The Effective Use Of Social Media

Social media became more prominent in business world along the growth of social media. The study of the usage of social media in fortune 500 1and Inc. 5002 shows that large number of companies is very familiar to social media and adopts them to run their business (Barnes, 2010). Several kinds of social media are around nowadays, however, not all of them are effective in business. Although the adoption rate of social media is growing year by year, some kind of social media are declining such as Podcasting, message board, and blogging. The reasons why those social media are declining can be found in the difference of method of connecting people and perception between customer and companies. A company has to use right social media in the right way and understand what consumer want from them via social media. This paper will examine the difference between growing social media and declining social media; the benefit from increasing social media; and the perception gap between companies and consumers.
Types of social media
The social media allows companies to gain more awareness of their business and communicate with customers directly. Each social networking tool has its own specific features and functions in communicating method. In the case of using the social media in a business, companies have to understand their characteristic and consider whether it is appropriate or not, in order to maximize the use of the social media.
The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth study the familiarity and adaption rate with six representative social medias: blogging, podcasting, online video, social networking tool, message board, and wikis (Barnes, 2010). The social media can be classified into two categories based on their characteristics:
1, Social network service, like Twitter or Facebook, is a social networking or micro blogging service, and information sharing tool. For example, the “share” feature in Facebook allows people