Analyzing Social Media's Impact on Business Communication Processes

This essay explores the significant impact of social media on both internal and external business communication. It highlights how social media platforms have transformed communication strategies within organizations by facilitating faster, simpler, and more effective interactions among employees, management, and external stakeholders. The essay discusses the positive outcomes of social media adoption, such as improved customer satisfaction, enhanced adaptability to changing customer needs, better business strategies, and easier global expansion. It also addresses the potential risks associated with social media use and emphasizes the importance of implementing regulations to mitigate negative consequences. Additionally, the reflection section details the key learnings from the essay, including the essential role of organizational communication, the benefits of social media in addressing consumer issues, and the need for a balanced approach to leveraging social media while managing its risks. The essay concludes that while social media is a powerful tool for enhancing business communication, organizations must adopt security measures and safety protocols to ensure its responsible and effective use.

Running head: BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
Business Communication
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Introduction
Every company, in order to become successful in the long run, requires a background of
effective communication process. Commonly, by the word ‘communication’, people understand
that it is a process of interaction with others on a daily basis for the purpose of exchanging
information. But, at the Organizational level, communication is divided into internal and external
communication. Internal communication deals with the communication among the internal
stakeholders and the management of an organization, whereas external communication is the
communication process that focuses on the audiences outside the organization (Tankosic Ivetic
and Mikelic 2017). Both the internal and external communication together, is identified as
corporate communication. In the recent times, the increasing use and development of various
forms of social media has influenced the internal and external communication of business
organizations in a positive way, which will be discussed in the following paragraphs.
Main Body
It is the goal of every business organization to expand its business at a global level, and
as businesses are becoming competitive and global increasingly, the social media is having a
significant role play in removing communication problems at a global level and bridging
distances for enabling relationship developments, which is a key element for all businesses
(Wang Pauleen and Zhang 2016). Social media is basically a platform, consisting of web-based
internet networks, where users are able to communicate with others and share information in a
collective manner. Social media can also said to be the platform that enables social interactions
with the use of technology that includes any combination of pictures, words, video or audio
(Winograd and Verance 2017). With regards to the fact that social media is a platform, it is to be

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mentioned that social media has created various platforms like Twitter and Facebook, which has
completely changed the manner of communication by family, friends and co-workers on a daily
basis, through their participation in creating and sharing different types of messages, which has
made communication more fast, easy and effective.
Both, small and large companies have identified the importance of social media in their
organization as it is something, which the customers as well as the employees are expecting more
and more (McCann and Barlow 2015). It is so, because the use of social media sites like
Facebook, twitter and LinkedIn are used at a large scale by people of almost all ages and also by
the number of people, who are technically oriented, entering the workforce, grown up with the
use of social media (Jussila Kärkkäinen and Aramo-Immonen 2014). Social media has made the
internal and external communication of organizations smoother, smarter and faster. Due to the
influence of social media, there is an emergence of a new environment of business in which,
most of the employees have the desire and ability to use social media for interacting with
managers, colleagues and customers for accomplishing work in a different way than using the
traditional methods (Dwyer 2013).
With regards to internal communication, the influence of social media has led to
transformation and shift in strategies as social media has made a positive impact on various
internal processes like recruitment and selection, incentives and rewards, communications, work
role definition, leadership, training and development (Men 2014). With regards to the external
communication, the social media has also created a positive impact. Websites like Yelp and
Angie’s list allows and helps consumers in evaluating vendors. Moreover, Twitter is used for
responding to concerns of consumers and Facebook enables the consumers to become fans. It is
due to such reasons that social media is becoming a common part of all organizations and

