INTRODUCTION
Social media can be defined as, the means through which people are engaged in sharing, creating and exchanging new things, content, articles, pictures and videos on different networks. Social media is not like old and traditional or Industrial media. It has many aspects that make it different such as; quality, speed, frequency, reach and others (Sterne, 2010). Social media is a group of internet that allows creation and exchange of different things and items all over on different pages. There are numerous forms of social media website , for example, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, MySpace and several others. Many of these websites are social sharing sites and some are social networking sites (Ellison, 2007).
On May, 2010, there were more than 2 billion views of a video post on YouTube every minute (Noone, McGuire, & Rohlfs, 2011). Some of the people use internet in a positive manner while some use it in a negative manner. According to Mangold, & Faulds, (2009), youngsters are spending more of their time on social networking sites than any other sites available. There seems to be many different types of social media websites, like; Magazines, Internet Forums, Wikis, Social Networking, Weblogs and also E-commerce business may refer to social media. More than about 58 million of the people visit social networking sites on a daily basis. Facebook and Twitter are considered to be the most commonly used social sites for every one nowadays. These two are also considered to be the brand flowing sites as a lot of the ads are posted on these sites. These sites are more likely to be used by young ones (O'Keeffe, & Clarke-Pearson, 2011).
Returns from Social media and SOCIAL MEDIA PROJECTS
Some of the returns from social media websites have been discussed below:
Improve communication:
A huge collection of well known sites are available for communication which make it easier for people to communicate (Paine, 2011). There are several features that these websites offer and some of the features include video chat, chat, voice calling, sharing and exchanging and plenty more (Boyd, & Ellison, 2007). Moreover, the use of Smartphones has increased drastically and it has allowed people to have access to these sites from anywhere. Thus, it has further increased the use of social media website. Talking in real, social media has affected the lives of individuals entirely and a large number of people have become addicted to these websites. Social media websites have also encouraged and helped people to built their social networks and keep in touch with their friends and family (Nelson, 2009).
Social media has helped businesses in improving communication with the customers. These websites have helped businesses in building better relations with the customers. So with better communication, businesses are able to clarify the queries of customers, help them out in their problems and satisfy customers in a better way.
Helped businesses in marketing products and services
Another important factor of the social media websites is that these websites has helped businesses in promoting their businesses, reaching to the customer, increasing their sales, communicating better with their customers, improving relationships with the customers and thus it has helped businesses in a number of ways (Coulter, 2012). Social media websites has also helped businesses in selling their products and services online. It is now much easier for businesses to build their good will and reputation and gain the buyer’s trust through social media websites as these businesses can directly communicate with the final user (Paine, 2011).
Social media websites have helped in increasing the reach of businesses. Using social media, businesses can now increase their reach and offer their products and services to people around the world. Businesses that have been restricted and limited to only a single city, now can expand their offerings at very low cost. Therefore it has helped businesses to reach far flung areas at low cost and thus have helped in increasing their returns (Stelzner, 2011)
Human resource benefits:
Social media offers a lot of benefits to businesses. It has been discussed a lot about the advantages that social media gives to businesses regarding customer relationship, relationship management, promoting the products and services, creating awareness, creating trust among customers and other such benefits. However highlighting all these benefits, some may not ignore the benefits that social media offers to businesses in managing and improving their relationship with the human resource of the organization. Businesses today are using social media websites to motivate, retain and attract quality human resource in their organization. Human resource is the most important asset of the business and today businesses have realized the importance of managing, attracting and retaining quality human resource and therefore social media offers a new way for businesses in managing human resource.
One of the most important advantages of social media website is to find offer jobs online. Social media website are helpful in posting different jobs and encouraging them to apply for the jobs according to their interest. LinkedIn is the most important websites that businesses use for hiring and attracting quality human resource. It helps you to create your resume online and Human Resource Department of other firms as well as managers can view your profile or resume and then offer you job for the available positions in their organization.
Keeping the stakeholders informed
These are some of the most important benefits that social media offers to businesses. There are a lot of other benefits that businesses can attain using social media such as keeping the stakeholders of the organization such as suppliers, governmental agencies, society, distributors and other stakeholders informed.
Calculating the return on investment from social media
A large number of firms have entered the arena of social media and they are using to achieve the abovementioned benefits. However, one of the main questions that have been asked is how businesses need to measure return on Investment on social media. Managers and investors before making any investment analyse the return on investment of that particular opportunity and therefore to make the decision whether to invest in social media or not, it is important to know the cost of using and managing social media. So to calculate the cost of managing social media and the cost of using social media is the time and resource that the organization puts in. On the other hand, the returns from social media are numerous; building brand, increasing and creating awareness, increasing sales, improving customer relationship management, building trust among customers, managing human resource, satisfying and keeping the stakeholders informed and several others.
Different researchers and scholars have presented different techniques and methods to calculate the return on investment from social media. However the summarized form of calculating returns from social media investment has been presented in the five steps below. Using the five steps below, one can determine if the result of ROI on social media is good or not.
Analysis:
The very first step in the process of calculating or analyzing the ROI from social media is to know why you are using social media and what limitations you are having in considering social media as a marketing and promotional tool (Hoffman, & Fodor, 2010).
Planning:
After the completion of the first step which is to analyze the ROI from social media the other important step is to plan and definite the goals that one would like to achieve from social media. In this step, one also needs to identify and plan why you are using social media, and what you would to achieve from social media (Nair, 2011). There may be more than a lot of goals for using of social media as; brand awareness, communicating with in the market and creating awareness regarding your offerings, improving brand image and others. Goals need to be SMART i.e. specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely (Hoffman, & Fodor, 2010).
Actions:
Having done with the planning step, now it comes to the implementation process or an action stage where one is supposed to utilize the existing resources in order to achieve the goals. These resources are usually the time and resources that has been used (Hoffman, & Fodor, 2010).
Evaluation:
During the action stage, it is important to evaluate the actions that are being taken and to analyse and evaluate the performances (Powell, Groves, & Dimos, 2011). By analyzing and evaluating the actions, it helps in identifying and knowing clearly whether the goals would be achieved within the time limit or not (Hoffman, & Fodor, 2010). By evaluating the actions, corrective measures need to be taken so that goals can be achieved in the right manner (Zarrella, 2010).
Repeat:
Then if the results have been achieved by following these steps, one must have to follow these above steps for again if he/she starts working on social media again.
Justification
Of course, it is vital for every other business to have existence of social media but it is more important to know how to make advantage from the source. Otherwise it is of no use and one is wasting his time, money and other resources as well as having presence on social media would not yield results (Wilson, Guinan, Parise, & Weinberg, 2011). But it is important to make the most from the social media. It can prove to be a very successful tool for the business if it is being used with a proper strategy (Safko, 2010).
The purpose of social media varies from one organization to another organization according to their needs, sizes, operations and several other aspects (Barnes, & Mattson, 2009). As far as it is concerned with the justification of the investment on social media, it is for every business whether big or small companies, but it is important for businesses to make the most of this social media and achieve positive and lucrative returns (Stolovitsky, 2012). For sure, if the resources are being used in an appropriate approach then the result or the return on investment from social media will be positive and lucrative particularly because of low cost required for the investment. Therefore, businesses need to use this social media by identifying and formulating realistic goals and then formulate strategies to achieve the most from social media.
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