Social Media's Influence on Accounting: Findings and Recommendations

This report analyzes the influence of social media on the accounting sector, covering various aspects such as the impact on marketing, the use of different social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, etc.), and the application of models like the Ansoff Matrix. The report summarizes findings from CW1, highlighting how social media is used for business promotion and brand loyalty. It concludes that social media is a crucial tool for the accounting sector, offering opportunities to enhance visibility and attract customers, despite the challenges of marketing intangible services. The report recommends detailed information sharing and the use of latest technologies and channels. It also addresses challenges posed by digital disruption, such as the need for employee training and budget allocation. The report emphasizes the importance of strategic use of social media for the accounting sector's growth and adaptation to the evolving digital landscape.

The influence of Social
media on the
accounting sector

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY.......................................................................................................................1
Summary of the findings................................................................................................1
Conclusions based on the summary..............................................................................2
Application of conclusions on accounting sector...........................................................2
Use of Ansoff Matrix on influence of social media on accounting.................................3
Recommendation regarding the way in which conclusions affect accounting sector
and the way in which they affect existing and emerging challenges posed by digital
disruption........................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION...................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES..................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Social media could be defined as the digital technology which is used by most of
the companies for the purpose of promoting their business and reach maximum number
of clients. It is leaving impact upon all the industries such as accounting, manufacturing,
retails etc. It guides the sectors to use the latest technology so that they can carry out
all the operational activities in systematic manner (Aladwani and Dwivedi, 2018).
Present report is based upon analysis of impact of social media on accounting sector.
This assignment covers various topics such as summary of finding, conclusion based
upon it, application of them on the accounting sector, use of Ansoff Model on the
influence of social media on accounting etc. Apart from this, strategic recommendations
on the affects of conclusions on accounting sector and existing and emerging
challenges posed by digital disruption are also covered in this report.
MAIN BODY
Summary of the findings
By analysing the CW1 it has been analysed that the main media which is
influencing all the businesses in current era is social media as it is used by all the
companies to market all the products and services properly. It is used by individuals,
entrepreneurs, innovators and entities for different purposes. People share their
creativity, thoughts and content through it. Entrepreneurs use it to share their
experience through social media by making video diaries, blogs etc. so that they can
become popular and generate revenues (Arnaboldi, Busco and Cuganesan, 2017).
Apart from this, businesses are using it to market their goods and services so that brand
loyalty could be made and desired level of profits could be generated. Different
platforms which are used by users of social media are Facebook, Instagram, You Tube,
Twitter, Linked In etc.
In Today's world there is no specific business which is using these platforms for
promoting their products and services because it facilitate them to reach maximum
number of individuals. There are various types of ways which could be focused by
businesses to use social media as a business tool. These are creating content,
advertisements etc. and posting them on the platform, hire vlog or blog creators for
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promotion, distribute coupons by conducting a questionnaire for the users etc. There
are two different types of modern and traditional models which could be focused by
businesses while planning to use social media to market the products and services.
These are Ansoff Matrix that suggest that only one strategy should be used to grow
business and another one is Modern Quantitative Theory that states that all companies
should find technological solutions for all the business issues (The influence of Social
media on the accounting sector, 2018).
Conclusions based on the summary
On the basis of the summary of CW1 different types of conclusions are
discovered. All of them could be analysed with the help of following points:
 Social media is the main platform which is used by businesses for the purpose of
marketing all the products and services nowadays (Bellucci, Biagi and Manetti,
2019).
 Different types of social media platforms that could be used by all the business
entities for promoting the goods and facilities that are offered by them are
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, You Tube etc.
 All the industries such as manufacturing, accounting, retail, hospitality etc. got
impacted because of the social media uses as it is the cheap and effective way
to market the business.
 There are various types of ways which could be focused by business entities
while using social media platform for promotion purpose. These are hiring blog or
vlog creators, creating page on social media websites and making attractive
advertisement or content and then posting it on different platforms (Dong, Liang
and He, 2017).
 By using social media platforms the businesses will be able to reach large
number of individuals which will help the companies to capture large market
share.
 While planning to develop the business it will be very important for the
organisations to make sure that they are able to use new and innovative
techniques to market the products and services.
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 Different types of models such as Ansoff Matrix and Modern Quantitative Theory
could be used by companies while planning to grow the business with the help of
latest technology (Dutot, Galvez and Versailles, 2016).
Application of conclusions on accounting sector
By analysing all the conclusions it has been determined that all the businesses in
accounting sector have various options to market all their services to a large number of
individuals. All the companies that are operating business under this sector offer various
facilities to the clients so that financial statements of them could be created. As services
are offered by the entities of this sector so it is very difficult to market them online
