Understanding Social Networking and Medium that Impact to Organisation Performance

Nowadays the world was boom with the series of social networking site that taken place in mainly of human life and give an impact regardless of positve or negative. As the world become more vibrant and volatile, social media networking such as Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and much more become virally induced into human life as well as give an impact to the businesses and entrepreneurs. 

In fact, without all of these social media human will not progress and moving like today and will cause some of major problem in communications and management strategies of particulars organizations and country as well. These social networking come out with outstanding number of active users since the very first medium exist. This type of communications medium seems to develop and expand rapidly year by year. This situation makes not only the effect on human but also affecting the business performance. 

As reported by eBiz, Facebook and Twitter become the most popular and high-rank in the world for social networking in terms of profits and registered users. The facts that each of entrepreneurs should take high consideration is, according to Forbes 50% of population currently uses Facebook and more than 37% use Twitter. [1] So to questioning the capability of social networking impact towards organization and business performance should be considered as non-sense attempt. 

Malaysian & Facebook Inseparable 

According to World Resources SIM Center, Malaysia was in 2nd rank for the number of Facebook users and the statistic show Facebook became the most popular site for Malaysian till December 2011. [2] This statistic proved the need of detail study to be done on the effect of social networking towards business profits and performances. 

The formula is very easy; market is about conservations. Its consist human being not just about the demographics sector. The internet and for sure, on the time being social networking enabling conservations among human being faster and market getting smarter, more informed and organized. 

Lot of study proved success CEO is the one who take progressive step in manipulating social network especially in large company. They are finally realizing that to produce progressive companies is by using social technologies to engage with customers, suppliers and even their own employees enables organizations to be more adaptive and agile. [3] 

The study by BRANDFog 2012 CEO Survey state more than 82% of respondents are likely or much more likely to trust a company whose CEO and team engage in social media. And an amazing 77% of respondents are likely or much more willing to buy from a company whose mission and values are defined through their leaderships’ involvement in social media. [4] 

In Malaysia, some of social networking-based companies have non-stop development day by day. The multi-nationals companies like PETRONAS, Shell, MAS Airlines, Sime Darby and lot more companies seem like they are easily used these social networking-based company to advertise their products. 

The company like ChurpChurp.com which mainly used Twitter and Facebook to advertise product of their client and Nuffnang.com which used blog platform to gain profits by hiring popular blogger to write an advertorial – the article to promote particulars product of client – and gain thousands of readers per day. 

How Company Strategically Used Social Network? 

The success company will try their best to listen, engage and monitor their client’s need and feedback. Without all these factors, the conservation that linked human being to each other and making networking stronger and directly affected to marketing progress will not happen. 

Steven R. Covey once wrote in his greatest book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, in the 5th habit he state peoples to seek first to understand, then to be understood. [5] This should apply on business companies too in due to listen and engage with their customers and clients. The rule of customers always right should really understand. They have right to criticize. The jobs for each of company to do is understand them and make an improvement. Period. 

Nowadays Facebook itself offer new functions that is “Group” which easily can be used by companies to engage and monitor the feedback directly from the client and customers without having problem of overlook of some feedback. And through the Twitter, company are permitted to used their own hashtags - # - to get client’s feedback towards their product and services directly without interfering with other conservations. [6] 

Marketing is about building a trust between products and customers. The conservations and networking between customers and manufacturers is the only window to realize the day to day improvement of each company’s profits. 

Social Media ROI 

All the CEOs used to look at Return On Investment (ROI) for each of investment done by their companies in terms on training, building and equipment to preserve the “gains from investment”. ROI will help companies to evaluate the performance of an investment and compare it to the performance of their other investment. [7] In social media investment too, company want to look up how long the investment in social media will sustain their profits in the market. 

This is called Social Media ROI. According to the research done by InventHelp, lot of companies gain the profits in large amount after making an investment through the social media network. BaseballRose.com spent USD200 acquiring Facebook fans and resulting in USD1000 in revenue. 93% of business for Foiled Cupcakes comes from Facebook fans and twitter followers. Joie de Vivre Hotels booked 1000 rooms for its USD79 per promotion to its 10000 Twitter followers. Jimmy Choo saw a 33% increase in sneaker sales with its Twitter campaign. Edible Arrangements ran a Facebook promotion which resulted in double digit sales increase. [8] 

For the records, thousands of companies used to invest in social networking and already gain revenue from that. The social networking regardless their types of medium used always give a positive ROI to investors. This will directly give a massive impact to company and business performance and the chance for them to sustain their marketability among the users or customers. 

Conclusion: A Gen-Z Era of Business 

If in the current political environment, all political parties used to endorse their approach and re-evaluate their stand for each issues just because of the fever of new generation called as Gen-Z which their life surround with high-end technologies and information, all entrepreneurs and businessman should do the same. 

Revaluation on the marketing approach used before must be done in due to avoid a dismiss risk face by their company from the market arena. Social networking media is the smart choice unconditionally and unquestionable. For the time being, the smart will keep going and conservative seem like easily jump into their own grave. 

References 

[1] Forbes: Why CEOs Should Care: How Social Media Drives Business by David K. Williams, CEO of Fishbowl and writer for HBR and Forbes.
[2] WRSC.org: World Map of Social Networks.
[3] GNUBAND.org: Social Networking for Your Business by Paolo Massa, researcher at Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Centre for Scientific and Technological Research.
[4] Small Business Trends: Small Business Leaders: How Social Should You Be? on the study of BRANDFog 2012 CEO Survey.
[5] QuickMBA: Management according to 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
[6] Twitter.com: What Are Hashtags ("#" Symbols)? 
[7] Investopedia: Definition of 'Return On Investment - ROI' 
[8] InventHelp: Measure Social Media Return on Investment (ROI). Infographic 

Side Note: This is my paper writing for Engineering Management (Individual Project) subject. Any comment for facts-check is really appreciate.