Social Networking in the Workplace

Social networking has, over the last decade, made an enormous impact on society. It has created a whole new dimension for people to communicate. In order to find out what our friends are up to, we can simply go on social networks like Facebook or Twitter and see the latest posts, pictures, and events. There are also many different points of access to which we can check our social networks. A large majority of people now have smart phones which allow them to access their social networks on their phones in addition to their laptops or desktops. This makes it very convenient to check our networks whenever and wherever we please. However, there is a time and a place for everything and the workplace is one area where the benefit from this ever-growing fad in our society is questionable. With everything, though, there is the good and the bad. I believe it is important to shed light on both the pros and the cons of social networking in the workplace.

There are multiple reasons why social networking in the workplace may be a bad thing. One obvious reason is that it takes time away from the reason you are getting paid, which is to actually work. If you are using social networking simply to find out what your friends are doing in the coming weekend, or to upload pictures of your pets, you are probably wasting valuable time that could be spent on more important things that will benefit the company you work for. Another aspect of social networking that many people do not take into consideration is that, as an employee, you represent the company you work for. If people are being irresponsible with their social networking, it could reflect badly on the company. People need to be aware that the things they post on their social networks can have big consequences not only for themselves, but also with who and what they are affiliated with.

Social networking can also have some positive benefits in the workplace. When used efficiently, it can be used as a great marketing tactic. Spreading the word about your business on social networks can create a great awareness for your company and the products/services you offer. It can also reach new markets of people that may otherwise not hear about your business. Another way it could be useful in the workplace is by being a great method of communication. For example, if you were “friends” with your employees on Facebook, you could message back and forth about work-related issues.

Because there are pro’s and con’s to social networking in the workplace, I believe that the type of impact it makes depends on how it is used. What is your view of social networking in the workplace?

 

Image provided by Google Images

The Future of Social Media

In the past decade we have seen many changes in social media. The way social media has advanced and spread into fields we never imagined. Who would have imagined the role of Facebook and Twitter in business world? Today social media has become a very important tool for the society and the importance of social media will only increase as time passes.

            We humans are social animals. We need to socialize as a part of our life. Today when the world is moving at rapid pace it becomes very difficult for everyone to meet in person or else communicate due to barriers like difference in timing and far away geographic locations. To overcome such difficulties we rely on Social media. Social media is a tool that brings the society under a single umbrella. 

            The content we share on social media is a very important aspect that will decide the direction in which social media will grow. The content we share on social media changes according to the need. At some point of time all we did on social media was shared “ What’s on your mind”, but now we share a lot more than just what you think and do. Social media will go through changes, as the needs of the users will be recognized.

            In the future the success of social media will depend on the advancement in the mobile technology. Today social media is used widely and a majority of people has switched to hand held devices to get on social media. It is more convenient way to use social media. Social media will grow mainly in three different fields, personal, business and information.

Vine Fame

I'm not too sure if many people know about Vine, but it's a social network where people can stream a short video that is up to 6 seconds. Although it was created last year, it really got popular this year (2013). When it came out it was the most popular app, it was fresh, new, and an excellent idea to have a range of videos in an app streamed from random people around the world. At one point vine got so popular Instagram tried to imitate the idea of putting videos on your app. 

Honestly at first Instagram was successful in it's plans to take the spot of the number one video app. People where putting "R.I.P Vine" post up due to the new features Instagram had. Not only did they extend the video time to 15 (which is twice the vine length, plus 3), but they also added filters to the videos. 







The fight between Instagram and Vine was a good one, but for the most part people where still on the Instagram side until that one magical day. Somehow when Vine got the re-vine feature it's popularity went sky-high. Now there are tons of comedians all over Vine making people laugh daily. Also since the feature is available to everyone its actually possible for anyone to get famous. For example this little boy named Terio is one of the most famous people on Vine due to one video. All he did was a 6 second dance and now he's taking pictures with celebrities.

Pinterest- Pin your interest!!

Social Media is considered to be an important part of people’s life now. The role that Social media plays in the lives of people has changed as time progressed and evolved as a completely new aspect of communication.

            If we go back in the history and try to evaluate the role of social media in people’s life, we will be amazed to see how social media grew from making friends, to sharing pictures, to networking and now sharing information with people of same interest. Pinterest is a pin board style website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, and hobbies. Users of the website can browse other pin boards for pictures, information and many different like interest things. They can repin the items, quotes, fashion, photos etc. on their own board and share it with their friends.

            If we have a close look at the way the website has been designed, the basics are the same as any other social media website. Users make friends and share information, apart from all this one aspect of the website that is unique from other social media is that you can be friends with people of same interest. This is when the users actually go out of their comfort zone and interact with someone whom they have not known personally but feel comfortable in interacting because of the same interests.

