Chapter 9: Social Commerce Creates New Customer Relationships

1) Assess the people, organization, and technology issues for using social media to engage with customers.

Answer:

We can assess the people, organization, and technology issues using social media such as Facebook and Twitter to engage with customer.

•  Powerful tolls for engaging customer and asses the people, organization, and technology issues.
• Companies are rolling out ads that capitalize on the social media features of Facebook to achieve greater visibility.
• Twitter has developed many new offerings to interested advertisers, like Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends.
• Facebook targeting capabilities to determine which type of people respond to the various ads it has created.
• Many companies are running online ads that focus less on pitching their product than on promoting their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts.
• The ads feature menu  tabs and allow users to click within the ad to see a brand’s Twitter messages or Facebook wall posts in real time, or to watch a brand’s video content from YouTube-all within the Web page where the ad appears.
• Even if the Facebook or Twitter postings in ads show brands apologizing about missteps or customer complaints, advertisers may still benefit. 

2) What are the advantage and disadvantage of using social media for advertising, brand building, market research, and customer service?

Answer:

Advantages:

• Building Brand Awareness

One of the most obvious reasons for using Social Media Marketing is to build brand awareness and it certainly does if used correctly.

• Reach a Large Audience

Using social media to market our business online will without a doubt help us reach a larger audience. In a way, the more people we reach, the better brand awareness we have but with social media, there is a lot of noise. We need to make sure we use a tool like Hoot suite so we can eliminate all of the noise and focus on reaching the people who want to engage with us.

• Great for SEO

Social Media or even more specific, Google+ is great for boosting our SEO. Google is picking up on how much activity each business is doing on social media and will rank our business accordingly. The more active and fresh content we are posting on our social media accounts, the better our business will rank on Google and it really is, as simple as that.

• Cost Effective

Social Media Marketing doesn’t cost you a penny, unless you want it to. You can market on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest and any other social network for free. If we want to run competitions or use a few select third party tools, we may end up have to pay a small fee but on the whole, social media marketing is very cost effective.

• Become a Thought Leader

Using Social Media to market our business can make us a thought leader in our selected field.

Disadvantages: 

• Understanding on how it works

We need to understand how social media works, when and how to use it and which channels to focus on depending on our end goal of using social media in order to get its full effects.

• Commits illegal crime

Social media may open possibility for hackers to commit illegal crime such as fraud, spam and virus attacks. People falling prey to online scam may also increase, resulting in data or identity theft.

• Viral social disadvantage

This may damage one’s reputation. The wrong online brand strategy could put us on this.

• Negative effects on worker productivity

Results in lost productivity and employees may use social media to attack the company’s reputation. Instead of working in their time of work, they can waste such valuable time using social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook. This may result in negative comments from employees about the company or potential legal consequences if employees use these sites to view objectionable, illicit or offensive material.

• Distraction

Most people who suffer from this are students. Instead of doing their homework’s they tend to fail their academic endeavours because of using social media in the wrong way.

• Serious detrimental outcomes on individual’s health

When social media is used in a wrong way, it may have a negative effect on both mental and physical health of individual.

3) Should all companies use Facebook and Twitter for customer service and advertising? Why or why not? What kinds of companies are best suited to use these platform?

Answer:

            Now days, people are not call up a company and complain or tell their feedback. Now, they are more likely to head to their smartphones or computers to tell the world how a product is. That’s why social media platform like Facebook, Twitter is important for customer service.

Example of company which use Twitter for Customer service:

            JetBlue Excels in Responsiveness. Airline delays are one of the most common causes of customer frustration. JetBlue ensures they’re responsive to their customers because they understand it’s important for continued customer loyalty. They engage with happy customers, but they also respond to and help frustrated customers as quickly as possible.

            JetBlue is to be extremely responsive to customers mentioning their brand. Whether they send public a reply or a private DM to answer a question, they are quick to interact. As seen in the picture above, they reached out to their frustrated customer within the hour.

            Social media is a channel where customers get quick responses. Social media platform help companies to response quickly to customer. Many companies dedicate full-time employees to the task of responding to customers and potential customers on social media. Social media help to satisfy customer needs.

Moreover, social media help find all this things.

• Social Listening (Listening for conversations about your company, competitors or other topics of interest)
• Social Conversation (Finding and responding to conversations online – engaging with others in social media)
• Social Marketing (Launching and running campaigns and promotions in social media)
• Social Analytics(Measuring and analyzing results of social media efforts across various platforms)
• Social Influencer (Identifying and engaging with influencers that are relevant to your company or industry)

               Social media platform is cheaper than traditional marketing and advertising methods. Promote a product using social networking sites by determining where their customers and potential customers are, and getting their product visible on those sites.

Facebook page

            Companies’ product can have its own page, where people can like it, comment on it, leave reviews and even link to your website so they can buy it. Companies can offer incentives such as coupons and discounts. Invite people to share company page with their friends so company community can grow.

Twitter account

            Companies can set up an account on Twitter for their product and promote it by attracting followers. Companies have to come up with brief messages that describe and promote their product. Follow people, brands and companies that might be interested in their product. The more people a company follow, the more followers that company have a chance of attracting.

            In our opinion all companies are best suited to use social media platform. At the same time the company should figure out what they want to accomplish via Social Media. Moreover, what are their human resources, and how many people can work on their social media efforts. Finally, how long is their project going to be.