ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF USING SOCIAL

NETWORKS IN BUSINESS
STUDENT NAME:
STUDENT CODE:

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 3
Literature review scope and objective ............................................................................................ 3
Comparative Analysis ..................................................................................................................... 4
Quality and currency articles and sources used .............................................................................. 6
Literature gap …………………………………………………………………………….……….6
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 7

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Introduction
In this report we will overview, discuss and try to understand the use of social media in business,
it’s advantages and disadvantages. Media is actually a medium which provide communication,
interaction, entertainment and information to individuals across the globe. It may be categorized
into print, electronic and social media. If I say social media has dominated over print and
electronic media in recent years then it would not be a misleading statement. Use of social media
as an advertisement forum is actually an attractive idea to increase your communication circle.
social media may include social websites, blogs, forums or media sharing websites which are
used on internet. Social media can be used for marketing of products or company itself telling
the salient features. According to diamond Social Media Marketing is marketing that focuses on
people, not products (Diamond, 2008). It is a well-balanced statement showing importance of the
consumer so web traffic, forum, target consumer, product features, product launching should be
kept in mind before going for social media use as a marketing medium for business.
Literature review scope and objective
The objectives of the following conducted study are:
 To discuss the use of social media as marketing medium in business.
 To analyse the effect on business.
 To conclude a clear statement showing impact of social media on business.
In this we are going to use secondary data for analysis as given or provided by sources. We will
not collect primary data for analysis.
According to Evans (2008), “Social Media relates to a self-generated, authentic conversation
between people about a particular subject of mutual interest, built on the thoughts and
experiences of the participants. Therefore, Social Media is definitely all about sharing and
aiming at a collective vision, often intending to offer a more-appropriated or informed choice at
the end”.
Today people are using social media not only for communication or refreshment but also for
their needs and purposes as people are using social media for employment opportunities, online
shopping, blog reading, empowerment, advertisement etc. you can guess the situation by keeping
in mind online booking, delivery and shopping. The scope of this review is quite dynamic as a

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lot of researches have been conducted till date and in the process, a lot of information has been
gathered. Social networks are such a form of media where a lot of business strategies are
conducted for the benefit of the business. Industries like travel, banking, hospitals, airlines,
automobiles, telecommunications, educational firms and several more explore this field. They
use this field for several reasons, for building their brand, promoting their products, developing
their products, customer service, amalgamating with the stakeholders, recruiting and employee
engagement and so on. Now the CEO's of the companies and the executives are creating
accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and so on which shows importance of these for
business. It will be covered briefly in this research paper that which benefits you can enjoy by
using social media in business or how much you will have to suffer?
Comparative Analysis
There are different ways to use social media in business based upon research (Hanafizadeh2012).
The different fields he has mentioned are:
 Marketing and advertising- it's stated that due to the online marketing and advertising the
newspapers and television are experiencing a much-distorted revenue market (Borgatti et al.
2013, p.10). A large number of consumer are using internet prefer to use online tools for shop
these days rather than going to market so companies are keen to launch their products online
for sale. Social media is used heavily for marketing these days which can be witnessed by just
logging into your account or by just visiting a social media website. Websites are heavily
loaded with some featured products advertisements which shows its importance for marketing.
 Knowledge management- In economic world, Resources are always in scarcity so should be
used in optimistic ways. Social media is a cheap source to send your message to your listeners
or consumers. People around the world can convey necessary information about their product
just clicking once in a second. Consumer can ask ambiguities by leaving a comment or by
sending a message making it a unique choice for both seller and consumer.
 Relationship management- the dialogic public relations has been stated here. According to this,
to develop a relationship, there must be some communication and dialogue. The dialogue can
be established by choosing a suitable channel for communication. Most of the nominated
companies are using social media as a communication channel to make dialogue with its
consumers, shareholders and stakeholders. In recent years, social media has used to establish
and maintain the relationships in the form of email, sharing a post or by uploading a video.

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 Social capital- is actually termed for the relations which are developed online but are beneficial
even offline. Someone visiting market or mall having a positive impression of you and your
company in mind will always prefer you (sometime even unconsciously) resulting in financial
and entrepreneurial benefit for you.
 E-commerce-. These social networks have become popular platforms where any organisation
or an individual try to establish itself. Through this platform, E-commerce is making a huge
improvement. E-commerce is making a tremendous progress by increased used of social media
these days as a large number of products are offered online for sale as compared to the past
years.
As the well-known expression articulates, “a picture is worth a thousand words”. Adding a
pictorial experience renovates the note into quicker and more friendly relations. Social media
sharing sites permit people to upload media such as photographs, videos, auditory or slide
presentations to a website that can be accessed from wherever in the world. Then, the content can
be shared with the world or just with the friends. In addition, most media sharing sites also offer
the possibility to post this on Anya social media sites by embedded you. Most social media sharing
sites have additional social features such as profiles, comments and playlists.
The leaders are using these social media websites as they are very much low-cost marketing and
spreads the brand name worldwide. The executives can connect directly to the peers, stakeholders,
demonstrate their commitment towards a cost and can gain purged feedback and information. But
there are also a lot of disadvantages or risks to this context (Baruah, 2012, p.5). it can also be seen
that through social networks the employees are recruited among the organisations. The business
executives plan to improve their businesses through the social network seems to difficult due to
misunderstanding the real meaning of social networks.
The secondary data was collected through the reports conducted over the years and a primary
report was conducted over 25 companies from various sectors and the benefits and disadvantages
the companies experienced. The result concluded was that the social networks help them to
increase their sales (Aral 2013).
A primary survey was conducted in which 200 businessmen, students, teachers, professionals
were included. Out of them, 125 respondents claimed that social networks are a major form of
communication while 75 respondents replied negatively which shows a clear margin in the support
of the idea.

