The Impact of Social Media on Organizational Management: A Case Study of McDonald’s Twitter Campaign

This assignment explores the impact of social media on organizational management through a case study of McDonald’s Twitter Campaign. It discusses the potential negative consequences of social media and provides steps to develop a positive relationship with it. The appropriate strategies for developing social media campaigns are also discussed.

Assignment
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Potential for Negative Consequences when Using Social Media....................................................4
Steps to Developing a Positive Relationship with Social Media.....................................................4
Appropriate Strategies for Developing Social Media Campaigns...................................................5
Strategy............................................................................................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
References:......................................................................................................................................6
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Introduction
The emergence of social media has brought in revolutionary changes for modern day businesses.
It has not only opened up new avenues for organizations to reach out to more people in
convenient ways, but also intensified competition in the markets (Tuten and Solomon 2017).
While the prospects offered by social media are huge waiting to be effectively exploited by the
organizations, there are certain drawbacks that might issue out of it if not used properly and
cautiously. This assignment shall aim at exploring the various nuances related to the use of social
media by organizations through the case study of McDonald’s famously known as ‘McDonald’s
Twitter Campaign: Hype Versus Reality’.
Potential for Negative Consequences when Using Social Media
Social media does not always depict a dreamy picture where organizations are successfully
reaching out to their desired customers and expanding their businesses. Rather, success of social
media campaigns depends upon a variety of factors and requires careful and specialised handling
by the staff of the organization. On one hand it has offered companies the opportunity to reach
out to a global base of consumer transcending the limitations posed by distance. On the other, it
has also dramatically brought down the costs incurred in marketing and promotion of products
(Hollensen and Raman 2014). However, it requires a proficient handling by a dedicated team of
employees by large organizations in order to be used effectively. The corporation has to incur
costs in maintaining a social media department which shall be responsible for handling the social
media affairs (Dijkmans, Kerkhof and Beukeboom, 2015). For an organization like McDonald’s
as the case study reveals, it had an entire team of professionals engaged in the social media
activities under the leadership of Rick Wion as the director. The various factors upon which
success of a social media campaign is contingent upon can be seen by the fact that the change of
a hashtag which seemed very minor in the beginning ended up having disastrous consequences
for the organization.
Therefore, the persons in charge of social media have to be overtly cautious while devising the
process of the campaign. Since, social media ensures instant communication all across the globe,
it does not take much time for negative publicity to spread just like it happened in the case study.
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The entire reputation that the organization had gathered might be put at stake for some small
fault (Schivinski and Dabrowski 2016). Moreover, social media demands constant engagement
form the customers. The organization has to be regularly active on the social media pages and
also be quick to reply to the queries and complaints of the consumers (Ashley and Tuten 2015).
Steps to Developing a Positive Relationship with Social Media
From the above section it can be understood that developing a positive relationship with the
social media is imperative for an organization to maintain the competitive edge in its business.
One of the ways the organization can build a strong relationship with its audience is by being
regular with their posts in their pages which shall help them in expanding their organic reach
over time (Felix, Rauschnabel and Hinsch, 2017). There should always be live help for the
consumers in case of their queries and grievances. The consumer recommendations should be
quickly communicated to the management so that they can tune their products and services in
accordance with the preferences of the consumers (Hollebeek et al. 2014).
The social media wing of the organization has to be extra sensitive towards the minor changes
taking place in the virtual world and make full use of every opportunity that comes before it in
order to extend its own reach. For example, McDonald’s team was not aware of how the hashtag
of “#McDStories” might affect their campaign. Such a hashtag had given the opportunity for
angry customers to voice out their gall against the organizations on the public platform and
needless to mention in the modern age of instant communication it took no time for the media to
get a glimpse of the phenomenon and instantly highlight it and subsequently it came into the
notice of millions of people worldwide.
Appropriate Strategies for Developing Social Media Campaigns
Before embarking upon a social media campaign, the respective department of the organization
shall carry out sufficient research of the market and also of the aspects of the media itself and
then try to devise a campaign that is compatible with the long and short term goals of the
organization (Kumar et al. 2016). A better knowledge of the consumers is absolutely
indispensable in the process of developing the campaign. While thinking of future campaigns on
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Twitter, Wion and his team has to come up with more accurate hashtags and ideas that shall
provide the prospective audience with the least bit of scope for negative promotion. As it can be
seen that “#McDStories” already had the scope of accommodating negative opinions as it can
refer to stories that are both positive and negative. Therefore, it is extremely important to use
words that are definite and less ambiguous.
Strategy
Vision: To reach out to more consumers and thereby increase sales.
Timeframe: The timeframe has to be set according to the number of customers that the
organization targets and the new products that are to be made available in the market.
Staff and Tools: The social media wing shall be primarily responsible for the process. It has to
work in cohesion with the management and the research and development team.
Execution: After proper research has been done and the objectives been decided upon, the
campaign can be executed on social media.
Record Outcome: After the execution is complete, the outcome has to be measured and seen
whether it had achieved the desired results.
Conclusion
From the above work, it can be evidently observed that the impact and the options of social
media in organisational management are discussed in descriptive manner. The case study helped
in getting a practical understanding of the problems that might arise out of the improper use of
social media for promotion. It can be observed that if put to proper use social media can open up
a vast field of opportunities for the organization.
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References:
Ashley, C and Tuten, T 2015, Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory
study of branded social content and consumer engagement, Psychology & Marketing, vol. 32 no.
1, pp.15-27
Dijkmans, C, Kerkhof, P and Beukeboom, CJ 2015, A stage to engage: Social media use and
corporate reputation, Tourism Management, vol. 47, pp.58-67.
Felix, R, Rauschnabel, PA and Hinsch, C 2017, Elements of strategic social media marketing: A
holistic framework, Journal of Business Research, vol. 70, pp.118-126.
Hollebeek, LD, Glynn, MS and Brodie, R.J 2014, Consumer brand engagement in social media:
Conceptualization, scale development and validation, Journal of interactive marketing, vol. 28
no. 2, pp.149-165.
Hollensen, S and Raman, A 2014 Social Media Marketing. Marketing Canada-Journal.
Kumar, A., Bezawada, R, Rishika, R, Janakiraman, R and Kannan, PK 2016, From social to sale:
The effects of firm-generated content in social media on customer behaviour, Journal of
Marketing, vol. 80 no. 2, pp.7-25.
Schivinski, B and Dabrowski, D, 2016 The effect of social media communication on consumer
perceptions of brands, Journal of Marketing Communications, vol. 22 no. 2, pp.189-214
Tuten, T.L and Solomon, M.R, 2017, Social media marketing Sage
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