Pros and Cons of Social Media for Business Entities

This article discusses the advantages and disadvantages of using social media for business entities. It covers the pros of social media, such as easy targeting of potential customers and increased market share, as well as the cons, such as the risk of stolen organizational information and damage to intellectual property. The article also emphasizes the importance of analyzing all relevant factors before using social media in organizational operations.

Running Head: Business Research
Business Research
Reflection on pros and cons of social media over business entities

Business Research 1
After reviewing the previous assessments, I have realised that social network and its related tools
plays crucial role in various forms. Its major roles are providing better communication platforms
to people for communicating with the millions of people across the globe. Its reachability and
significance is increasing rapidly in every field. With lack of barriers, social media platforms
have become the effective source of marketing and promotional activities. I have also realised
that with the help of social media and its related platforms, various business organizations have
been grown in the domestic as well as in the international market. This reflection will be based
over my personal experience on the pros and cons in social media networks in business.
Business is an entity engaged in trading and other related activities in order to satisfy the
consumer’s needs. To promote their products and the services, they use social media networks as
this is the most effective tool in comparison to the other mediums of promotion. The major pros
in relation with the social media networks for business entities is that it is the most easiest way to
target its potential customers. With the help of these strategies, organization could easily
promote its products and services in the target market along with describing the significance of
their products. As per my opinion, this is the best and most effective tool through which start-ups
could develop their effective position in the target market. Apart from the new business entities,
it can also be used by existing companies to increase their market share and the customer base as
well. I realised that these are effective mediums for the organizations in terms of attainment of
their goals and the objectives, but at the same time, organizations should also concentrate over
the quality of their products and service because this factor will help them to retain the customers
for longer period of time. The major platforms in social media network are Facebook and
Twitter; I have learned that these are majorly used social media networks across the globe.

Business Research 2
According to a researcher, in 2004, Facebook was introduced and within just 14 years of its
launching, organization has more than 900 million active users across the globe. Approximately
50% of the total population of the globe is active over social media networks (Coulson, et. al.,
2016). According to my view, this is the most attractive factor for business entities to adopt this
medium as their primary method for executing promotional and advertisement operations in an
effective manner. Apart from these pros, I have also learned that there are some others also such
as spreading information to the target and potential customers in short period is more convenient
and it with the help of these mediums, organization could cover the large part of the market in
relevance with spreading the information to the target audience. Major areas served by social
networks are marketing, research communication and online sales.
I have also learnt the cons in relevance with the usage of social media along with sundry
advantages. Some of the major issues which I have learnt from assessing previous tasks are
leakage of confidential information of company, security issues related to customer’s private
details, hacking, cyber attacking and providing false information and the like. Before application
of the social networks in the organizational operations, it is must to analyse all the relevant
factors with it in order to get the expected outcomes. Amongst these cons, a major con is hacking
and it is an illegal process which involves accessing of unauthorised data and this could be
misused as well. With the help of hacking, unauthorised person could access the company’s data
and secret information which could leads to various issues such as loss in terms of business as
well as in terms of goodwill. Apart from this, I have learnt that promotion through social media
and through other internet based platforms provides customers an option to post their reviews on
the company’s website and on other platforms. Comments given by customers could be negative

Business Research 3
as well and this leads to decline in the reputation of the firm. Thus, social media leads to both
advantages for the firm as well as it also lead to various disadvantages. For deleting the
unfavourable comments, company needs to check their social media accounts on daily basis and
providing satisfactory response also becomes crucial activity for maintaining the image in the
target market. This leads to increase in the cost for the organization as separate team needs to be
appointed who can regularly check and analyse customer’s comments. Apart from this cost,
organization is also required to invest a huge part of their earnings in securing the organizational
information on the social networks. Hacking leads to risk of stolen of organizational crucial
information and to save this information, it is required adopt certain strategies which could
increase the effectiveness of the system as well as organizational information could be kept in
safe and secure manner.
Much usage of social media platforms leads to destruction of the intellectual property.
Intellectual property is trademarks, copyrights and other intangible assets of the organization.
Thus, for a company, it is necessary to adopt certain strategies and the policies through which the
impact of these risks factors could be reduced (Jeske & Shultz, 2016).
Thus, I have concluded that social media platforms and other networks are useful in today’s
business world because it helps to expand the business in the overseas market and it also helps
the business to increase the effectiveness of the organization. These networks are capable enough
to increase the communication process of the organization and it also helps the organization to
build effective relation amongst the employees and the customers. These mediums are capable
enough to communicate with the potential customers in relevance with spreading information
regarding the products and its features. Along with the advantages, I had also analysed certain

Business Research 4
weaknesses of using social media networks which includes risk of stolen of organizational secret
information along with the damage of intellectual property of the company.

Business Research 5
References
Coulson, N.S., Smedley, R., Bostock, S., Kyle, S.D., Gollancz, R., Luik, A.I., Hames, P. and
Espie, C.A., 2016. The pros and cons of getting engaged in an online social community
embedded within digital cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia: survey among users. Journal
of medical Internet research, 18(4).
Jeske, D. and Shultz, K.S., 2016. Using social media content for screening in recruitment and
selection: pros and cons. Work, employment and society, 30(3), pp.535-546.