Social media influences internal business communication positively 1

PROFESSOR:

COURSE:

SUBJECT: Social Media influences internal business

communication positively

ROLL NUMBER:
Social media influences internal business communication positively 2

Argue either in favour or against ‘social media influences internal business

communication positively’

Social media are electrical form of communication, which connects each user via sharing of
pictures, information, messages or any other social platform. It doesn’t come as a shock that
social media has had a huge impact in modern societies, creeping its way into all forms of
communication as well, such as internal business communications. As newton third law states
that every action has an opposite reaction, similarly social media has influenced internal
business communication positively, as well as negatively. In this essay, we argue that the
positive impact of social media far outweighs the negative (in regards to internal business
communication), and this claim is supported by authoritative sources.

Firstly, social media platform allows a business to stay in touch with the cutting edge business
trends. Corporate communication is defined as the centralized communication management
with respect to the reputation of the organization (Doorley and Garzia, 2007), and the use of
social media help business in associating their reputation with the current trends. It helps reach
out to the mass media user, enabling means to build relationship with the customers. Not only
this, social media would allow media research regarding business trends as well, due to the
large number of consumers who use social media.

Secondly, Social media and high communication awareness transforms a team from
individualistic to a more collective one. Teams that are more social media friendly are able to
perform task orientated communication at a superior level. Teams, within internal businesses,
who are in the low communication awareness conditions rely more on individualistic
approaches in completing a project, as they lacked the communication support required to
leverage a team-work based approach. Teams which used social media for communication and
had more communication awareness stood out and were more efficient due to early and stable
communication between team members. The use of social media directed the attention of
individuals towards their team members, and invited them to take part in, respond to or trigger
conversations on a more frequent and ongoing basis (heath et al. 2002, Schmidt 2002).

Thirdly, the use of social media as platforms for communication in internal business affairs also
increases effectiveness and efficiency of project teams. The use of social media enables
asynchronous team collaboration between members. It enables team to build early
communication amongst each other, saving time on individual team communication and fills in
for people who find it difficult in keeping up with the development of said project.
Social media influences internal business communication positively 3

Communication awareness allows unobstructed broadcasting (Bradner et al., 1999). The use of
social media is more appropriately obtrusive, compared to ‘phone calls’ or other mode of
communication, which are more intrusive. Hence, the use of social media enables team
members within internal business to broadcast information in unobtrusive manner, as well as
promote more communication between team members.

The use of social media enhances and ensures a business/organization’s alignment and
cohesion. A central issue in most business organizations is to ensure that all employees or
people associated understand and promote the core vision of the organization. The use of
social media is a cheap but effective way to ensure this. The upper management could easily
create videos, highlighting the organizations mission, their interpretation of it and how an
individual should go about it. Not only this, the employees could create and share videos
exploring new ideas for the organization, which would combine the employees personal
interest with the overall vision of the organization, and those videos could be easily shared and
viewed. The extensive use of this form of communication is a cost friendly feasible method for
the unification of large members of the business and associated peers.

Social network analysis could also be used for the selection process of certain employees or
internees into the business environment, or the replacement of current employees within the
organization may also be discussed. Applications could be developed, which could be aimed to
simulate the network of communication of organization members, generating accounts and
profiles of the employees and their mutual communication. Formal parameters could also easily
be introduced within this, which would be related to the personal data of each individual, which
introduces the concept of introducing additional parameters in the process of evaluating online
business social media platforms. Just as stated above, video resume system could be
implemented within the business organization, which would make the employee and volunteer
selection process easier, as it would give the hiring managers a better sense of the applicants
image and personality, before shortlisting them for interviews, saving time on the selection
process, as well as making it more efficient. (Amy M young et al., 2014).

In conclusion, the essay explored the effect and impact of social media on internal business
communication. The essay states the advantages social media has had, including but not limited
to expanding the image of an organization and ensuring a proper communication channel for
employees working within the organization, converting the team from a more individualistic
one to a more collective one, as the use of social media provokes conversations and
communication, which boosts productivity in the sense that it increases team work. Among
other factors, the use of social media also gave birth to new innovative methods, such as
employee induction, as stated above. Furthermore, the use of social media allows business to
stay in touch with their customers, create a more transparent bond with their customers, focus
Social media influences internal business communication positively 4

more on what the customer wants via surveys, as well as easily expand any campaign for the
business. Due to the afore mentioned reasons, it is clear that social media influences internal
business communication in a positive manner, as the positive far out weights the narrow
negatives.

REFERENCES

Madsen, V. (2016). Constructing Organizational Identity on Internal Social Media. International

Journal of Business Communication, 53(2), pp.200-223.

Meredith, M. (2012). Strategic Communication and Social Media. Business Communication

Quarterly, 75(1), pp.89-95.

Krancher, O., Dibbern, J. and Meyer, P. (2018). How Social Media-Enabled Communication
Awareness Enhances Project Team Performance. Journal of the Association for Information
Systems, 19, pp.813-856.

Schaupp, L. and Bélanger, F. (2014). The Value of Social Media for Small Businesses. Journal of
Information Systems, 28(1), pp.187-207.

Sovilj, S. and Vaskovic, V. (2014). Exploring the Usefulness of Corporate Online Social Networks
in the Human Resource Management. Management - Journal for theory and practice of
management, 19(70), pp.5-16.