Social Media Evolves to Social Business | The Digital Clicks Blog
With the ever-increasing number of global brands and politicians making social media a serious part of their Internet marketing, the days of social media being a direct reflection of our real-life interactions with friends are coming to an end. We’re no longer using social media to have informal conversations; instead, our posts are thoroughly planned and orchestrated around appearing social to customers and outsiders while driving the company’s marketing from an SMO perspective. Here are just three of the main ways that social media has evolved to revolutionise the way businesses function: Organisational Construct: As social media becomes a more prominent part of business, it no longer just affects the marketing department of a company but now forces companies to look at their social media operations more holistically. Major brands such as Xbox, for example, have started to use social media to focus on specific areas of business, like an “Xbox Support” customer service-dedicated Twitter account. Social Intelligence and Market Research: With the increase of “like,” “retweet,” and “+1” features, in addition to the ongoing conversations across the web in blogs and comment sections, social media has become a goldmine of market research and customer feedback. Not only this, but companies can now target their market based on users' likes and interests using Facebook PPC ads. User Collaboration and Ad Hoc Creation: What started as “jailbreaking” and shared user-created software on handsets has since been developed by businesses like Apple and Android as a social platform that promotes the sharing of content along with rating, commenting, and discussing it. This is just another way that a potential threat to business has been adapted to incorporate social media, through things like the Apple App Store and Android Market, as a way of increasing sales. While social media has caused business as we know it to evolve, there is still a massive gap between groups: the consumers using social media for discussion and the companies that use it for marketing. The task for any online marketing company, therefore, is to bridge this gap and further blur the distinction between business and social. The aim is not just to have customers be fans of a brand, but for customers to co-create value with the business. When a company engages in social media, its supporters gain a mutually beneficial voice that never stops. A voice that, if listened to, will change the way businesses operate forever.