Social Networking and Web Conferencing and Their Effect on the Business World
George Mason University

The Effect of Social Networking

Advertising, or promoting a brand to attract customers to your business and its products and services, is a very important part of running a successful company. Social networking has provided an entirely new way for businesses to gain exposure to millions of potential customers. Not only does social networking provide a new realm of advertising, but it also allows companies to utilize a more interactive form of advertising. On social network sites, many times users can comment on advertisements and fan pages, giving companies a form of feedback that is not available in television and print advertising. The downside of this is that due to its interactive nature, advertising on a social networking site requires a large amount of input and effort. According to Bloomsburg BusinessWeek, in order to successfully run a successful advertising campaign on a social network, “someone's going to need to spend time. This includes responding to visitors' questions, posting brilliant thoughts, adding graphics, and monitoring activity—basically trying to generate buzz.”(Marks, 2010 May). The amount of effort required to advertise on social networks makes it difficult for small business, which often do not have the time or personnel to run a complex online advertising campaign, to have a negative predisposition when it comes to competing with larger companies. This shift in the way companies advertise will cause more companies to seek social advertisers in order to keep up with a changing marketplace. Due to its interactive nature, social networks can also help businesses identify target markets to better select potential customers. With the help of social networking, businesses can see when people are talking about their company on their pages, as well as when they comment on a fan page or advertisement. Jayme Schwartz talks about this idea, ““As a business, you'll want to search for people and other businesses who are tweeting about our industry or product category and start following them.”(Schwartz, 2010 September, page 24). This demonstrates how companies can now efficiently conduct market research and find target markets with the use of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. These social networking sites can allow businesses to see what potential customers are interested in, and after finding out allow businesses to cater advertisements toward their newly discovered target market. The newest facet of social networking that companies have made use of is location based services. Location based services allow users to update their location, as well as get up to date traffic and weather information based on their location. (Global Market Information Database, 2010 May). This service has always been popular among Twitter users, and has recently become available on Facebook. This feature has become more and more useful due to the increased percentage of the public that carries smart phones, or phones that can access the Internet, because social network users can update their location on the go. Businesses have been able to use this service to their advantage by seeing when social network users tag their location in tweets and check-in at various locations, allowing nearby businesses to send the users coupons or advertisements.”(Global Market Information Database, 2010 May). This allows businesses to more efficiently advertise by allowing them to know who is a potential customer based on geographic location. Any coupons or information they send to locals about their products is used as persuasion for a customer to visit their business.