Name: MAMBA N.

Student No: 201036426

Lecturer: Pheladi Tracy Lefika

Due Date: 11 March 2013 TOPIC: Discuss the impact Social Media has had on the global economy as far as business-related interaction is concerned.

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction 2. Definition of term 3. Characteristics of social media 4. Social marketing and businesses 5. Customer relationship management 6. The effects of social media to the society 7. The impact of social media to the retailers, businesses and global Economy 8. Challenges of using social media in the retail sector 9. The change in culture, communication and value of systems Communication 10. The nature of the internet practice/the reasons for using the Internet 11. Integrations of social networks 12. What are the effects of network? 13. Conclusion Bibliography

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1. Introduction This essay contains the brief discussion about social media and the impacts it has caused to the global economy, society as well as to the business related matters. Social media is regarded as the most popular kind of communication that technology innovation has brought to the international community that helps or enable people to have the long distance communication and it also consists of different segments which are called the blogs, and micro-blogs. Blogs were innovated for business and professional use it is either by companies or by formal organisations education etc. Then the second segment is micro-blog which was innovated for general use. Businesses use social media for one reason and that is to promote their businesses and people use social media to communicate.it is clear that social media has become so important in the global economy but it has brought both negative and positive impacts to the society and also the businesses. 2. Social media 2.1 Definition of social media this media comprises all online tools that allow people who are similarly interested to share information, learn from others or network in an open progression. The information available on the online locates is similarly referred to as "user-generated content, this means that anybody is allowed to post to the site with least constraint or inaccuracy. The user-supplied content can differ far and wide in form as written posts, photos, videos, original music or bookmarked links. The user-supplied can be formless such as family photos on Facebook or very thorough and formal examples can be articles on Wikipedia Wilson (2010:1). According to Wilson (2010:1) an incomplete list of the structuring options of a social media site can include any mixture of blogs,micro-blogs,photo sharing, video

sharing,bookmark-sharing,online publishing, customer reviews ,forums, professional and social networking or any more-traditional website structure that accepts posts from an unstructured online community. Social media has become such an important component in motivating opinions and site visits in a way that social media features are found almost wherever you acreage on the web.
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3. Characteristics of social media According to Wilson (2010:1) Social media reveals the wide-ranging range of humankind. Social media can be unperceptive or boring, well-adjusted or influenced, protected or too enlightening or revealing and most significantly certifiable accurate or disgracefully libelous,accurate or false, anything can be forwarded online with either the best of intensions or with nasty or cruel intent. Maybe it is this irregularity that makes people to be more excited to use it.social media can be an on-going challenge for online readers to measure the relative importance and rationality of what they see. There are numerous social media applicants and websites across the web and it is impossible to list them all but some basic social Medias include the following: a) Blogs which are originally also referred to as web logs, blogs were approved to encounter professional and business aims. b) The secondly there are micro-blogs-which includes short postings, restricted in choice and time demands on users to have become very common. The intimidating experiment of creating comprehensible essays for a blog is prepared easier by the strategy of these short format passages. Micro-blogs can include Facebook, twitter and MySpace. 4. Social marketing and businesses This is the advertising action whereby a business targets customers or predictions through social media sites in a determination to increase sales, make stronger brand reliability or succeed on other business goals. Social marketing is not similar to the traditional promotional marketing which relies on purchased engagement on hightraffic Medias such as television or print. Social media is plan can be in many forms; a business may form a page on Facebook or develop a blog directed to the matters related to its business fragment Wilson (2010:1). 5. Customer relationship management