Pinterest is considered to be haven for the marketers. They can direct their adds to a group of same interest people and communities with people of same interest. Unlike other Social media where website tries to get the people with like interest together, in pinterest the users themselves find their way to a community or else a pin boards with same interest. Until now Pinterest has been successful in creating an environment where people are comfortable in interacting in the pin boards style but as time progress and the users taste changes, the users will look for some more features to keep them interested in the pin board style interaction. It will be a tough barrier for the Pinterest team to go past and develop.

http://www.businessinsider.com/pinterest-is-fastest-growing-content-sharing-platform-2013-11 

Customer Service Using Twitter

Many company's have been using Facebook for years, but now many are leaning toward Twitter because of the vast number of users.  The question is whether using Twitter is an effective method of customer service. Reports have shown that the customer service and response times on Twitter have worsened over the past three years.

There are pros and cons to using Twitter for customer service. I think some of the pros are that customers can connect with the business more by getting daily updates and being able to know promotional activities in a timely manner. Twitter helps customers reach out to users/buyers all over the world and tell them about products/services available.

I think there are also a few cons to using Twitter. One of the main problems is that customers may go unheard due to the vast number of "tweets" to a company. A customer's voice can easily be lost in the busyness of Twitter. Another negative impact Twitter has on customer service is that company's now have to hire employees just to deal with the social media aspects of their company. 

Social Media in general has saved some company's and lost others thousands of dollars.  One example found in my reading was when a Domino's video was released on YouTube in 2009 displaying Domino's employees treating product in a wrongful manner. This put a bad taste in the mouths of customers across the nation. This social media incident hurt their company. Domino's set out to make a change. Through social medias and other advertising outlets, "prompted Domino’s to make company-wide changes including altering their pizza recipe, aggressively reaching out to customers on social media, and launching a marketing campaign acknowledging mistakes and promising a better product."  So through social media, Domino's crashed and also used it so change the thoughts of customers to rise to the top of their market.

 

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/social-media-for-brand-customer-service-2013-10#ixzz2kRyAPB7R

Google+ the new social media

One site that is new to the social networking era is Google+. The number of users who use Google+ for posting pales in comparison to Facebook or Twitter but one thing Google+ is attempting to do is to improve different features of social networking, such instant messaging and uploading photos.

 As Google senior vice president says "People have beautiful treasures that have become stranded in these devices." Google+ offers users the ability to upload photos at their full photo resolution rather than compressing them like Twitter and Facebook. Along with adding other tools such as editing features and new ways to tag photos.
Another feature Google+ is trying to gain an advantage is the ability to chat with other people face-to-face individually or in groups. Google+ instant messaging feature is Google Hangout and offers users the ability to chat one on one and with up to ten people at a time. Google Hangout is very similar to Skype but focuses more on face-to-face interaction.
Many people are critical of Google+ and don't understand how to use it and all its features though including myself.



http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/29/tech/social-media/google-plus-photos-hangouts/index.html?iref=allsearch

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/G/google_hangouts.html

 

The Revolution of Myspace

Although Myspace was not technically the entity that started social media, one could say that it was the website that changed the world of social media completely from what it had been thought of before. MySpace was founded in 2003 and launched in 2004. Within the first year of launch, there were already 5 million users. Just two years after launching, MySpace had taken the throne for the most visited website in the United States, beating out Google search and Yahoo! Mail. The social media giant peaked finally in July of 2008 with a grand total of 75.9 million visitors. MySpace later began to struggle after being passed by Facebook and started laying off many of its employees and was eventually bought out by another company.

Today, MySpace has been revamped to mainly to be used for music. Although it is not quite as popular as it once was, MySpace can always would thought of as the one who put social media on the map for good.
I'm sure that Tom would be proud!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/29/myspace-history-timeline_n_887059.html#s299852&title=June_2011_Impending

Image provided by Google Images

Advertising on Facebook

Social networking has changed countless aspects of the way society interacts with each other. It has changed not only how friends communicate, but also how businesses communicate to potential consumers. The rise of social networking has opened up a whole new world for businesses to advertise their products and services.  Facebook, the top social networking site, has become largely known among businesses as a promising arena to reach new and existing customers.

Facebook is a social networking home to over 1 billion people, according to the site. Because of this, it makes perfect sense that companies greatly benefit from using the network as a tool for advertising. The main way companies do this is by creating a Facebook profile for their business. Once they have created the page, they can begin reaching out to people by adding friends and posting comments and pictures.

Another way for businesses to advertise on Facebook is by using Facebook Ads. Although this method costs money unlike making a business profile page, it can be very effective in getting your advertisement to a multitude of people who might not otherwise see it. Facebook Ads are done by the business paying the site to display Ads on the timelines of people who might be interested in the business. Facebook decides what Ads are shown to certain people through demographics and/or what an individual has previously “liked”.

Facebook has become such a popular place for businesses to advertise that it has an entire section on its site dedicated to advertising for companies titled “Facebook for Business”.

