Impact of Social Media on Modern Business Communication

This essay discusses the impact of social media on modern business communication, including changes in communication over the past 20 years, challenges faced by businesses, and the impact of social media on retail business communication. It also explores the opportunities and challenges that social media presents for modern businesses.

Running head: INTERPERSONAL AND E- BUSINESS
Interpersonal and E Business
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Introduction:
The essay aims at providing an insight into the impact of the social media on modern
business communication. The essay would discuss how business communication has undergone
changes over a time line of twenty years along with portrayal of the challenges that the
businesses face in communication during the 21st century. The report also takes into account a
retail business and shows how the introduction of social media in business communication has
affected the way of doing business. The essay also tries to put forward an instance showing how
the retails business is using the newer means of communication. There is also mention of the
opportunities and the challenges it creates for modern business.
Discussion:
Business communication refers to the sharing of information between the people within
organization for its commercial benefit. In other words, its people also refer it as the relaying of
the information within the business (Schermerhorn et al. 2014). Communication is important
within business as it leads to the development of the organization. Communication helps the
managers in performing basic management functions that includes motivation, planning, control
and organization. Thus, communication skills, whether oral or written, is important for business
activity (Schullery 2013). The business world has undergone major changes and so has the
process of communication in the past 20 years. The manner in which businesses engage in
communication in matters related to business transaction and market to the customers has
achieved a transformation. This transformation is contributed to the emergence of the internet.
The introduction of the internet aided people to the create websites, learn new ideas and make
use of the email facilities. This has also led to the emergence of companies like Amazon and
Google in digital realm. Internet also led to the surfacing of the concepts like search engine

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optimization, social networking and social bookmarking along with various forms of digital
generation of traffic. In present times, the existence of such avenues acts as the standard base for
operation in the ongoing endeavor for increasing the sales volume via internet. The affiliate
programs, the email list with the auto responders also emerged the viable avenues adopted by the
business as a means of communication in reaching out and marketing to the masses. Internet has
thus made billions of profit from the increasing number of business transactions carried online.
Modern business owners think about marketing to the consumers through the creation of a
company website instead of the traditional advertisements in prints (Edel 2017).
There has also been significant change in the verbal communication in business with the
introduction of texting, email and the various social media platforms (Hair et al. 2015).
Compared to the time when technology did not exist, verbal communication has a visible decline
in the last 20 years. Email represented one of the first forms of the communication technology
that remain in use as a means of corporate and business communication (Kim and Hastak 2018).
Email represents the most common form of communication in business that accounts for close to
188 billion emails on a daily basis. Texting also represents a means used for effective
communication in business. Nowadays, close to around seventy percent people uses their smart
phones for texting (Lim et al. 2015). There has also been the presence of various social media
platforms that has aided businesses communication. The use of various social media sites like
Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram have increased in business thereby diminishing the
verbal communication (Laroche, Habibi and Richard 2013).
Thus, two distinct phenomena occurred in business communication during the 21st
century. First, the concept of communication redefined and given newer means through
increased referral to the technological revolution (Cunningham and Fröschl 2013). Thus, through

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renegotiating the essence of communication, businesses have successfully created their own
identity in the society and a global culture managed through technological innovations. The
second phenomena refer to the mainstreaming of globalization that puts forward a global scope
for economic, political, and social activity (Smith 2013). Thus, the phenomena dwindle between
promotion of the global homogeneity and the promotion of heterogeneity that aids in challenging
the identity within global community and the belief of a single culture on a global scale.
Globalization however represents the byproduct of technological revolution that led to the
creation of modern communication forms. The challenge for business lies in understanding the
symbiotic relationship between globalization and communication and considers how one remains
symptomatic of the other (Laszlo and Cescau 2017).
Social media significantly affects the retail business communication by offering
another online platform for the retailers to market their products and brands, create additional
avenues for the customers to provide feedback and engage with the retail brands. For a retail
brand, the social media holds a financial significance (Rapp et al. 2013). In the year, 2014,
around 3.3 billion retail purchases influenced directly by the social media. The social media
influences the retail decisions of the people by representing exclusive deals and discounts,
putting forward options for making a purchase, enable following the brand for communicating
with the brand.
However, social media influences the retail business in the following manner:
Reputation Management and Risk Mitigation of Public Relations: With the
emergence of social media, news spreads at an unprecedented speed. Retail brands can respond
instantly to any sort of negative activity thereby reducing the harmful impacts and maintain a
positive brand image (Kim and Park 2013). Quick response on social media platforms like

