Coatsworth 1

Tyler Coatsworth

Professor Julia Intawiwat

ENGL 2116

20 November 2017

Research Report on Social Media

The purpose of this research is to identify the many ways social media influences

business. The proliferation of social media has taken the technological revolution by storm. In

2017 statistics show that approximately 2 billion people are using social media to date

(Statista). With roughly a third of the population of Earth using social media, its use, application,

and impact on business are evident. While many scenarios social media paint social media in a

positive light, such as marketing to customers which well discuss in the first couple paragraphs,

the drawbacks and cons still exist. Navigating the muddied waters of social media when keeping

your business competitive can prove a challenge, discussed in the second part of the paper.

Alongside maintaining a positive public image is the pitfall of oversharing. Putting too much

internal organization data on the web can lead to challenges from rivaling businesses and

cybercriminals alike. This analysis will allow for more individual consideration social media

usage in relations to business, professional, and personal life.

Social networks are especially important for brand marketing and advertisement. Before

the invention of the Internet, businesses and companies were often the first to initiate contact

with potential buyers. Today this is not the case. The Internet puts the power back into the hands

of the consumer, giving people the ability to research a company and view product reviews

before they decide to do business with you. Brian Clarke, CEO of Copyblogger says, And yes,
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we tell ourselves stories about brands, products, and services. Whether youre consciously telling

a story or not, prospects are telling themselves a story about you. (Clark). Maintaining a strong

online presence can qualify yourself to people who otherwise would pass you by. This double-

sided coin of giving power to the consumer all ties into your branding and how effectively you

manage your online presence. The increasing ability for your consumers to talk to each other

limits the ability to control your public face (Horn). This also extends to personal branding as

well. Having a strong online portfolio or LinkedIn profile with vouching connections is essential

when separating yourself from the millions of other candidates out there.

So, what is social commerce? Social commerce harnesses the simple idea that people

value the opinion of other people (Qualman). Which means that opportunities will begin to find

us rather than seeking for them. Thats the power of trust people place in the opinions of others,

with over 78% of people trusting a peers opinion on a product or service (Qualman). Review

sites such as Amazon allow the crowdsourcing of opinions by people across the globe, all

available in one place, to aid a customers decision to buyor not to. Social services such as

TripAdvisor, Foursquare, Google+, and Facebook create an open space for dialogue between

brand and individual. Its a product designers dream world, a place where feedback can be

gathered and implemented into the next product releaseall at the whopping price of free.

Before the invention of social media, gathering such large amounts of data and responses from

customers would not only cost a lot but would place more effort on internal testing, leaving room

for error and slowing business ability to create enhancements.

There was a case a few years back when Facebook, Trip adviser, and Google Maps were

first taking off that user acquisition of user data from locations people had visited was becoming

a gold-mine for up and coming social platforms. One programmer, Craig Ulliott, back in 2008
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created an application called Where Ive Been which was later nearly bought by TripAdvisor for

$3 million dollars after gathering over a million active users (Qualman). TripAdvisor later

decided to build their own in-house application for around 20,000 dollars using the free Google

Maps as their backend. Entering the market quickly and with little testing, they were able to

incrementally update their design through the feedback of users and surpass Ulliotts userbase by

over five times. The CEO of TripAdvisor, Steve Kaufer, says this, If you arent constantly

evolving along with your customers you will be doomed to fail. (Qualman). As weve seen in

recent years, integration of location services into social applications such as SnapChat and the

online game PokmonGo can have a tremendous impact on your visibility to consumers in the

modern age.

Not only is the online commerce giant Amazon a great place to get feedback on your

products and services, it is also a great place for customer acquisition. Daymond John, CEO of

FUBU and angel investor on the ABC show Sharktank, teaches this in his entrepreneurship

course Success Formula. Why place the effort in getting customers to your site, when you can go

sell at a place your customers already trust?

There are many cases, however, where social media impacts businesses negatively. Use

of social media networks during office hours can impair productivity and lead to distraction.

Checking newsfeeds and messages throughout work hours needed for concentration can derail

the ability to focus and perform up to standard (Esam). Not only can its use be distracting,

maintaining a digital presence online can also lead to exposure to data leakage and a corporate

competitive disadvantage. Networking sites for business professionals, including LinkedIn,

expose relationships, organizational ties, and hierarchies to outsiders that otherwise would

remain internal to the respective company. Public tools for Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)
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are freely available to the public for scraping data from the troves of social sites on the WEB.

One such collection of tools called the OSINT Framework provides users the ability to scour the

globe for people, addresses, phone numbers, social media, and location data to name a few. With

organizational information gathered from these platforms, an attacker can wage very

sophisticated spear-phishing attacks against employees. Like any penetration tester, someone

who hacks computers ethically for a living will tell you, people are the weakest link in your

digital environment. By clicking a malicious embedded email link or by opening documents set

with a payload exploit, your organization can allow hackers into your systemsall with a click

of a mouse.

Knowing when to use social media appropriately is an essential business skill for the

modern age, and having the insight to refrain from certain aspects of it are key. Reaching

customers can be achieved more easily, while your control over their communication and

opinions are limited. Adequately balancing the publicity and privacy features for your

organization can prove a challenge but in many cases, the pros outweigh the risks. If you are

adaptable and work to keep up with the market the world of social media is your oyster, allowing

you to reach an audience of raving fans never before dreamed of in the world prior.
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Works Cited

Clark, Brian, et al. How to Know Exactly What Content to Deliver to Convert More Prospects.

Copyblogger, 28 Aug. 2017, www.copyblogger.com/what/.

Esam Alwagait, Basit Shahzad, Sophia Alim, Impact of social media usage on students academic

performance in Saudi Arabia, In Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 51, Part B,

2015, Pages 1092-1097, ISSN 0747-5632, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.09.028.

Horn, Ine S, Torben Taros, Sven Dirkes, Lucas Huer, Maximilian Rose, Raphael Tietmeyer, and

Efthymios Constantinides. "Business Reputation and Social Media: a Primer on Threats

and Responses." Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice. 16.3 (2015):

193-208. Print.

Number of social media users worldwide 2010-2021. Statista,

www.statista.com/statistics/278414/number-of-worldwide-social-network-users/.

Qualman, Erik. Socialnomics: how social media transforms the way we live and do business.

Wiley, 2011.