This part focuses on getting data about clients into the indicators of sales representatives, social customer relationship management emphases on

achievement perception from the information made by clients and communities when interacting with the enterprises they buying goods and services from and when they co-operate one another over the various kinds of social media Wilson (2010:1). 6. The effects of social media to the society. According to Ormond (2012: internet) Social media enables people to make conversations with each other without even seeing one another. This means that they do not have the face to face conversations as they can use the blogs e.g. Facebook, tweeter, MySpace and other many social media blogs available to the web.in that way some people just talk to one another using the blogs which they use to date or to make friends that they do not even know if and never met in person or face to face. This increases the chances of people to manipulate children or teenagers who have them as friends in their social networks. Some people use social networks to commit crime that is one of the disadvantages about social media. 7. The impact of social media to the retailers, businesses and the global economy. According to Schultz D.E, Block M.P&Labrecque I.L (2012) Social media brings innovation to the society through the invention of various ways performed to advertise and promote products by various companies or businesses, in that way it pose a challenge to the society. The growth in digital media should benefit retailers as the essential elements of integrated marketing communication but the evidence suggests otherwise. The empirical research attempts to determine the impact of the rise of digital channels e.g. (internet search, social media, and mobile) on the retailer band preference. There is the idea that digital media can help brand build relationships and increase loyalty is not true, we find that consumer preference for a large number of retail brands has been in recent decline. A correlation analysis suggests a relationship between the rise of social media adoption and a decrease in brand preference. If it is true, the major challenge for both retailers and brand manufacturers may lie ahead.

Many retailers have databases containing the names, addresses and purchase histories of their customers, in this way it will be easy for them to develop approaches to integrate into their IMC strategy in order to draw customers closer and expand and enhance the perceived relationship that already exist. The research focused on two specific values that social media has been purported to add to marketers and their customers. The first value is the ability for the marketer to create close relationships with customers and prospects through interactive on-going conversations. The second purpose of social media is enabling of customers to recommend products thus social media becomes a global word -of -mouth system through which customers can share their experience with others Schultz D.E, Block M.P&Labrecque I.L (2012). 8. Challenges of using social media in the retail sector According to Schultz D.E, Block M.P&Labrecque I.L (2012)The challenge of both these concepts is that measuring the impact of these close associations and positive word-of mouth activities, while relatively easy to conceptualise are often extremely difficult to measure.it is a relatively easy matter to measure the amount of consumer chatter or buzz through various programs. Connecting those consumer comments to any commercial impact or effect has proven difficult. Most of the techniques rely on recent data while an examination of longitudinal data is necessary for measuring the impact and effect of consumer usage of social media on retailer brand preferences. Digital media encompasses many channels including mobile, search, online television, and gaming but customers mainly recommended Facebook since it is the largest social media, there should be a direct positive correlation with social media usage and retailer preferences however they find the opposite as the longitudinal results show a steady decrease brand preference Schultz D.E, Block

M.P&Labrecque I.L (2012). 9. The Change in culture, communication and value of systems

communication According to Phillips and Young (2009) the superiority of dependable content, links and search engine optimization of directorial occurrence conveys organizations rate to the consideration of extra people proposes competitive benefit.
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Other method of reliance enrichment comes from people proposing rankings and estimations about products or services online. Some examples includes yahoo, eBay.BizRate, Epinion and Amazon, and there are fewer systematic contributions by individuals whose accessible commentaries transmit heaviness in admiration in online networks and social media. Due to the networks effect of which the

