Use of Social Media for Business: IT Infrastructure Management

This paper investigates the extent to which social media has a quantifiable influence on business performance. It explores the benefits of social media for businesses, the impact of social media on business growth and performance, and the influence of social media on business competences.

Running head: IT INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT 1
IT Infrastructure Management: Use of Social Media for Business
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

IT INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT 2
Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................4
Definition of Social Media..........................................................................................................................4
The Influence of Social Media on Business Competences..........................................................................5
Benefits of Social Media for Businesses......................................................................................................7
Impact of Social Media on Business Growth and Performance...................................................................8
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................9
References.................................................................................................................................................10

IT INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT 3
Abstract
With the intensely globalized as well as competitively driven business environment social media
plays a key role. In the modern business world social media is the gear for marketing. Social
media has momentous impact on the business growth and performance such as improving brand
awareness and increases sales among others.
Keywords: Social media, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Marketing

IT INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT 4
Use of Social Media for Business
Introduction
The current business world is technology driven hence social media have turn out to be a
platform where traders can spread out their advertising campaigns to a broad assortment of
customers. According to Hassan, Nadzim, and Shiratuddin (2015) social media is acting as a
marketing link between brands and users. In this regard, social media gears are gaining fame and
are highly being used in daily operations of many corporations extending from start-ups, small
and medium businesses to gigantic companies. However, despite the massive usage of social
media, little is well-known regarding the detailed effect that these gears as well as technology
have on business performance process. The essence of this paper is to go past listing the profits
and shortcomings of social media tools and investigate the extent to which their application has
quantifiable influence on business performance. As traditional marketing approaches to
consumers such as advertising using newspapers, and direct mail are becoming less and less
effective, businesses are shifting towards social media to link-up with customers and persons
who influence them. Indeed, methodologies as well as tools for interconnecting with customers
have drastically transformed with the advent of social media (Turban, & Volonino, Wood, 2015).
Consequently, business ought to learn what way to use social media in a manner that is stable
with their business strategy. Certainly, this is particularly true for companies that are determined
to gain a competitive advantage.
Definition of Social Media
In order to acknowledge social media as an advertising gear that it is significant for a trader to
recognize each aspect of it. Social media cannot be appreciated minus first describing Web 2.0,
which is a new tactic through which final users utilize the World Wide Web a place where

IT INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT 5
content is continually altered by all operators in a collaborative and shared manner (Ngai, Tao, &
Moon, 2015). Wen 2.0 has advanced from just a simple information recovery to interoperability,
interactive and collaborative platform. Social media is described as a collection of internet based
apps that shaped on conceptual and high-tech basis of Web 2.0 that permit formation and
interchange of user created content (Ainin, Parveen, Moghavvemi, Jaafar, & Mohd Shuib, 2015).
Social media is all about distribution information with the objective of providing a more
appropriate choice at the end. Social media conveys a broad range of word-of-mouth, online and
mobile forums such as blogs, consumer-to-consumer email, social networking websites,
consumer service or product rating and business sponsored discussion boards and chat rooms.
The Influence of Social Media on Business Competences
According to Parveen, Jaafar, and Ainin (2015) there are several latent aspects (business
proficiencies) which are greatly impacted by Web 2.0 tools that eventually impact business
performance. These factors include rapid application development, collaboration and
communication, customer relationship management, knowledge management, innovation and
training.
Rapid application development: social media tools help to improve app improvement by
incorporating third-party services and merging the prevailing technologies as well as applications
into innovative businesses. These gears involve specialists, company employees, consumers and
suppliers in product improvement efforts which speed them up. In addition, customers are
engaged in the product progress process reduces rate of miscarriage by a large margin
(Guesalaga, 2016). Through social media it permits businesses the ability to modify and develop
apps faster, support applications easier and advance on the modelling necessities.

