Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Media Marketing for Business Organizations

This essay discusses the advantages and disadvantages of using social media for marketing purposes by business organizations. It covers topics such as increased brand awareness, revenue enhancement, inbound traffic, search engine ranking, and negative impacts on children's decision-making and security.

Running head: LANGUAGE AND LEARNING
Language and learning
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

1LANGUAGE AND LEARNING
The term social media can be defined as interactive computer-mediated technologies
which facilitate the creation as well a sharing of information, career interest, innovative ideas and
other forms of expression via virtual communalities as well as networks. Some of the highly
popularly media platforms includes Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and LinkedIn. With the
enhancement of technology, marketers today are getting highly inclined for using social media
platform for marketing purpose. While several advantage of using the above marketing technique
can be detected, several disadvantages of using social media platform for marketing purpose are
also evidenced. The purpose of this essay is to find out whether the usage of social media is
advantageous or not for the today’s business organization. The position statement of the essay is
in spite of several disadvantages, usage of social media platform posses the potentiality to
enhance the competitive advantage as well as productivity of organizations.
One of the major advantages of the usage of social media includes increased brand awareness
in a highly cost effective way. Social media is considered to be one of the most cost effective
digital marketing techniques which is currently used by the marketers to syndicate content as
well as to enhance the visibility of the business. According to researchers, majority of the
popular social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn offers promotional activities at a
highly low price or at free of cost. Moreover, as per the survey, more than 86.3 percent o the
global population is present at social media (Alharbie 2015). Thus, companies can effectively
reach to the consumers through social media in a highly cost effective way. Considering the fact
that social media platform makes it possible for the management of companies to directly
communicate with their target consumers, they are able to understand the exact needs of the
consumers. This in turn helps them to manufacture the product depending on the quality of the
same. This action helps the company to obtain consumer satisfaction which lead to enhancement

2LANGUAGE AND LEARNING
of consumer base and loyalty. Not only that, regular conversation with the consumers also
enhances the brand equity and brand requisition. One of the chief example of organizations that
have enhanced their brand reorganization through social media includes Samsung. The above
mentioned evident is based on secondary research conducted by eminent researchers and thus is
highly authentic. Finally it can be concluded that social media promotion is directly proportional
to the brand equity of the organizations.
Social media marketing impose a huge impact on the psychology of the children which
adversely affect their decision making power and psychology. Thus this can be termed as a
negative impact of usage of social media for marketing. According to researchers, children now a
days are highly sensitive to online advertisement. This affects their decision making while
selecting food items for themselves. Children are found to take decision based on the degree to
which they can relate with the advertisement rather than the nutrition present in the food item.
For instance, food items like Kellogg’s and m&m attract children with animated advertisement
and attractive packaging. Regular consumption of unhealthy food items does impose negative
impact on the health of the children (Kelly et al. 2015). Thus this manipulative action needs to be
stopped as soon as possible. According to researchers, laws have been taken place in different
countries to reduce the new technology effects on children. Through the article, the author has
pointed out the need of awareness associated with adverse impact of social media advertising on
children. The article contains good number of proof so that the relevance is a bit of a problem
since everything cannot be taken as an example. However, the lack of well sorted evidence and
appropriate placement of the same can be considered as a major limitation of the article. From
this paragraph it can be concluded that that management of organizations that offers children
food items needs be more cautious while marketing their product in the social media platforms.

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Another major advantage of using the social media platform by business organization
includes enhancement in the revenue of the organization. A being stated earlier, more than 80
percent of the population across the world is present at social media platforms like. Promotion as
well as marketing through social media thus makes it possible for majority of the population to
reach a huge base of the consumers at a highly short amount of time (Vinerean 2017). Along
with that single click links which are posted by the organizations in order to encourage
consumers to view their official website can also be considered as added advantage. Since social
media provide the management with the capability of posting high quality pictures as well as
videos of their products and services, the target communication are able to go through the same
and thus develop an idea about the product or the services. This in turn encourages the
consumers to buy the products and thus enhances the revenue of the company. According to the
researchers, 27.9 billion revenue have been earned by organizations after posting advertisement
on Facebook. Twitter has gone 2.5 billion revenue from advertising. This article contains enough
evidence that is needed to support the mentioned advantage. However, the academic side is less
in this article and lack of specification is also evident in the same.
As per (Whiting et al. 2015), social media marketing posses a major risk to the protection
of the confidentiality of the consumers as well as on their security. Social media posses the
potential to impose both good as well as bad impact on an organization. While some of the
organization uses social media for promotion, other organization do not do the same. The data
which remains in the media profile can impose risk on the consumers since several act of piracy
can take place through this process without the awareness of anyone. The purchasing decision
can always be affected through social media. Hence organizations require to perform this process