encouragement of word of mouth is very important. A section by one individual related to a collection online and thereafter to other individuals, but undetectable when nobody of the accomplices has a vast subsequent. The spread of such a section can be larger than any single online or offline high-reach average. The section spreads like an infection and becomes superficial by hardworking observing can even it moves from the online network to program media Phillips and Young (2009). Research by the UK (United Kingdom) Public Relations industry Internet Commission shows that whereas individuals are reading more news online, the UK viewers for television news bulletins dropped by 10 per cent between 1994 and 2005, with a 25 per cent drop amongst young individuals. Likewise total national newspaper readership had fell by 25 per cent over the previous 40 years, with onethird less individuals frequently reading a national newspaper now than 20 years ago.it appears that devotion is moving away from the old-style focus of public relations practice. City University says that Americans create up a usual of 36 per cent of the online viewers for British news websites, with up to 39 per cent of readers upcoming from other external destinations. This means that as little as one in four readers storms from the United Kingdom Phillips and Young (2009). 10. The nature of the internet practice/the reasons for using the internet Phillips and Young (2009) there are billions of web pages collected together they form millions of websites. Meaning that no individual can even initiate to anticipate staying all the web sites that can be of concern and pertinent to them, still fewer to read or integrate their satisfaction. Underneath this deceits a prosperity of information hidden profound in computers are edited only when requested for (called deep web) and that increase information accessible to the internet customers. While skill is now used to entrance much of this information most individuals select to access the data in their own time and of own research. Internet is an attraction
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method of communication. Individuals seek information, action, fun and whatever at the time when they want it. Other internet action and advancement are confusion and some are annoying. Advancement may be tolerated but for a salesperson to trust that a communication can be pushed to a viewers deprived of their entire individual approval of the recipient is conceited and immature. The fast increase of digital media like internet ,mobile phones and mp3 players is breaking individuals media consumption and advertising is tougher for predictable and campaign to style an impression. Online video explosion was beginning to

consume into television broadcasting time. Social media locations are not just developing in popularity but most of them among the lots used internet assets Phillips and Young (2009). 11. Integrations of social networks Internet protocols can be understood. E-mail can be understood into web presentations. Meaning that individuals can direct e-mails from their e-mail software user and it can be delivered from a website like yahoo mail, MSN Hotmail or Googles Gmail and from this whole web solicitations passed to e-mail users. Internet protocols appear to be exchangeable from users viewpoints-mail from user software or web can be transmitted using cellular telephony and can also be read on mobile phones or transmitted through online games and many other various procedures Phillips and Young (2009). According to Phillips and Young (2009) the internet protocol has developed to the normal used in radio and television and television machineries. Meaning that television will become fully convergent with the internet, digital radio and television will be effortlessly included. The development can enhance broadband copper and fibre-optic cable, radio, cellular phone and Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) networks to hurry applications such as running films and long TV programs leading to time shifting programs to be copied at an appropriate time for users and excitingly allowing users to edit the content they want to watch and share their edited works with others. This affects the use of internet. This means that more information is available on wider range of devices and boards and that message are no longer constrained by the media they were intended for, an example is press release can now be produced by newspapers, users website and the online media for reading on
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a PC, laptops, mobile phone, television and gaming machine or even a television set or in duplication. 12. What are special effects network? Internet can be referred to physical and electronic network. The internet is also a network on a plentiful of human balance.in the 18th, 19th and 20th century control and abilities of mass media advanced through circulation of news sheets, newspapers, radio, film and televiosion.the old-style form of social transmission of news and information acquired second place. Now mass media and mass communication are motionless exact vital but there is a competitor which is called network communication Phillips and Young (2009). Conclusion Social media consists of numerous social media applicants and websites across the web and it is impossible to list them all but some basic social Medias include the blogs and micro-blogs. Blogs were made for formal use and applications and the micro-blogs were made for individual or general use, micro-blogs can include Facebook, twitter and other numerous social networks. Social media can be very important in the businesses like for promoting and strengthening business brand. People use social media to post things online those things are important but some are very useless. Social networking can be protected but it can also be too revealing that people cannot be sure about their privacy online.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Phillips.D& Young.P. (2009), online public relations: A practical guide to develop an online strategy in the world of social media Ormond, S. (2011).the effect of social media, social networking, and twitter: we dont talk any more. (Available from: http://www.freelancecopywritersblog.com/2666/theeffect-of-social-media-on-society/ (Accessed 08 marches 2012). Biagi.S. (2007).media/Impact: an introduction to mass media. London: New York Schultz D.E, Block M.P&Labrecque I.L (2012).consumer retailer preference and Facebook: friends or foes?. International journal of integrated marketing

communications, 7(1):9-10 Wilsons.S. (2010:1) social media and small business marketing. London: New York