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Quality of articles and sources used
These articles are very supportive in the critical work conducted here. They have been very
critically researched with a lot of practical and sufficient information (Sherri, 2015, p.14). They
have been researched very minutely and various dimensions have been described. Here the three
articles are analysed and some similarities and dissimilarities can be stated. All the authors of the
articles have discussed how the social networks or network has influenced the business and its
strategies They have discussed the advantages and disadvantages of the social network. They all
state more or less the same in this context. They provide immediate feedbacks, increase the sales
of the products, reduce the cost for brand marketing, help the organisations stay connected with its
stakeholders etc.
The disadvantages stated be negative opinion which can destroy the brand image and negative
feedbacks can demolish the reputation. there can be harassment of the company through the pages
and blogs etc. hence, the companies should make careful strategies to tackle the situation if any.
Literature gap
In the business sector, social networks have helped enormously as it has helped them to bridge the
communication gaps between the consumers and the entrepreneurs. Different authors have stated
that how the social networks help the real-world outcomes. It has been observed that the two
employees from two different organisations share the policies of the companies and in the process,
the organisations can modify their policies and gets a view of their company strategies from an
outsource angle. Lastly, the different advantages and disadvantages have been stated.
The articles that have been found or have been analysed are mainly targeting on the marketing and
brand imaging and how the social network is related to this (Zikmund, 2012, p.20). But there are
also other dimensions to this topic like the social capital, e-commerce, relationship management
and so on are not much focused on. Moreover, there are a lot of disadvantages to the collaboration
of social network and business but there is not much explored. They only focus on the advantages
of this collaboration. For example- different ideas are shared, it is a low-cost platform, less time
consuming, important marketing tool, and it is a huge source of information, important interaction
tool for the customers. There are also several disadvantages that are stated (William and Arora,
215, p.19).

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Moreover, the literature has not pointed out that, the social network is a daily part of our lives and
intrudes on our privacy, frequent use of social networks reduces the productivity of the workers,
the reduction of job in the marketing and sales departments, it is also partially impersonal as the
companies have no idea about the consumer and later can cause some kind of harassment for the
company.

Conclusion
In this paper, we discussed social media and its implementations in business comprehensively.
Most of the economist and business analysts emphasized upon the use of social media in business.
They also discussed advantages and disadvantages of use of social media in business.
Advantages may be advertisement, more audiences, low cost, more convenient, influential and
two-way communication. These factors can bridge trust gap between consumer and company.
Disadvantages may be negative comments and unfavourable blogging. In developing countries,
less internet facilities and low education rate may also affect its use negatively. Companies and
entrepreneurs should also be well aware of it and formulate strategies to counter such situations.

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Reference list:
 Hanafizadeh, P., Ravasan, A.Z., Nabavi, A. and Mehrabioun, M., (2012). A literature
review on the business impacts of social network sites. International Journal of Virtual
Communities and Social Networking (IJVCSN), 4(1), pp.46-60.
 Aral, S., Dellarocas, C. and Godes, D., (2013). Introduction to the special issue—social
networks and business transformation: a framework for research. Information Systems
Research, 24(1), pp.3-13.
 Baruah, T.D., (2012). The effectiveness of Social networks as a tool of communication and
its potential for technology enabled connections: A micro-level study. International
Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, 2(5), pp.1-10.
 Borgatti, S.P., Everett, M.G. and Johnson, J.C., (2013). Analyzing social networks. SAGE
Publications Limited.
 Sherri L. Jackson (2015), Research Methods and Statistics; Critical Thinking Approach,
(5th ed), USA, Cengage.
 Sigala, M., Christou, E. and Gretzel, U. eds., (2012). Social networks in travel, tourism and
hospitality: Theory, practice and cases. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
 Wang, X., Yu, C. and Wei, Y., (2012). Social networks peer communication and impacts
on purchase intentions: A consumer socialization framework. Journal of Interactive
Marketing, 26(4), pp.198-208.