Communication
Social media are an emerging phenomenon in communication and business marketing it has revolutionized corporate communications. Despite all of its supposed benefits most people are slow at adopting social media due to its fairly recent introduction (Tardy, 2012). There exists a difference in measuring the effects of social media from traditional communications. First social media involve people while traditional communications is more focused on the use of advertising and branding. Social media also involve a shift to dialogue in which there are many stakeholders and these stakeholders and not just the companies have the power on the message that gets out to the public (Tardy, 2011).Social media provide a medium for corporate organizations to sustain an interactive communication with their clients and hence gain immediate feedback unlike traditional communication that involve one way output of corporate communication. Social media information has to be customized, and tailor made depending on its audience hence more effective while in traditional communications one message is relayed to the entire population (Napoli, 2011).
How to establish a research project to see if social media campaign is working
First one would assemble a capable team. These are people that have good writing and editing skills. Secondly one needs to plan the campaign identifying the short term objectives, social channels to use and build ideas to guide the campaign. Thirdly one needs to choose an appropriate platform to use while putting into account where the target audience is more likely to spend their time online and also compare with industry benchmarks so as to be able to keep up to the standards that would assure returns. Next one needs to create an editorial calendar that includes a place for updates. In doing, all these one needs to be true to their company always echoing the company’s mission and vision to ensure success (Napoli, 2011).
References
In Tardy, C. H. (2012). A handbook for the study of human communication: Methods and instruments for observing, measuring, and assessing communication processes. Norwood, N.J: Ablex.
Napoli, P. M. (2011). Audience evolution: New technologies and the transformation of media audiences. New York: Columbia University Press.
