Introduction

This article reports key findings on "social media marketing for business communication" which is rapidly changing business communication architecture. The study surveyed over different marketers with the goal of understanding how they are using social media to grow and promote their businesses. In today’s competitive market, it’s not just who you know, it’s also who they know, and what they know. Online social networks have the potential to connect you to a vast world of people and resources. Use of social media can help organizations to bring in more business and establish customer loyalty. Now there is a huge increase in online older adults using social networking sites and are not anymore just communications tools for teens and college students.

Significance and Need for the study

The objectives of the survey are

• To understand business communities perceptions about social networking sites
• To know how the social media is changing the world of business communication
• To understand the role of social media in corporate reputation
• To know the frequently used social media tools and services

Key findings

• In the research survey, it is found that most of the individuals are using online media and social networking sites for their business
• It is observed from the survey that virtual sales presentations, traditional print media are the trending down marketing activities. Few opined that the marketing activities like mobile content, online meetings, conferences are still executed at the same level as 2years ago.

Business Sources	Increased	Stayed the same	Decreased
Traditional Print media	80	193	103
Online media	324	43	7
Mobile Content	246	101	22
Conferences	126	200	43
Online/virtual meetings	172	156	39
Online/virtual sales presentations	19	178	60
Social/professional networking	286	72	9
Usage of the information sources during the past 2years

• Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter are the most frequently used social media tools by the organizations.
• Out of 322 people answered, 196 said that they use social media tools or applications for their business development.
• Out of 159 who answered this question, 24% said that they use social networking sites to share information regarding business products and services while 22% said that it is to listen to their customer views.

Reasons for being on social media

• 169 out of 322 said that they do answer their business and operations related queries using social media sites.
• Most of the individuals using social networking sites are between the age group of 26 to 45.
• Individuals using social media sites for their business or business related queries are vice presidents, general managers, CEO’s, COO’s, CFO’s etc., and individuals involved in the function of marketing and sales, operations etc.
• 45% of the respondents said that they use social networking tools more than once in a day whereas 33% use 2 or 3 times in a week.

Frequency of being on social media sites

• Although social media tools are free in terms of establishing accounts, there is a learning curve and they do require time and effort.
• Companies or organizations must aim more at engaging activities and less at selling.
• Engaging customers will be a challenge task and there should always be community management on social media sites to engage people.
• Companies using social media, have to realize that the content is controlled by the audience or consumers but not by the company. The business community must be ready to accept the negative comments that may appear in the social media sites and ready to deal with customer satisfaction. These two could explain the reasons for some of the companies for not being engaged on social media sites.
• It is not possible for the larger companies to keep an eye on their social media sites but the smaller companies must keep an eye on their social media sites.
• People today demand honest and direct relationship with the companies with which they do business and social media can help with it.
• Organizations must be transparent in terms of its business with the customers.
• Social media marketing should always be integrated with overall marketing strategy and should never be used instead of other marketing strategies.

Advantages

• The organizations post updates that help their customers get to know the people and personality of a company and less about their products and services.
• It is important for the companies to interact and engage with the customers directly with their (customers) chosen means of communication.
• Social networking or professional networking is critical for any business as it helps to generate more business exposure, improved traffic and improved search rankings.

Conclusion

It can be concluded from the survey that social media marketing tools and applications are being used by most of the organizations. Social networking sites are widely used by majority of the organizations as it is inexpensive, goes viral, and is direct interaction with the customers, and are used to increase brand awareness, peer to peer conversation, and exchange of content.

To conclude, social media can be called as the latest and fastest move in the present online advertising and branding strategies. It is a new concept and the organizations are still experimenting to understand what works and what doesn’t work in social media marketing.