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Facebook and Twitter can help in resolving a customer problem that helps in fostering loyalty
and improvement in the reputation of the company.
Testing Market and Effectiveness of the Campaign: The social media enables the
retail brands in keeping the customers at their fingertips (Rauniar et al. 2014). The use of the
social media also helps the retail business in testing the ideas for the campaign with the followers
of the social media before their commitment to larger advertisements. The platform also provides
the retail business with updated analytics on variety of metrics thereby helping the brands to
measure effectiveness of social media campaigns.
Building Brand Loyalty and Customer Engagement: Many people follow brands for
gaining access to the deals and discounts of the retail brands (Hollebeek, Glynn and Brodie
2014). The retail business can therefore use the social media platforms for not only building
brand awareness but also engage with the online communities in creating loyalty of the brand.
In addition, the social media platform can help the retail business in gaining more accuracy in
responding and forecasting the consumers’ desires as well as their trends. The social media also
helps in reducing the cost of marketing and enhancing the return on the investments. The retail
brands can target the niche customers so that the business can target marketing expenditure with
higher accuracy in comparison to the other marketing avenues. The social media also aids retail
business in communicating the unloaded inventory. However, they need to take care of popular
product demand, ensure timely shipping and response to the negative feedback.
The retail business can communicate through Facebook that is one of the leading
converters for the retail consumers. Facebook dominates as source of sales as well as social
traffic in retail business. Close to around 85 percent of all the orders from the social media

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platform comes from Facebook. Retail business can also benefit from social media networks
like You Tube and Pinterest.
The social media has put forward various opportunities for the modern retail business in
the form of market research, brand awareness, lead generation, lead nurturing and customer
support (Cardon and Marshall 2015). In the terms of the market research, social media platform
represents a tool for eaves dropping the audience. This conversation enables the retail brands in
building the buyer profile, gaining first hand insight into the challenges they face, aspirations,
pain points and preferences. In the terms of building awareness, social media put forward
exceptional opportunities in promoting the retail brand and improving the brand’s online
presence. The principles of inbound marketing encourage the usage of social media as a means
of distributing the educational content for building brand awareness that need to be achieved in a
subtle manner. Marketers not only invest significant time but also resources in creation of
content for the purposes of lead generation. However, the value of the content is lost if it is not
viewed by anyone. In the regard to lead generation, social media acts as a platform for the retail
business that helps in the amplification of the reach, strengthening awareness of the brand and
drives the efforts for lead generation. The content for the lead generations is discovered by
prospects of social media. Social media also helps the retail business in nurturing the leads.
Effective monitoring of the social media help the business in nurturing the known leads via the
buying cycle through observing the questions customers asks and looks for. The retailers notified
when there is a tweet regarding the specific keyword that gives an opportunity in providing
helpful information. In terms of the market research, social media provides the opportunity to the
retail business in managing communication and dealing with complaints, support and queries

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honestly and openly. This helps the potential and the existing client to rely on the retailers post
sale through the platform they are most comfortable.
Social media also portrays various challenges to the contemporary retail business. This
first challenge involves development of social media strategy. This refers to a daunting task for
the business (Okazaki and Taylor 2013). The social media strategy represents the summary of
everything that the retail business plans to achieve for the business with the help of the social
networks. The second challenge involves the measurement of the return on investment (ROI) of
the social media. The return of investment of social media depends on particular business goals.
The method applied will differ for this will vary across business. Before the retail business start
measuring its ROI it necessary for the business to have a defined set of goals. This is where the
social media strategy holds importance. It is also necessary to have quantifiable goals. The third
challenge lies in turning the employees into brand advocates. Easier must be adopted for turning
the employees into the brand advocates. The retailers can launch an employees’ platform for
advocacy that makes it easier for the companies to curate the content for the brand ambassadors
or employees for sharing with the social network. The social media acts as a great platform for
streamlining content and messages related to the brand. The fourth challenge lies in choosing
the ideal social media platform for usage. It is necessary for the business to identify the social
media platform where the target audience spends their maximum time. It is there important for
the retail business to familiarize itself with the demographics of each of the social network and
take a note of the target audience. However, it is not just sufficient for locating the target
audience but also have an idea on the platform where they remain active. Hundreds of followers
do not imply that the company has an audience since there can be existence of various fake
accounts. It is also important for the retailers to find out the target audience to be actively

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contributing otherwise the aims of the business would not be met. The fourth challenge lies in
improving the decline of the organic reach. The means for driving reach depends on finding right
audience mix. Therefore, it is also necessary for the retailers to use a social media management
tool for monitoring the engagement with the post along with tracking the post that performs well.
Conclusion
Thus, to conclude, one can say that social media platforms have put forward various tools
that have made the task of the marketers much easier especially in connection to relaying of
messages to the target audience. Thus, in present times one can say that, if a business does not
have its presence felt on social media then it actually remains invisible to the customers. The
essay thus tries to give an insight into the fact how social media acts as valuable asset that helps
the business earn loyal customers, directly engage and interact with them, form trustworthy and
honest relationships and finally leads to the creation of an environment where they would like to
return frequently and also inform family and friends.

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