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companies are accommodating these new realities (Montalvo 2016). The positive influence of
social media on internal and external media has led to certain positive outcomes in the form of
new public relations and marketing channels, customer acquisition, new approaches for
communications and branding service and loyalty, collaborative innovations for developing
products, recruitment of skilled candidates, who are difficult to find and increased engagement of
employees (Mahajan 2015). Moreover, it has been observed that the active use of social media in
organizations has made the employees more engaged with their companies. Social media is of
great value to the organizations as they get people interacting and talking across borders,
boundaries and soils (Dwyer 2013).
It can be said that social media has a positive influence on the internal and external
communication of organizations because it provides with certain benefits like greater
transparency, responsibility, trust, innovation, and improved customer services (Tiago and
Veríssimo 2014). The use of social media by organizations leads to a positive impact on the
experience of the consumer because of its dynamic capability, which helps in making
adjustments in accordance with the changing needs over time (Schivinski and Dabrowski 2016).
Also, the use of social media, unlike the traditional marketing techniques, involves exchange of
information between consumers and the user generated content, which leads to greater advocacy
and satisfaction and helps in building a strong customer engagement for the organizations, which
uses social media as a marketing strategy (Ashley and Tuten 2015). Moreover, social media has
changed the daily communication, which occurs externally and internally, by facilitating a
dynamic and interactive process to occur between organizations and individuals, which represent
the voices of both the organization and the user.

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Although the social media has made a positive influence on the external and internal
communications in business, it is to be mentioned that social media can also pose a potential risk
if the organizations are not careful. Social media can be misused for various purposes, leading to
internal and external negative consequences (Bovée Thill and Raina 2016). Therefore, business
organizations must maintain regulations on the use of social media, as much as possible, for the
purpose of internal and external communications.
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be concluded by stating that in today’s world, social media has become
the most popular platform for sharing information and for communication, as social media has
made communication much easier, faster, simpler and smoother. This is why it has been adapted
by the business organizations to improve their internal and external communication, which is a
key element of all organizations. The use of social media by organizations have led to better
customer satisfaction, adaptability to their changing needs, better business strategies and has
made global expansion of businesses easier and faster. Thus, it can be said that social media has
a positive influence on the internal and external communication of business.

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Reflection
From the above essay, firstly, I have learned that organizational communication is very
much essential for the success of a business organization. Internal communication is the
communication between the internal stakeholders and management, whereas, external
communication is the communication between the organization and the outside audiences and
customers of the business. I have learnt that social media is a platform of communication and
sharing information, which is used by the people on a daily basis for sharing information in a
collective manner. It is due to this that the business organizations use social media for the
purpose internal and external communication and, the use of social media have made a positive
influence on the internal and external business communication as it results in faster, simpler and
easier communication, both internally and externally, expanding the business globally and in
dealing with the changing needs of the customers.
Moreover, from the essay, I found that the use of social media in internal and external
communication has also made it possible for the organizations to communicate and deal with the
consumer issues in a much more effective and efficient manner. I have also gained knowledge
about the fact that companies, which have adapted social media for the purpose of external and
internal communications as their marketing strategy, find their employees being more engaged
with their organizations. Furthermore, I have also learnt that social media has resulted in positive
outcomes by way of new public relations and marketing channels, customer acquisition, new
approaches for communications, branding service and loyalty, collaborative innovations for
developing products, recruitment of skilled candidates, who are difficult to find and increased
engagement of employees. Although, from the whole essay, I have learnt about the positive
influences of social media on internal and external business communication, I have also learnt

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that the use of social media can also pose certain potential risks as well, which can cause various
problems in the internal and external communication of business.
Therefore, in one hand, I find that business organizations must use social media for the
purpose of internal and external communications as the main source of communication, instead
of making minimal use of it because social media is the platform, as it is the most popular
platform for sharing information and for communication. Organizations should make use of the
various social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to facilitate better communication,
both internally and externally, in order to expand globally and run successfully. On the other
hand, I think that although it is very much essential for the organizations to use social media for
the purpose of internal and external communication, it is also important for the organizations to
keep in mind the potential risks that social media can pose. Hence, the use of social media must
be regulated as much as possible. For this purpose, I believe that the organizations must use
effective security systems and take other safety measures for protecting the internal and external
communications and must not wrong use of social media.

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