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affectively in order to gain maximum result. The risks behind it should be taken in to
consideration and right techniques used be used. Major example of organizations that have
gained success through social media marketing includes Starbucks and twitter. This article
clearly demonstrates the risk associated with social media. However, the article lacks the enough
strategies that can be incorporated by the organization to deal with the mentioned risk.
Social media enables the organization to gain more inbound traffic. According to the
consumers, without marketing the business trough social media, the inbound traffic of the
organization is limited to the usual consumers (Phillips et al. 2015). The individuals familiar with
the brand name are the only most likely ones to search for the organizations. Lack of inbound
logistics means that the organization will not be able to reach majority of the consumers within a
stipulated time. On the other hand inbound logistics helps the organization to enhance the
consumer base and the loyalty of the consumers. One of the major example of organizations
whose inbound logistics have enhanced due to social medial marketing is the Body shop. The
article has clearly demonstrated the benefit of inbound logistics. However, it would have really
great if the article was more efficiently structured.
Social media posses the potential to enhance the search engine ranking of the
organization. Using social media for marketing purpose enhances the site traffic. Search engine
optimization is a highly crucial method for achieving higher page ranking as well as obtaining
traffic to the business website (Pan 2015). While social media platforms doe not directly
enhance search engine ranking, according to the researchers, more than 58% of marketers who
have been using social media for one year or longer still see improved search engine rankings.
For instance, Zomato, has gained high search engine ranking after marketing its service through
social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. One of the major strength of the

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article is its detailed description, analysis and evaluation o the mentioned advantage of social
media platforms. However, the fact that the article as not provide evidence of strategies that can
be implemented in order to enhance the ranking in search engine can be considered as a major
limitation of the same
From the above discussion it can be concluded that social media do posses both positive
as well as negative impact on the business of an organization. While positive impacts includes
enhancement in consumer loyalty consumer base and brand equity, improved search engine
ranking and inbound traffic, negative impact of social media marketing include risk of the
consumer security as well as negative impact on the decision making of the student. However,
the fact that the mentioned limitations can be effectively eradicated by incorporating effective
strategies cannot be ignored. Ethical demonstration of the product through advertisement is
highly required n order to prevent the inclination of the children to unhealthy food product. In
order to deal with the issue of security, the organization should implement several tools that are
available in he market to ensure online security.

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Reference List
Alharbie, A., 2015. Business growth thru social media marketing. International Journal of
Innovation and Applied Studies, 13(4), pp.873.
Kelly, B., Vandevijvere, S., Freeman, B. and Jenkin, G., 2015. New media but same old tricks:
food marketing to children in the digital age. Current obesity reports, 4(1), pp.37-45.
Pan, B., 2015. The power of search engine ranking for tourist destinations. Tourism
Management, 47, pp.79-87.
Phillips, J.M., Huggins, K.A. and Harding, L.M., 2015. From Old Spice to the Texas Law Hawk:
How Inbound Marketing, Content Leadership and Social Media Can Level the Playing Field for
Solo Practitioners. J. Bus. Entrepreneurship & L., 9, p.389.
Vinerean, S., 2017. Importance of Strategic Social Media Marketing. Expert Journal of
Marketing, 5(1).
Whiting, Anne, Deshpande Annat, Social Media Marketing: A Myth of Necessity, The Journal of
Applied Ethics and Economics, 2014, vol 16, Iss 5, pp 74- 81.