Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Media Usage for McDonald Australia

This report discusses the possible advantages and disadvantages of social media usage coupled with strategies that may be taken into account for designing its prospective Twitter campaigns and communication plan for building media relations for McDonald Australia.

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MNG81001MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION
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MEMO
To: Andrew Gregory, CEO, McDonald Australia
From: Rick Wion, Director (Social Media), McDonald Australia
Introduction
According to Manel (2018) for marketing their wide range of product offerings and services,
brand promotion and advertise across multiple target market and customers, the contributions of
social media on fast food chain like McDonald is immensely significant. Through this report
discussions will be made about the possible advantages and disadvantages of social media usage
coupled with strategies that may be taken into account for designing its prospective Twitter
campaigns and communication plan for building media relations.
Body
1. According to Whiting and Deshpande (2016) for building productive engagement with
targeted audiences, escalating traffic on corporate website or ecommerce sites by enabling
connection and interactions amidst customer and organizational representatives at personal and
emotional level with intent to develop brand image, it has been observed that social media has
emerged as a potential business marketing and advertising tool in today’s contemporary business
model. Usage of social media has further increased the scope for entrepreneurs worldwide to
initiate and develop a brand by giving voice to their businesses. Besides, social media is also
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equally effective in attracting new customers by designing adequate campaigns for grabbing the
attention of their followers with mind-blowing promotions and offerings. Once a decent fan
following is secured, organizations can further shift their focus on tailored social media
campaigns for winning their long-term brand loyalties. According to Kamboj and Sarmah (2018)
with the help of advertising of products within the local communities in remunerative ways,
significant contributions are made by social media in revenue generation through reduced costs.
This happens because social media advertisements are usually linked an organization’s social
page or official website, which assists in building brand awareness. However, according to Han
and Kim (2017) use of social media also brings along certain disadvantages for businesses
mainly revolving around the freedom of followers in negatively or giving fake comments about
ones products and/or services, which is viewed by thousands of other followers, shared and liked
a million of times thus, adversely impacting the sales figures. Although a quick response can
mitigate the potential damage but cannot completely discontinue criticisms.
2. According to Sundstrom and Levenshus (2017) existing and potential customers, staffs,
members of board, suppliers, media, food bloggers and journalist, health educators, thought
leaders, politicians, and NPOs (nonprofit organisations) are the different audiences McDonald
needs to address while making use of social media. For instance, to deal with needs of fast food
lovers who are also health conscious at the same and promote the rising trend of healthy living
and nutritional food, social media was used by McDonald for positioning the brand as healthy
and low calories food promoter. Healthy food menu like salads, wraps, fat free ice creams, more
fibred patties etc. was incorporated in the regular meals besides giving calorie counts for each
food product. Moreover, it came up with a Q&A campaign for addressing its PR needs and
covering up pink slime controversy for encouraging food lovers’ query about the ingredients
used in their favourite menu by posting videos of how a food product was prepared.
3. Ahead of designing attractive Twitter campaigns, according to Lou (2017) it is necessary to
evaluate and comprehend the dos and don’ts for brainstorming engaging content ideas followed
by reviewing past content and campaigns and measuring their effectiveness. Themes and format
generating more leads, interest and social shares, and tangible business outcomes should be
identified for developing future campaigns. This should be followed by setting goals for social
media strategy for targeting right audience within right timing besides, setting primary customer
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interest based themes, new food trends and the dynamics of market to ensure that the Twitter
campaigns content taps the perceptions of target audiences. According to Husain, Ghufran and
Chaubey (2016) for standing out from competition and cultivating idiosyncratic presence on
Twitter, unique themes can be chosen by thinking out of the box ideas and building more nucleus
account tweets integrating some challenging marketing strategy by utilizing networks having
exclusive features and user base for building more rendezvous with audiences. The Twitter
campaigns outcomes should be measured finally for interpreting its success.
4. According to Icha and Edwin (2016) for supporting strong media relationship and précised
reporting a new social media strategy should be devised focusing on the communication plan
depicted in the tabular format below.
Communication Plan
Criteria Response
Timings
The new social media campaign should be launched within 12
days of prior campaign’s negative discourse and criticisms.
Audiences
Existing and potential customers, staffs, board members,
suppliers, media, food bloggers and journalist, health
educators, thought leaders, politicians, NPOs
Sender Director of Social media (McDonald)
Message
The new campaign should convey details about ingredients
used in food products and the preparation process coupled with
nutritional data and calorie count besides promoting
McDonalds quality standards.
Expected Result
Rise in positive image about the food products of McDonald
within target audiences, communicating nutritional info to
health educators, strengthen ethical sourcing image amid
community and NPOs.
Medium Social media platform like Twitter
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Materials Videos, testimonials, expert reviews and customers comments
Frequency The new campaign should be posted twice a day
Conclusion
From the above study, finally it can be concluded that social media is widely contemplated as a
powerful tool having significant contributions in establishing connections of business
organizations with direct customers. Moreover, social media when used in an effective way
bestows numerous benefits on businesses in terms of brand awareness and attracting new
customers to count a few. However it also has certain disadvantage revolving around negative
publicity with fake contents hence, adequate planning and a captivating communication plan is
required to build social media effectiveness.
References
Han, M. C. and Kim, Y. (2017). Social media commerce: Town square to market square. Pan -
Pacific Journal of Business Research, 8(1), 29-46. Available:
https://search.proquest.com/docview/2091587815?accountid=30552.
Husain, S., Ghufran, A. and Chaubey, D. S. (2016). Relevance of social media in marketing and
advertising. Splint International Journal of Professionals, 3(7), 21-28. Available:
https://search.proquest.com/docview/1906047118?accountid=30552
Icha, O. and Edwin, A. (2016). Effectiveness of social media networks as a strategic tool for
organizational marketing management. Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce, 21, 1-19.
Available: https://search.proquest.com/docview/1799378236?accountid=30552
Kamboj, S. and Sarmah, B. (2018). Construction and validation of the customer social
participation in brand communities scale. Internet Research, 28(1), 46-73. Available:
https://search.proquest.com/docview/1994328948?accountid=30552
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Lou, S. (2017). Applying data analytics to social media advertising: A twitter advertising
campaign case study. Journal of Advertising Education, 21(1), 26-32,4. Available:
https://search.proquest.com/docview/1914440143?accountid=30552
Manel, H. (2018). Understanding social media advertising effect on consumers’
responses. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 31(3), 426-445. Available:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JEIM-07-2017-0101
Sundstrom, B. and Levenshus, A. B. (2017). The art of engagement: Dialogic strategies on
twitter. Journal of Communication Management, 21(1), 17-33. Available:
https://search.proquest.com/docview/1857991386?accountid=30552
Whiting, A. and Deshpande, A. (2016). Towards greater understanding of social media
marketing: A review. The Journal of Applied Business and Economics, 18(4), 82-91. Available:
https://search.proquest.com/docview/1855298218?accountid=30552
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