University Report: Social Media Strategies for Business Communication

This report examines the significant role of social media in enhancing business communication, both internally and externally. It emphasizes how platforms like Twitter and Facebook facilitate customer engagement and feedback, crucial for business improvement. The report details the various uses of social media, including customer relationship management, targeted marketing, and internal communication strategies to connect with employees. It highlights examples from companies like Nationwide Building Society, internet shopping sites, and entertainment platforms such as Netflix, showcasing how they leverage social media for business growth. Furthermore, the report addresses potential pitfalls, such as legal issues, and provides practical strategies for effective social media management, including content planning, active employee involvement, dashboard utilization, and the importance of setting notifications. The conclusion underscores the importance of careful social media use to maximize its benefits and mitigate risks.

Running head: SOCIAL MEDIA TO IMPROVE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL
COMMUNICATION
Social Media to Improve Internal and External Communication
Students name:
University name:
Authors note:

1
SOCIAL MEDIA TO IMPROVE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION
Executive summary
The main purpose of this assignment is to discuss about the usage of social media in developing
business culture both internally and externally. Nowadays, Social media is an increasing
platform and each and every person has an account in these media platforms or at least in one of
them. The business houses can make an efficient use of this part. They can easily connect with
their targeted customers by using social media platforms. They can connect efficiently and take
feedback from these platforms for future improvement purpose. The social media is also used in
the internal communication strategy such as dealing with employees, implementing a
communication strategy. But this sector has some pitfalls as well like it can attack legal hassles if
not dealt with care. There are several ways that can be used to deal with this social platform in a
better way and this is possible by creating dashboards and setting notifications.

2
SOCIAL MEDIA TO IMPROVE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Social Media Uses in the Business Sector.......................................................................................3
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
References........................................................................................................................................9

3
SOCIAL MEDIA TO IMPROVE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION
Introduction
This study deals with the concept of Social media as it is plays a major role in improving
business communication, both in the external sector and in the internal sector. Some of the
popular social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook have helped the companies in
building a strong communication with the customers through their technical support (Atanassova
and Clark, 2015). Each and every people today are social media user in their personal life.
Everyone has an account and uses this source as the main source of communication in their
personal life. Hence, it has proved to be one of the most effective ways to communicate with the
customers. A lot can be said of using social media in improving the internal communication as
well. Companies are using this platform to communicate with their staffs and building a work
environment which includes collaboration. This report studies the different uses of social media
in the business culture. It points out the exact uses and the exact ways of using it effectively, the
pitfalls of using it.
Social Media Uses in the Business Sector
There are lots of uses of this social media sectors like the external and the internal uses.
They can be described here like:
Uses of social media in external communication:
Business houses in many sectors are using social media in their customer dealing
operations like keeping a track in their demands and other things (Constantiou and Kallinikos,
2015). Customers use social media in an extreme level nowadays and many want the companies
they are dealing to communicate with them through this media. The Nation Wide Built Society is

4
SOCIAL MEDIA TO IMPROVE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION
known as the mutual society which is the largest in UK with more than 15 million customers and
members. They are the first to start the retail internet banking service. With customer demand,
they have adopted digital technologies to support them and are matured in digital technologies
(Cornelissen and Cornelissen 2017). There are various other using examples of these sectors.
The internet shopping sites are one of them. It provides shopping varieties with their sites and
records the preferences of the customers. They use this record for their reference purposes. They
also keep tracking their customer preferences through lots of questionnaires (Csikszentmihalyi
and Sawyer 2014). Questions regarding their preferences, Quality criteria, demands are
harnessed in these questionnaires. Near about all the retailers nowadays are using this internet
shopping techniques. Baby product companies like Pampers are using this social media network
to engage with their targeted customers. They have their blog sites and website pages. They keep
engaging their customers in lots of life events through their sites. The maternal needs and
conversation with the new moms are also carried through these sites. Entertainment sites like
Netflix are using this method for business development. They note down the customer searches.
They also communicate their offers to their customers through their social sites Dahnil et al.
2014). And the research for selecting these offers is also done to a large extent through this sites.
There is lots of example of this social media use by the business houses in each and every sector
for their external communication.
Uses of social media in internal communication
The business houses are using social media to improve their internal business culture. It
is an important criteria to reach to all the staff and talk to them about their work. This part is
most managed by the social media scenario. They are being mostly connected through groups
and that make the most effective use of time and resources. Not only is this, the communication

