In today's day and age, many people find themselves utilizing social networking sites. To take advantage of the booming use of social networks, many corporations and organizations also have dedicated pages for themselves in social networking sites such as Facebook & Twitter. What this has allowed many of the big corporations to do is to become closer in touch with it's consumers. Through a tweet or a Facebook post, large multi-billion dollar companies can get a better idea of what their consumers are thinking. Take for example an error that occurred with Amazon. In the New York Times Article, "Amazon Says Error Removed Listings", Amazon realized how disastrous one error was through multiple tweets made by their shoppers. Consumers were able to directly voice their opinions directly to Amazon's page, as opposed to having to make phone calls to talk to representatives. This helps big corporations know much sooner what their customers are thinking.
Another use of social networking is described in the article, "Why Is Nissan Mimicking Myspace?" The article describes how Nissan is launching a social networking outlet just for it's employees to allow them to become more cost-efficient through better means of communication and voicing their opinions to the rest of the company. It's an effective way of relaying information from different areas of a business to upper management.
Even though the aforementioned articles detail the benefits, there are consequences that companies might have to face as well. For instance, one consumers bad experience with a product is open information to other potential customers, which may hurt sales. Also, some posts can be made that offend some consumers without it meaning to and it'll be tough for companies to retain customers after making such mistakes.
In the future, I predict companies to invest into social networking teams and finding metrics that can be used to help them determine successful business operations. In addition, companies might host their own social networking sites, so people can connect based on their experience with that company. For instance, automotive manufacturers can host their own sites, in an attempt to have events exclusively for those that purchased their cars.
Great post Sanjit. I definitely agree with everything you mentioned especially the part about customers voicing their negative experiences on social media. There are tons of instances where grouchy customers went to social media to post pictures or comments about a terrible experience they encountered. It is much more likely for someone to comment about something negative that happened to them rather than something positive. And the negative content always gets shared, viewed and commented on way more. Even recently when the NYPD attempted a twitter campaign with the hashtag #mynypd they were expecting tweets about great encounters with our NY policemen expect people were posting police brutality pictures and it spiraled out of control.
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