because no pictures regarding those facilities could be shared online (Kaur and Lodhia,
2019).
Social media is very effective platform for companies to market products but it is
very difficult to use it for services because of their intangible nature. If it will be used by
companies effectively then it can help them to increase visibility and it will result in more
opportunities for conversion. While planning to attract large number of customers the
entities operating under accounting sector can use social media platforms to share
detailed information about all the facilities that are offered by them. It is tough job for the
companies to attract the customers as they are not serving any tangible thing but
services and it is very difficult to gain trust of clients with the help of social media.
Nowadays all the businesses are using social media and if accounting sector will be
using it then it can help to generate more revenues by enhancing number of customers.
Different channels which could be used by firms are Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
(Manetti and Bellucci, 2016).
Use of Ansoff Matrix on influence of social media on accounting
Ansoff Matrix is a growth model which is used by companies to select one of the
strategies of it which could be used to develop the business. Four different strategic
direction of it are market penetration, development, product development, diversification
etc. This model influences the use of social media in accounting because if it will be
focused then the businesses will be required to choose only one option for developing
business (Momany and Alshboul, 2016).
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In current era entities can choose different options for growth if it will be used
then only one strategy will be selected and it may result in weak execution of future
operations. Nowadays businesses can use various types of growth strategies so that
they can reach to desired level of success (Oladele and Oyewole, 2020)s.
Recommendation regarding the way in which conclusions affect accounting sector and
the way in which they affect existing and emerging challenges posed by digital
disruption
When new digital technologies are introduced in the market then digital disruption
takes place and affect the value proposition of the current products and services that
are available in the market. Currently the main technique which has taken place
because of it is use of social media as it is used by most of the businesses for
promoting the business online. Accounting sector is mainly focused with offering
services to the clients and use of social media influenced it as it is very difficult to
market the facilities because of their intangible nature (Porumbescu, 2016). Some of the
recommendations for affect of social media on accounting sector and the challenges
that are posed by it are as follows:
 While using social media accounting sector should pay attention towards sharing
highly detailed and accurate information with the clients so that all the services
could be promoted (Van Rooyen, 2020).
 It has been recommended to the accounting sector that all the entities under this
industry should use latest technologies to market the facilities so that all the long-
term goals and objectives could be accomplished.
 The accounting sector is suggested to find best and effective channels to market
the services. Some of them are Facebook, Instagram, You Tube and Twitter
(Wan and Zhou, 2019).
 One of the main challenges which is posed by digital disruption is lack of
knowledge of latest technology and to deal with it accounting sector can arrange
timely training sessions for the employees to get expertise in digital initiatives.
 Budget is another challenge which could be faced by accounting sector in digital
disruption and to deal with it the management of entities will be required to make
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sure that they are keeping separate budget for all the activities (Yadav and
Rahman, 2018).
CONCLUSION
From the above project report it has been concluded that social media is one of
the main platforms which is used by companies for the purpose of marketing all their
products and services (Beier and Wagner, 2016). There are various types of options
that are available for accounting sector companies to promote all their facilities on social
media and attract large number of customers. These are Instagram, Facebook, Twitter,
You Tube etc.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Aladwani, A. M. and Dwivedi, Y. K., 2018. Towards a theory of SocioCitizenry: Quality
anticipation, trust configuration, and approved adaptation of governmental
social media. International Journal of Information Management. 43. pp.261-272.
Arnaboldi, M., Busco, C. and Cuganesan, S., 2017. Accounting, accountability, social
media and big data: revolution or hype?. Accounting, auditing & accountability
journal.
Beier, M. and Wagner, K., 2016. Social media adoption: barriers to the strategic use of
social media in SMEs.
Bellucci, M., Biagi, S. and Manetti, G., 2019. Dialogic accounting and stakeholder
engagement through social media: the case of top-ranked universities. The
Review of Higher Education. 42(3). pp.1145-1184.
Dong, T., Liang, C. and He, X., 2017. Social media and internet public events.
Telematics and Informatics. 34(3). pp.726-739.
Dutot, V., Galvez, E. L. and Versailles, D. W., 2016. CSR communications strategies
through social media and influence on e-reputation. Management decision.
Kaur, A. and Lodhia, S. K., 2019. Sustainability accounting, accountability and reporting
in the public sector. Meditari Accountancy Research.
Manetti, G. and Bellucci, M., 2016. The use of social media for engaging stakeholders in
sustainability reporting. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal.
Momany, M. and Alshboul, A., 2016. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING: UTILIZING
SOCIAL MEDIA TO ADVANCE BRAND AWARENESS AND INCREASE
ONLINE SALES. International Journal of Business, Marketing, & Decision
Science. 9(1).
Oladele, F. and Oyewole, T. G., 2020. Social Media, Mobile and Cloud Technology Use
in Accounting: Value-Analyses in Developing Economies. Emerald Group
Publishing.
Porumbescu, G. A., 2016. Linking public sector social media and e-government website
use to trust in government. Government Information Quarterly. 33(2). pp.291-
304.
Van Rooyen, A. A., 2020. Social media is so easy to share. Accounting Education.
29(4). pp.356-371.
Wan, F. and Zhou, X., 2019, November. A Framework for Measuring the Influence of
Government Social Media Accounts. In 2019 International Conference on
Machine Learning, Big Data and Business Intelligence (MLBDBI) (pp. 19-22).
IEEE.
Yadav, M. and Rahman, Z., 2018. The influence of social media marketing activities on
customer loyalty. Benchmarking: An International Journal.
Online
The influence of Social media on the accounting sector. 2018. [Online]. Available
through:
<https://blogs.unsw.edu.au/thedigitalage/blog/2018/04/social-media-in-the-
world-of-accounting/>
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