5
SOCIAL MEDIA TO IMPROVE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION
strategy formed by the business houses also generally carried on by the social media process.
They use this media to communicate their strategy message and deal with employees. The board
meetings are also being discussed in the soc9al media pages. An example for this purpose can be
sited for the business house like Grant Thornton. They have used the social media way to deal
with their internal members. They had completely changed the process in which their people
used to interact internally (Grant 2016). The company’s working culture has changed drastically
and they have changed from one of the risk aversion company. The company got support from
the top ladder like the board of directors and the CEO of it. The social media platform for them
made the work culture sound easy rather than heavy. But there is lots of pitfall for this media use.
This can easily lead to the misuse of the media. The company has come with the ten rules for
using social media and those are just described as common sense (Kane 2015). They have also
created a center of excellence to provide training o the user and to provide support. There are few
worries regarding the use of social media which can invite social worries as well as legal hassles.
The use of the social media should go with aim and the objectives of the company. They should
not be misused here as well. So there should remain a little bit of caution.
There are lots of points or aspects that can be followed while using social media for both
the internal uses and the external uses. Some of the points are listed below with proper
justification:
Content planning for the Social Media Channels:
The media presences should ensure a consistent posting and frequent postings as well the
content should remain planned from before or may be from 2 to 3 weeks. The things should be
mapped out clearly and the company’s social media handling team should discuss matters in

6
SOCIAL MEDIA TO IMPROVE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION
beforehand without any scope of confusion (Krombholz et al., 2015). Less confusion transmits
into a better media handling. Categories can be established for the posts like Promotional
content, Product Related, Internal Employees and all. They can make the messages more clear
and evident and can save a lot of time that can be invested in other works (Kwon, Lee and Shin,
2014). It should be remembered as well that seeing the contents in a clear way and categorized
way is also a stress busters for the people seeing it like the company people and for the
customers as well.
Making an active involvement and the company departments:
It is important to involve in active engagement by the employees where they can
communicate easily and share their feedback to other Departments and Senior Department.
Whether regarding the clients or regarding the employees, for multiple clients or for multiple
employees, it is a very important aspect to make the clients or the employees more involved in
the social media aspect from the very beginning. The most important thing in the online
environment is time. Time cannot be wasted in anyways. This is the reason why involvements of
the right people from the very beginning can make the process more streamlined and maintain
the proper work flow which can save time to a great extend. The social media can also be used to
as a platform to get acquaintance with client’s views like their approval for posting, making
suggestions, deciding whether a posting should get published and also planning and scheduling
the upcoming posts and events with the team. This discussion with the team and the clients can
ensure that the best and the most effective posts are going online (Levenshus and Lemon, 2017).
This is also helpful in providing answers to the customer questions and confusions. Personal
helps can be provided through this media whenever people need it regarding dealing with not so
important or personal responses.

7
SOCIAL MEDIA TO IMPROVE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION
Sharing a platform for using the Social Media channels
There should be structured overview of the social media means no more juggling
between the different tabs of the social media platforms (Levenshus and Lemon, 2017). The
general social media using means a lot of tabs for the different users remain open for the
different groups and using a lot of passwords, lots of logins and log outs and like stuffs. A
structured overview of the whole scenario helps in the whole logging in using of the server
process. The structured overview can be done dashboards. Dashboard allows the users to manage
all the stuffs from a single post with lots of logging in sessions and logging out and switching
and sharing passwords. The mostly used social media site are like Twitter, Face book, LinkedIn,
YouTube, Google+ and all. They can be handled together through the process. The office
environment can make the use of few other sites through this dashboard process as well. Another
important part is monitoring the conversations. The dashboards also allow assign permission for
these monitoring and related stuffs. The most important aspect of this social media using is not to
repeat any content that anybody else has already used. Monitoring makes this easy and
permissions for monitoring are important.
Setting notifications for new tweets, replies and private messages
If not necessary but it is very important to set notifications for the tweets, email
notifications and stuffs (Oyza and Edwin, 2015). It is a very important point to remain available
all the time while using the social media platform and that too without going mad. Another thing
is that if any of the team members is facing an issue, then another team member should be the
one deal with problem rather than anyone else. Urgent matters need immediate attentions. A free

