Impact of Social Media on Contemporary Business Communication: A Case Study of Microsoft

This essay discusses the impact of social media on contemporary business communication using the case study of Microsoft. It highlights the opportunities and challenges that social media creates for modern businesses.

Running head: INTERPERSONAL AND E-COMMUNICATION
Interpersonal and e-communication
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Communication is the integral part of the business that determines the relationship with
the stakeholders internally. Externally, communication is important to explain people about the
products and services and how it may fit into their life. Social media is changing the nature of
communication that takes place in business. The aim of the essay is to discuss the impact of
social media on the contemporary business communication. There is a continuous evolution of
the technological advances in the business communication. Social media tool has played a great
role in the success of the business. The tool has changed the external and internal communication
system of the business. Businesses today have become more open, democratic and participatory
than before. Such changes have been previously unforseen in business sector (Wollschlaeger et
al. 2017). For this purpose the essay uses the case study of Microsoft social media marketing as
obtained from the www.forbes.com. According to the Forbes’s news in 2017 Microsoft has
changed the science of sales. The news highlighted that the company is “using LinkedIn to take
on salesforce.com” (Evans 2018). In regards to the case study the essay explains the way social
media changes have impacted the operations of the modern business. Further the essay discusses
the fundamental opportunities and challenges that social media creates for the modern
businesses.
There were great challenges to business communication 20 years ago. For instance,
difficulty communicating with people from different cultural backgrounds, problems with long
emails and queues, poor availability for 24*7 calls. However, it is easy now to tweet 24*7 even
out of office a concept absent 20 years ago. With online communication it is less a burden to
travel places. Customers can now communicate from home rather than operating through
desktops. There is more engagement with people than before with SQL integrations and

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Google+. In a minute there is bulk of data generated currently, than 20 years ago. The credit goes
to social media (Baruah 2012).
Social media positively impacts the business communication with customers. According
to Dong and Wu (2015) employees are believed to be the most credible source of information by
41% of the response in the 2013 survey. Employees can share the right message with the use of
the online advocacy platform like Bambu. Microsoft corporation one of the world’s biggest
technological companies has incorporated the social media tool in its daily business for
improving communication with customers. Social media helps improve a business by enhancing
the responsiveness of the stakeholders. It eases the way the customer can give and take
feedbacks. Business can easily view complaints and deal with it rapidly (Jussila et al. 2014).
According to Baruah, (2012) social media improves the communication and branding system. By
engaging with the customers at deeper level through social profiles and websites and improves
the branding efforts. It will allow the prospective customer to better identify the brand
characteristics.
Microsoft has created the social media management software system that was the cause
of the company’s advancement. Microsoft has adopted the social media system for employee
involvement, product development, and customer engagement. Use of the social program
called “Microsoft Teams” the whole company is well connected with the trams and it has
facilitated a strong collaboration. It helped the company to take its productivity to new stage.
The communication system has improved as this program allows the individual members of the
specific team to access the “file share tab” (Fox, 2018). The company also developed the
“Microsoft Social Command Center” that helps to direct the customers and manage them in right
location. They can grab the social opportunities by over viewing all the social channels. It

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helped the company to engage with the customers in authentic ways and shifted through the
social chatter. Thus, social media impact the business communication positively by creating a
social environment between business and customers. By using Sprinklr like platform, a large
team at Microsoft manages its each product by planning, listening, driving paid media and
engaging across 150 channels (Sprinklr 2017). The social engagement are quickly monitored and
navigated by the command centre team just by keyword searches. It is easy for the members to
address queries through personal handles (Fox 2018).
Wang et al. (2012) argued that social media has changed the nature of marketing in the
contemporary business. When compared to the blanket marketing approach the nature of the
social networking platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook triggers greater response from the
customers. It has improved the process of marketing the products and services without
overwhelming the customers. It is way easier to spread the word about the business by
strategically placing the advertisements. When compared to traditional marketing, social media
has changed the way of finding the potential customers using the keywords and hashtags. This,
social media is an efficient approach to track the competitors as this tool is very informative. It is
easy to interpret the factors affecting the industry. Social media increases the online presence as
internet has become the integral part of every person’s daily lives. It allows the customers to
make purchasing decisions, which has great impact on the advertisement and marketing.
However, it is affordable as there is no need of extensive budget even when competing with
other popular brands.
Microsoft has integrated the social media into the public relation strategy. It allows the
customers to think about the business positively. In case of Microsoft the use of LinkedIn and
Facebook gave the customers the opportunity to engage with each other. It gave the business the