IT INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT 6
Collaboration and communication: Social media platform have the capacity to enhance
collaboration and communication within and amongst corporations hence fostering fast
internationalization of businesses as well as globalization of their operations. Web 2.0 have the
capacity to reach out to many people faster, coordinate discussions, and harmonize tasks and
projects.
Customer relationship management: according to Wang, Pauleen, and Zhang (2016) social media
platforms have transformed the traditional Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
processes. Social media helps to identify and solve consumer issues. It is possible to mine
customers’ data through social media, capability to get customer feedback and also communicate
effectively with consumers.
Knowledge organization: Web 2.0 tools enhances knowledge organization procedures,
knowledge creation and exchange. Through Web 2.0 tools it is possible to advance the
transmission of knowledge among workforces within the organization. Also, social media gears
with external attention on communication with the merchants and with clienteles.
Innovation: novelty is a direct outcome of the interchange of concepts between specialists that is
facilitated by user-produced and mass co-creation. Therefore, social media networks permit rapid
novelties to appear on the market by facilitating continued communication between people with
expertise in the business world. Innovation is analyzed through the capacity to improve
innovative activities, and enhance success rate.
Training: Social media gears influence training procedures because information has become user
driven and organizations face changeovers toward user generated content, data sharing ad user
experience.

IT INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT 7
Benefits of Social Media for Businesses
Some of the main business benefits include:
Improved customer service: Social media permits companies to respond the customer’s
complaints, concerns as well as questions almost promptly. Research has shown that consumers
always want to be assured that in case they have a problem they can get assistance quickly. A
study by Forbes indicate that approximately 70% of customers who acquire quick reply on social
media are more probable to applaud such a product or service to other persons (Jones, Borgman,
& Ulusoy, 2015).
Improved consumer insights: through social media platforms a business is capable of getting an
enhanced understanding of their consumers hence they can share their perceptions since they are
conscious that the business pay attention to their concerns. Therefore, social media permits
companies to see what prospective consumer’s views are and the network within them.
Cost efficient: According to Kumar, Bezawada, Rishika, Janakiraman, and Kannan, (2016) when
a company operates on a static advertising financial plan, social media is the most cost-effective
approach to market and advertise its products. Social media spots such as twitter, Facebook and
Pinterest among others allow organizations to share their views at no expense at all, which makes
social media an inexpensive marketing websites.
Connectivity: Organizations are always connected to consumers in terms of lifestyles,
exchanging likings and adapt to the evolving customer interest. Through social media
corporations are capable of taking care of the dynamic innovations and interests happening in the
marketing campaign.

IT INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT 8
Establish brand awareness: It is possible to enhance brand awareness amongst consumers
through social media, hence it helps to build the business image.
Sales: With the amplified acquaintance on social media, it pushes traffic into businesses.
Consequently, this transform prospective customers into authentic customers, hence swelling
sales (Guesalaga, 2016). For example, the most notable social media examples include:
Facebook: It is a popular open social interacting website which permit registered users to
produce profiles, upload videos, photos, send messages and proactively keep contact with family,
friends and colleagues. In regard to the recent studies from Nielsen Group, it was found that
Internet users in the US spend the highest time on Facebook unlike any other sites.
LinkedIn: It is a social socializing platform particularly designed for the corporate community.
The objective of this site is to permit registered persons to establish as well as document network
of the persons they know and trust jobwise.
Impact of Social Media on Business Growth and Performance
With the high rate at which social media is growing at, there is a tremendous influence on
business as well as business marketing. Social media aid to develop business strategies. Popular
website such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and LinkedIn have provided huge opportunities for
companies to win the customers attention and simultaneously build their brand image. These
social media platforms allow organizations to use and exhibits numerous strategies by creating
brand profiles such as sweepstakes, fun pages ad contests (Hassan, Nadzim, & Shiratuddin,
2015). Through social media it allows customers to show their likes and preferences to their
friends, colleagues and family over certain products and services. Therefore, if one is not happy
with a given product they can blog and write about it on several social networking sites. Indeed,

