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Social Media in Business Communications Facebook Creating your page

Facebook has a section called facebook business. This is a page used to find out what facebook can do for your business. It allows you to set up a facebook page for your business it also gives you the option to request a web address such as “facebook.com/yourgreatcompany,” which is just the example used on the facbook business website. (Facebook Business, 2016)

Audience

Along with setting up a specific web address it also allows you to tailor your page for a specific audience. Facebook allows you to pick from the following targets: (Facebook Business, 2016)

Content

After you set up your facebook you can use it just like your personal facebook. You can post pictures or statuses pertaining to your business or you can direct your posts to customers. One of the big things is that you can reply to peoples comments to show that you hear what they are saying and are using there feedback. It allows you to be active with your customers. (Facebook Business, 2016)

Ads Another option is the facebook ad tool. You can use this to create ads that attract customers by advertising your products or offering discounts. You can also make it show up on customers pages, showing links for your app or website. (Facebook Business, 2016)

Fine Tuning

The last thing facebook offers is called insights. This allows you to customize the demographic you want to bring to your page. It also helps track features including likes, page views or posts. This data helps by showing you what posts or ads are bringing customers in so you can focus on the ads that work not the ads that don’t. (Facebook Business, 2016)

LinkedIn

Launched on May 5th 2003, Linkedin is a social media site designed specifically with professionals in mind. The format of the individual profiles closely resembles that of Facebook. Linkedin allows people and businesses to present themselves to the world, and either advertise or search for employees or employment. As of March 2016 there were more than 433 million Linkedin profiles worldwide. This provides a great platform for reaching out to large volumes of people.

The basic profile setup of a Linkedin page is considerable more formal than that of Facebook. Most of the “about me” section is in relation to personal skills and professional attributes. Linkedin also provides a much more detailed account of current and past employment, as well as education and degrees. The formatting of the home page and news feed are also very professional as they only only permit the sharing of work related information. This way the news feed is not cluttered with personal stories or chain postings, rather it is streamlined with relevant information.

Linkedin provides a huge asset to those seeking employment. It provides an effective way for people to advertise themselves by documenting their skills in a very user friendly format. These skills can also be endorsed by personal connections that know first hand what you excel at. These connections serve as generic references that make you more appealing to many potential employers. Linkedin also gets your name out into an employer rich community. It can assist with job searches by sorting through hundreds of potential opportunities to find the ones that fit your specific skillsets. This feature works similar to a dating site to help people find their dream careers.

From an employer standpoint, Linkedin is a great asset as it helps get the company's name out. This allows companies to advertise recent advancements, employment opportunities and other newsworthy activity. For growing smaller businesses it can help develop a wider clientele base and give the public a better insight into what they do and what services they offer. This professional setting can also be used to dispel rumors and conduct damage control on scandals.

Instagram Instagram is a photo sharing service designed by Kevin Systrom and Mike Kreiger. The app launched in 2010 and became the number one photography app in just a few hours. Over the next two years, Instagram began to add different functions to enhance the app. Hashtags, filters, high resolution support, and one click rotate were just a few features that made the app grow in popularity. By September of 2011 the service had over 10 million users worldwide and only on Apple’s platform. In April of 2012 the app was released for android users and the company was eventually bought by Facebook for a substantial price of 1 billion in cash and stocks (Woods, 2013).

There is no specific business profile on Instagram but the app is very useful for advertising and getting your business out there. You can interact with other users by liking photos, tagging users in photos, and direct messaging. Businesses can make their content easier to find by searching hashtags that could be related to their brand and see the photos with that hashtag. This helps to follow other users who share an interest in the same things. Geo tagging is another function that can help one’s business. This feature allows you to add a location to a photo you took. The location appears at the top of your post and the service creates a photo map that shows where all your photos have been taken. This helps if your business is involved with traveling or your brand is associated with traveling. The app has features to help with advertising of your business. There are three different formats for advertising on the platform. A photo ad looks like a regular post, but have a sponsored label above the photo and a “learn more” button below the photo. There are video ads that work the same as regular photo ads. A carousel ad is a unique way of advertising that look like photo ads but feature multiple photos a user can swipe through (Helmrich, 2016).

Instagram offers businesses a way to show off their product or services. Users can see new pictures of new products as they come in or before and after views of a certain service. Businesses can go behind the scenes and provide their Instagram page with interesting content. If there is an interesting process of how something is made or done it can be showcased on the Instagram page. This will also show customers exactly what goes on in the background of your business. Including employees in your posts can make your company seem more personal. Sharing pictures of employees hard at work or having fun at a company outing can show that your business cares about its workers. Use Instagram as an opportunity to share exclusive deals with your customers. You can give back to your Instagram followers by offering deals to them for following you. You can also post a photo with instructions on how to apply for an exclusive promotion or deal (Helmrich, 2016). Instagram is clearly a useful tool businesses can use to enhance their online presence. The app is great for advertising, giving information about your business, interacting with customers, and promoting exclusive deals that you want to share with the public.

Twitter

Twitter is a social media application that was invented in 2006 by Jack Dorsey (MacArthur, 2016). The application was originally envisioned as a SMS messaging based application where friends could keep track of each other and send messages. One of the things that makes Twitter different than other apps is that the user’s messages can only be 140 characters. This ensures that all messages sent on Twitter are short and concise. A message on Twitter is known as a “tweet”. Twitter also introduced the concepts of “hashtags”. Hashtags are words or phrases that are preceded by the ‘#’ symbol, and they define the theme of the message being sent. Twitter uses re-tweets and favorites to determine the popularity of a certain tweet.

Companies will often make a Twitter page, much like they would make a Facebook page. Having a Twitter account allows businesses to communicate very directly with their customers. Large companies often have a customer service Twitter account where people can tweet them directly with questions. Since Twitter works very well with hyperlinks and digital media, companies can direct their customers to a website to find out more information, if their answer won’t fit in 140 characters.

Companies can also use Twitter to advertise. They can pay to do this, or use the power of their following to do it for free. Companies can create their own hashtags that focus on something that they want to advertise. When users interact with the hashtag, it begins to grow in popularity until it is “trending”, in which case, all users can see it in their trending section. Companies can also pay for advertising by the use of “promoted tweets”. These are tweets that Twitter will directly insert into the timeline of people that fit the advertising companies target demographic. Promoted tweets cost $0.50 - $4.00 for each interaction. Companies can also pay to promote a trend which costs $200,000 (Alleger, 2013).

Twitter is generally considered an informal social media outlet as opposed to something like LinkedIn. As a professional, people have to be careful what they post to their twitter because it can be found very easily. There are also Twitter accounts that post adult content on the site. If a user follows one of these accounts, all their followers can see, so users have to be careful who they follow.

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