Impact of Social Media on Business Communication: An Essay

This essay examines the evolving landscape of business communication, particularly focusing on the significant impact of social media. It explores how social media platforms have become essential tools for both internal and external communication within organizations. The essay discusses the advantages of using social media, such as improved customer engagement, efficient marketing, and enhanced internal collaboration. It also highlights the influence of social media on internal communication, including employee engagement and brand advocacy. Furthermore, the essay addresses potential challenges associated with using social media, such as data confidentiality and the selection of appropriate platforms. Ultimately, the essay concludes that while social media presents some challenges, its positive influence on business communication is undeniable, making it an indispensable tool in the modern business environment. The essay is supported by various academic references to strengthen its arguments.

Running head: BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
Business Communication
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
Introduction
With the advent of computers and technology, there has been a considerable evolution in
the mode of communication as well. The newer and currently one of the most used tools for
communication is social media. Social media is a great tool or platform for business
communication and is widely used for internal and external business communication. The
business world has drastically changed with the use of modern technology. For any business, it is
very essential to have a proper communication with the customer. Social media is effectively
used for this purpose although it was not designed for business use (Lovejoy and Saxton 2012).
The essay discusses the positive influences of the social media on internal and external business
communication. The essay further discusses the process by which social media platform is
considered as an effective communication tool.
Social media as a tool for business communication
The social media is as extremely valuable tool or asset that is used by business
organization to keep in touch with the customer and understand the customers’ needs. Social
networks are widely used as a platform for engaging with the clients to fetch their views about
the product or services offered by the company. Social media provides a group of online
communication options that enables a user or a business organization in receiving feedbacks,
sharing ideas and receive information that would be helpful for conducting business processes.
The use of social Intranet, internal blogs, discussion forums and web-based communication are
major social media tools that are put to business use (Jussila, Kärkkäinen and Aramo-Immonen
2014). The use of social media as a tool for communication has increased considerably as it is a
platform that is used and accessed by majority of the people across the globe. With the advent of

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technology, it is expected that the social media experience furthermore traffic in future (Wang,
Yu and Wei 2012). Therefore, it acts as a great platform for collecting the views of number of
people and sharing new ideas and products with them. Therefore, social media acts as a powerful
tool for marketing for business in reaching out a larger group of audiences (Khang, Ki and Ye
2012).
Social Media’s Influence on Internal and External business communication
The social Media platform has a good influence on different business communication be
it internal or external. The different social media platforms including Twitter, Google+,
Facebook, provide a global platform for business communications. It helps both in internal and
external business communication. External business communication indicates communication of
an organization with its clients and customers in order to solve their queries of fetch their
reviews. Apart from this, millions of people access the social media thus making it a great
platform for business marketing (Dahnil et al. 2014). Marketing is a type of external
communication as well, since an organization promotes its product to the customers with an aim
of increasing their customer base.
Internal communication indicates communication that is carried out within a business.
The internal communications are important for upholding the momentum of staff relationship
that further brings profit to the company. The process of internal communication can be as
simple as staffs email, newsletter and instant messaging. However, in recent times, social media
has a wide influence on the process of internal communication that includes transmission of
information among the employees within an organization.
How important is Social media as a communication tool?

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Social media has gradually become the most important tool for business communication.
This is because, social media has now become a central part or medium of communication be it
business or private. The process of communication through social media is not only simple and
easy, but also helps in connecting to the audiences across the world. Social media is responsible
for offering a fast-paced digital climate, which when incorporated in business yields a positive
result (Castronovo and Huang 2012). Apart from this, social media seems to have a wide
influence on the communication process. With the advent of technology, organization has
adapted to the changing process of communication and adopted social media for purpose of
internal communications as well. Different organizations reach out to their employees in several
ways that includes email campaigns, online staff magazine and staff forums. These
communication channels are mainly used for employee marketing. Employees are harnessed as
brand advocates of the companies; that is, the company is allowing the staffs to speak on their
behalf online. Proper usage of social media by the employers on their employee can foster a
better working relationship (Mishra, Boynton and Mishra 2014). Furthermore, it is a great and an
inexpensive medium of sharing contents with the employees within the organization.
Issues Faced
Although social media has a positive influence on the internal and external business
communications, there are certain issues that might be faced by the companies in making use of
social media as a primary tool for communication. However, there are certain things that are
needed to be looked after in order to use social media as a communication tool. One of the major
issues faced by using social media as a tool for communication is to maintain the data
confidentiality. The communication taking place over social media is not private and it is
essential for the organization not to disclose any confidential information about the company on

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those platform. However, this can be mitigated by setting a proper privacy policy for the content
that is being shared online (Majchrzak et al. 2013). Apart from this, it is essential to understand,
which social media platform is to be used for promoting their business.
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above discussion it can be concluded that social media is widely used
as a communication tool in the business and has a positive influence in the same. With the advent
of technology, it has been observed that many business organizations make use of social media
in promoting their business part from reaching out to the employees within an organization.
Social media makes the process of communication even simpler. However, there are minor
issues associated with this communication tool, which if mitigated can act as a positive influence
to the company.

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References
Castronovo, C. and Huang, L., 2012. Social media in an alternative marketing communication
model. Journal of Marketing Development and Competitiveness, 6(1), p.117.
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.
Jussila, J.J., Kärkkäinen, H. and Aramo-Immonen, H., 2014. Social media utilization in business-
to-business relationships of technology industry firms. Computers in Human Behavior, 30,
pp.606-613.
Khang, H., Ki, E.J. and Ye, L., 2012. Social media research in advertising, communication,
marketing, and public relations, 1997–2010. Journalism & Mass Communication
Quarterly, 89(2), pp.279-298.
Lovejoy, K. and Saxton, G.D., 2012. Information, community, and action: How nonprofit
organizations use social media. Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 17(3), pp.337-
353.
Majchrzak, A., Faraj, S., Kane, G.C. and Azad, B., 2013. The contradictory influence of social
media affordances on online communal knowledge sharing. Journal of Computer‐Mediated
Communication, 19(1), pp.38-55.
Mishra, K., Boynton, L. and Mishra, A., 2014. Driving employee engagement: The expanded
role of internal communications. International Journal of Business Communication, 51(2),
pp.183-202.

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Wang, X., Yu, C. and Wei, Y., 2012. Social media peer communication and impacts on purchase
intentions: A consumer socialization framework. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 26(4),
pp.198-208.