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opportunity to smartly mix and engage content. Social media allows the business to develop a
friendly and responsive persona (Sebastiano 2015). It will help attract the customers, who can
recommend the services and the products of the company to others and overall grow as the
focused community. Microsoft curates contents for the brand ambassadors to share with their
social network (Microsoft 2017). The company in this way is able to streamline the important
messages that matters to the brand (Evans 2018). Microsoft has crafted an extraordinary level of
success with the integration of LinkedIn in every fact of the Microsoft’s business such as
productivity, data, enterprise apps, AI and more (Microsoft Business Team 2017). With the help
of LinkedIn, Microsoft efficiently tracks, identifies and communicates with the clients and build
relationships with the customers. The satisfaction rate of Microsoft’s customer was found to be
97% (Fox 2018).
There are various opportunities given by the social media. People can access web from
anywhere computers, smartphones, laptops, tablets, and even internet based televisions. It is
easier for the business to directly target the customers through social media marketing
campaigns, launch and promote new products, and create brand awareness. It is easier for the
business to personally interact with both potential and existing customers (Cardon and Marshall
2015). The same is evident from the Microsoft’s 530-million-plus members in LinkedIn (Evans
2018). The business can even use the social media activity to measure the referrals to sales.
Mobile devices are used for carrying out significant amount of social media activities. Microsoft
uses a social media strategy for advertisement and marketing that is compatible with the mobile
devices. It allows its customers to talk about the pertinent issues. The company now deals with
its customer at personal level and enhance the brand image. The customers of the Microsoft are
more receptive to information shared by the company as the brand is involving with its clients

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more than before. That is helping them view the company has approachable and accessible
(Sebastiano 2015).
According to Jussila et al. (2014) social media is cheap and effective in interaction with
target market. With minimum investment one can have big impact possible in case of marketing
campaign. Microsoft too had grabbed the new opportunities given by integrating LinkedIn. One
of the benefits to the Microsoft is the “Microsoft Relationship Sales”. It helps to pair up the
LinkedIn Sales Navigator tool with the Microsoft's SaaS apps--Dynamics 365 for Sales. It is the
big customer win for the company as it reaches its delighted customer in just a minute. It has the
opportunity to use the fusion products at Park Place Technologies to integrate the information to
single platform to allow saving time and improved productivity of Park Place's sales team. As
the whole company will collaborate in real time, there will be a high growth trajectory.
Simultaneously it will also allow delivering the outstanding service to its data centre customers.
Consequently, there is a cloud war between Microsoft and Salesforce (Evans 2018). By adapting
to social networking sites, Microsoft has transformed the process of selling the products and
services. The 530 plus members in LinkedIn has the potential to interlace with Microsoft
Dynamics Sales. It is estimated that the customer relationship management applications may
have price tag of $26.2-billion look like a bargain. There is a vast revenue opportunity in the
first level for the applications to support, automate service, partner relationships, and more
(Archambault and Grudin 2012).
It can be interpreted from the above discussion that Microsoft has turned highly
innovative. Use of social media has change the company from old fashioned one into the heap
and leading edge. It was not very innovative earlier when compare to the Google, Amazon, and
Apple. The product development and design has improved by staying ahead of technology. In

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all the sectors the company it was able to foster high level of collaboration which has improved
its overall employee management. It is creating new products and design by increasing data
collection from the social media channels. This process was quick unlike the traditional modes of
meetings and surveys. In old business model without social media it was a long process to spark
creativity. Creation of new products and design was a very hectic without social media. This led
to rapid business growth as Microsoft advertised and marketed only what it could offer. It has
been devising new marketing strategies based on feedback from Facebook users that are tailored
to their needs. The company is ahead of competition by boosting online traffic to its site. These
medium helps it to provide best products and services (Sebastiano 2015, Microsoft Business
Team 2017, Evans 2018).
In addition to opportunities, social media also comes with various challenges. It is
difficult to determine the best platform of social media; the time needs to be devoted, and ways
to improve the organic reach. People are inundated with the social media content, as per day
there are around 500 million tweets, with more than 350 million photos uploaded on Facebook
pages such as Bing, Xbox, offie, as well windows phone. Microsoft also has Pinterest accounts
that attracts 869 followers. Without appropriate media management tool it is arduous to track the
performance and make adjustments. Thus, there is constant demand of devising strategies to
push content to the next level and yet have humanistic relationship with the customers (Ashley
and Tuten 2015).
Ashley and Tuten (2015) argued that customers have heightened expectations about the
business. It is difficult to manage the customer expectations. Ethical issues are the major
limitations of the social media that may end up having legal implications. There is a need to
come up with best practices to avoid ethical issues. It is because the social media will enhance

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the customer loyalty and quickly helps build brand awareness. This process of public forum
conversation comes with dangers such as handling the negative feedback. In response to this
Scott (2015) argue that developing the social media strategy is the biggest challenge. Lack of
defined objectives and goals will drain huge amount of time. Another tricky challenge is to
measure the social media ROI. It is difficult to see the value of tweet when compare to number
of clicks on an ad. It may be difficult to achieve without quantifiable goals. Further, without a
proper employee advocacy program it is difficult to turn employees into brand advocates. In
case of Microsoft, the privacy issue was prominent when it detected a woman at risk of
postpartum depression through online communication. There is a huge breach to privacy with
social media that has potential for legal implications.
The essay had discussed the impact of the social media on business communication. It
can be concluded that this tool improves the business communication for smooth operations at
daily level, which was completely absent 20 years ago. Through social media marketing it is
easy to know the customer’s needs and improve responsiveness. It is easy to stay ahead of
competition by adopting the digital marketing strategies like Microsoft, which is both B2B and
B2C company. The company has boosted its online sales using social media. The social media
has helped in effective marketing, identifying potential customers in less time, increased
affordability, and database management from remote locations and build strong social
environment. Social media gives various opportunities and the main one is information access
about the customers. Such online presence greatly impacts the purchase decision. This has
greatly changed the advertising in general. In addition to various opportunities there are many
challenges associated with the use of social media.

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