation and real-time content can increase business exposure and customer engagement.
Risks and Issues of Using Social Media
● Vulnerability to online threats: Putting your business out there leaves it vulnerable to online security threats. The smallest mistakes can have heavy impacts on how your brand is consumed. Hacking can affect all businesses, whether small or large. Businesses should implement strong cybersecurity measures to avoid these attacks by implementing password upgrades and using a central management system with built-in firewalls for their social pages. ● Compliance violation: violations of applicable laws and regulations, such as trademarks, copyright infringement, data security concerns, employment issues, privacy rights violations, and improper handling of electronic communications can be communicated through social media which could be risky according to the retention policies. Businesses can mitigate this through data protection regulations like the Data Protection Act 2018(DPA 2018) which regulates the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to protect personal data. ● Competitor risk: If you decide to rely mostly on conventional marketing strategies along with additional consumer communication and cooperation channels, you risk losing market share to rivals that use social media's insights. To mitigate this, businesses should regularly monitor competitors' activities and compare engagement numbers to improve their tactics. ● Inability to manage generational divide : many businesses need help comprehending how younger generations are utilising new technologies, making it difficult to develop efficient marketing campaigns that personalise specialised content
to attract targeted clients. To mitigate this, businesses should encourage continual learning within their marketing departments and employ younger staff members ● familiar with current social media trends. ● Brand hijacking: Malicious parties can abuse a company’s reputation, threatening customer privacy and trust. To mitigate brand hijacking businesses should change passwords regularly, use multi-factor authentication(MFA) and monitor for unusual activities.
Case study: Burger King incident
In 2013, Burger King’s X account was hacked, rebranded to look like McDonald’s, and filled with unapproved tweets. This attack by the Defonic Team Screen Club emphasised the serious potential damage involved with the account security and the brand's reputation. While Burger King gained 30000 followers, the incident demonstrated the need to have well-prepared strong security policies in place. McDonald’s issued a statement sympathising with its rivals over the event tweeting: “We emphasise with our @BurgerKing counterparts. Rest assured we had nothing to do with the hacking.”. Burger King was not available to comment at the time of writing, and Twitter declined to comment(hack). Analysing this demonstrates that businesses should learn to establish better security measures and develop crisis response strategies to avoid similar incidents in the future. From this case study businesses realise the importance of robust security measures and are always prepared.
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