IT INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT 9
with a strong online presence, businesses can counter such situations through their distinct
innovative ways of their products and services.
Conclusion
Studies have shown that traders can intensify awareness of their brands by being
innovative when engaging with consumers on social media sites (Wang, Pauleen, & Zhang,
2016). Currently, more customers are turning to using social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn,
and Twitter among others depend on these sites for marketing shopping decisions, advertisement
using social media is significant. Facebook is regarded as a better marketing avenues compared
to other avenues since it stores information regarding all its users information hence it ensures
that business marketing reaches specific retailer target market segment. Indeed, social media
sites are at a great stage for traders to create as well as experience by using info stored on these
sites to enhance user understanding and their brands.
Task B (5 marks)
a) Are any of the bold, coloured text matches in my self-check report missing in-text
references? No. there is not.
b) Do any of the bold, coloured text matches in my self-check report include more than three
words in a row copied from the original source without quotation marks? Yes. For example, in
the introduction part: “business are turning to social media to” business are shifting towards
social media.
c) Do direct quotations take up more than 10% of the essay? (We need to change some of the
direct quotations to summaries and paraphrases so that at least 90% of every essay is written in

IT INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT 10
our own words.) No. the direct quotations have been paraphrased and then supported with in-
text citations as acknowledgement to the authors of the work.
d) Are any of the bold, coloured text matches in my originality report purely coincidental?
(Sometimes our words coincidentally match with words in other online sources that we have
never seen before and that are completely irrelevant to our research topic. If so, we do not need
to change anything at all.)
Yes. Some words such as “social media” are coincidental because they are emerging terms.
e) Do any of the short strings of matching text indicate that my attempts at paraphrasing were
not completely successful? (We need to avoid sham paraphrasing, one type of plagiarism, by
using synonyms and changing the sentence structures completely. Remember that we should not
copy more than three words in a row from the original without quotation marks.)
Yes. Such as “social media is described as” should be social media is defined as.
f) Have I synthesised all of the sources’ ideas into my essay by introducing each piece of
source information with a signal phrase and by adding my own comments or interpretation to it
in the following sentence? (We need to avoid dropped-in quotations and simply reporting facts)
No. all the source ideas in my essay have been synthesized well.

IT INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT 11
References
Ainin, S., Parveen, F., Moghavvemi, S., Jaafar, N. I., & Mohd Shuib, N. L. (2015). Factors
influencing the use of social media by SMEs and its performance outcomes. Industrial
Management & Data Systems, 115(3), 570-588.
Guesalaga, R. (2016). The use of social media in sales: Individual and organizational
antecedents, and the role of customer engagement in social media. Industrial Marketing
Management, 54, 71-79.
Hassan, S., Nadzim, S. Z. A., & Shiratuddin, N. (2015). Strategic use of social media for small
business based on the AIDA model. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 172, 262-
269.
Jones, N., Borgman, R., & Ulusoy, E. (2015). Impact of social media on small
businesses. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 22(4), 611-632.
Kumar, A., Bezawada, R., Rishika, R., Janakiraman, R., & Kannan, P. K. (2016). From social to
sale: The effects of firm-generated content in social media on customer behavior. Journal
of Marketing, 80(1), 7-25.
Ngai, E. W., Tao, S. S., & Moon, K. K. (2015). Social media research: Theories, constructs, and
conceptual frameworks. International journal of information management, 35(1), 33-44.

IT INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT 12
Parveen, F., Jaafar, N. I., & Ainin, S. (2015). Social media usage and organizational
performance: Reflections of Malaysian social media managers. Telematics and
Informatics, 32(1), 67-78.
Turban, E., & Volonino, L. & Wood, G. (2015). Information Technology for Management: On-
Demand Strategies for Performance, Growth and Sustainablity 11th edition. USA: John
Wiley and Sons.
Wang, W. Y., Pauleen, D. J., & Zhang, T. (2016). How social media applications affect B2B
communication and improve business performance in SMEs. Industrial Marketing
Management, 54, 4-14.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019850115300146