8
SOCIAL MEDIA TO IMPROVE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION
flow or a certain flow of the media use depends on the solving process of urgent matters. Finding
solutions in a very short time is a very important point to be maintained (Rokka et al., 2014).
The media management team should stay in the top of the whole process through ticket
inbox
This inbox adds up all the activities in the social media channels and set them in a
common platform so as to deal with it with an ease (Rothaermel 2015). This makes the team
members know what exactly their tasks are and help those sorting things out. The inbox enables
one to manage tall the messages with proper care (Sekaran and Bougie 2016).
Conclusion
It can be concluded from the whole report that social media can be proved to a very
strong platform for ensuring business development. It helps in the internal sector as well as the
external sector. The internal sectors can be like communicating between the whole employee
group, implication of communication strategies and all and external factors are like
communicating with the targeted customers, engaging the customers, extracting feedback for
future works and all. But the social media sector had some loophole as well they can attract legal
issue with a few of the misuses and all other matters can get involved which will create
problems. Hence, the media should be used with proper care. There can be a few ways to work in
social media platform. They are like creating a dashboard with all the quite together to provide
with an ease while using the media, setting notification.

9
SOCIAL MEDIA TO IMPROVE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION
References
Atanassova, I. and Clark, L., 2015. Social media practices in SME marketing activities: A
theoretical framework and research agenda. Journal of customer behaviour, 14(2), pp.163-183.
Constantiou, I.D. and Kallinikos, J., 2015. New games, new rules: big data and the changing
context of strategy. Journal of Information Technology, 30(1), pp.44-57.
Cornelissen, J. and Cornelissen, J.P., 2017. Corporate communication: A guide to theory and
practice. Sage.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. and Sawyer, K., 2014. Shifting the focus from individual to organizational
creativity. In The systems model of creativity (pp. 67-71). Springer, Dordrecht.
Dahnil, M.I., Marzuki, K.M., Langgat, J. and Fabeil, N.F., 2014. Factors influencing SMEs
adoption of social media marketing. Procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 148, pp.119-126.
Grant, R.M., 2016. Contemporary strategy analysis: Text and cases edition. John Wiley & Sons.
Kane, G.C., 2015. Enterprise social media: Current capabilities and future possibilities. MIS
Quarterly Executive, 14(1).
Krombholz, K., Hobel, H., Huber, M. and Weippl, E., 2015. Advanced social engineering
attacks. Journal of Information Security and applications, 22, pp.113-122.
Kwon, O., Lee, N. and Shin, B., 2014. Data quality management, data usage experience and
acquisition intention of big data analytics. International Journal of Information
Management, 34(3), pp.387-394.

10
SOCIAL MEDIA TO IMPROVE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION
Levenshus, A.B. and Lemon, L.L., 2017. The Minimized Face of Internal Communication: An
Exploration of How Public Relations Agency Websites Frame Internal Communication and its
Connection to Social Media. Public Relations Journal, 11(1).
Oyza, I. and Edwin, A.M., 2015. Effectiveness of social media networks as a strategic tool for
organizational marketing management. The Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce.
Rokka, J., Karlsson, K. and Tienari, J., 2014. Balancing acts: Managing employees and
reputation in social media. Journal of Marketing Management, 30(7-8), pp.802-827.
Rothaermel, F.T., 2015. Strategic management. McGraw-Hill Education.
Sekaran, U. and Bougie, R., 2016. Research methods for business: A skill building approach.
John Wiley & Sons.
Vernuccio, M., 2014. Communicating corporate brands through social media: An exploratory
study. International Journal of Business Communication, 51(3), pp.211-233.
Wang, W.Y., Pauleen, D.J. and Zhang, T., 2016. How social media applications affect B2B
communication and improve business performance in SMEs. Industrial Marketing
Management, 54, pp.4-14.