Do you yourself have a business and would like to take it to the next level by advertising on Facebook? By going to https://www.facebook.com/business/, you can take the easy steps to introducing your business to Facebook, and introducing potential comsumers to your business.

Photo provided by Google Images

Marketing and Twitter



With the emergence of social networks in this day and age managers must be aware of their risk and opportunities. Many small businesses are using the social networking site as a tool for marketing. Many people already realize the wide spread effects tweeting can have on gaining awareness for products, services, and other issues. Small business can utilize twitter as a marketing tool with little or no advertising budget at all. Bigger businesses like Starbucks and Comcast also use twitter to promote products and to answer customer questions. But now companies are looking at it as a tool to gain leads. "According to HipLogiq, combing through the millions of conversations that can be taking place at any time on the social media platform is now made possible with their SocialCentiv
software"(socialcentiv), this can be useful for business to find out who possible customers could be. Do you feel comfortable with companies monitoring your tweets to find out what products you might be interested in buying?

http://resources.socialcentiv.com/can-twitter-leads-really-leverage-small-business-marketing-success_10786.html

http://www.anchormedia.com/free-twitter-tools-you-should-know-about/

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/business/smallbusiness/23twitter.html?_r=0

From Instagram to Businessman

         Instagram is an online photo sharing, video sharing and social networking service. It allows its users to take pictures and videos so they can share them on a variety of social networking services, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr. As we all know many people use this app on their phone for fun, but little do they know Instagram is one of the most popular marketing strategies. 

         Slowly people are starting to post their businesses on Instagram in order to spread the word. There is a certain trick most of the business owners do. They start off a "shoutout" page to get people to shout them out in order to get a large amount of followers.

 Most of the time they do a shout out for shout out thing where they shout you out only after you do theirs. After receiving thousands of followers they finally change the page to their business and put up posts for everyone to view. Another thing business owners do is buy the follower. They do this to give people the illusion that they are already popular, and they should join the "Bandwagon."  

            For now it seems pretty legit, so far there's no report of an Instagram scam or scandal. A few pages I have seen and shopped from are:

•  Sellsneakers here has a link to Sole supremacy

•    DistinguishedCravat

• SneakerFind

http://www.keepcalmandposters.com/poster/keep-calm-and-s4s-



        

Facebook "Catfishing"

A New Spin on the Word "Catfish."

For the past few years, people of all ages throughout the world have been using other people's identities or fake ones instead of using their own profiles to talk to others on Facebook.  Due to a new television show called "Catfish," this has become more common than ever.

The show "Catfish" conducted by Nev Schulman and Max Joseph has shown the vast amount of "Catfishing" around the United States.  I am wondering to what extent people are going to take this. Even on the show people are getting highly upset because of how they are treated by these "fake people." 

In one case, a woman pretended to be the rapper "Bow Wow." She even sent a woman money to make the story more believable. This case went on for half a year before the truth came out, with help from Nev and the show "Catfish." Social media can be easy access to use someone's identity without them even knowing it. 

I have personally felt like I have been "Catfished." The same random woman has been messaging me for the past 6 months. I have no clue who she is, we aren't friends on Facebook, we have no mutual friends, and she only has about 10 pictures. I have told her to stop messaging me more than once, but she continues to do so. I get very aggravated and wonder how many other people she or he does this to.

I am wondering if this issue will eventually be pushed to a legal issue! I am thinking that one day a random person will make up a name of a real person and the actual person that has that name is going to get angry and make it a legal issue. I would be mad if someone was using my name and posting inappropriate things on Facebook.  How would you feel or react? Will this ever go to trial? How far are people going to take this?

http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/news/id.25855/title.bow-wow-meets-catfish-s-dee-pimpin-keyonna

Image:   http://starcasm.net/archives/246696

How LinkedIn Could Be the Ticket to Landing an Internship

     College is hard enough as it is. Many students are always having to cope with the stress of keeping their grades up. As if that weren’t stressful enough, they start to realize that in just a few years, they have to step out into the real world and start a career in order to provide for themselves. This can be problematic for many students because jobs are not as easy to come by as they once were. As students, they must find a way to give them a competitive advantage over other college graduates. One of the most successful ways to insure an opportunity after college is to get their foot in the door and gain experience by obtaining an internship.

     Internships are normally a semester long, and can either contain part-time or full-time hours. They are a great way to gain hands-on experience in the field that one desires. The problem is, internships can be just as hard to find as that full-time position following graduation. One of the ways students can help find an internship or help a potential employer locate them is by using LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a social networking site in a more professional outlook.

 LinkedIn can aid students in several ways, of which some are

·          Keeping their account updated which can act as a resume that can be seen by any employer

·         Connecting with professionals in their desired field and network to learn about potential internships with their company

·         Research companies and their competitors in order to go into the interview with confidence and questions

·         Look up internships and apply for them in a convenient way

By creating an account and using these tips, this will strongly increase your chances of getting that internship you have been waiting for.

           

For more information or to start your account today, visit www.linkedin.com