Skip to main content

Does Social Media help or hurt companies?

Social media has had a huge impact on companies around the nation. Start up companies have been able to create a presence within their respected industries with the help of followers, likes, and shares. We are currently in an age where recommendations mean more than ever before, and "popularity" is an actual thing in the social media world.

I think that this online social media world has been beneficial to well known companies or famous people because now they can use certain sites for free publicity and to generate positive feedback through reviews and comments. For instance, someone like Kim Kardashian has the capability to create an entire empire of merchandise through  advertising on snapchat/Instagram thanks to her 100 million followers. Besides the Kardashians, companies such as Wendy's or Chipotle have used sites like twitter to personify their brand and to communicate with their customers in a more casual way. These tools have helped these corporations understand their publics while also improving.

But unfortunately, social media does have a negative side as well. If one person creates a funny tweet dissing Chipotle's burrito bowl, that post can go viral and lead to a lasting impact and undesired connotation towards burrito bowls. This same thing can be applied to every sort of company in every type of way. One bad comment can lead to a domino effect, and once those comments are out there, they will always be retrievable. Reviews. Reviews. Reviews. These can save a company or kill a company.

When an organization receives negatives comments, it is important for a company to have a public relations plan on how to manage their current situation. These plans can range from preventing false information from spreading, to killing a story that you don't want the world to know. The biggest thing social media can do, is dictate how a company is perceived. Having a crisis plan, or a strategy on what and when to post can be the difference between a negative perception and a positive one.


Overall, social media has created a new world for advertising/public relations. Social media has no boundaries, and no rules. It is no longer only public relation practitioners, or adverting specialists who determine what the public sees and what it does not. Social media has made everything more complex which makes it a crucial thing to study.
 Image result for good and bad side to social media

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Keeping Up With Social Media

Hey there, welcome to my blog! This will be my main space to discuss all things social media. I am currently at VCU and enrolled in a class called Social Media in PR.  For the class I have been updating my twitter account  @isabellesassano with tweets regarding different social media campaigns and other interesting social media occurenses.  I also tweeted a few times from my personal account  @misisabelle , before I made the account primarily for my class (@isabellesassano). Each tweet incorporates the hashtag #MASC336BURKETT which you could use to see all of my fellow classmates tweets as well! In this blog I am hoping to use this platform to share my opinions freely and informally. I truly believe that the best blogs are done when the person acts as if it were their diary. So my goal will be to write openly and honestly. I look forward to keeping up with this blog each week in order to discuss different social media topics or trends that are currently goin...

Social Media and it's Impact

When I was in high school, Instagram was just becoming a thing, and Twitter was the most popular site among students. When I first made an Instagram account, I would post the most random pictures and the amount of likes that I would receive never crossed my mind. It wasn’t until Instagram became mainstream and millions of people started to download the app, that I started to notice the attention I would receive on my posts, and that the more likes or comments, resulted in more endorphins and more “happiness”. I put quotes around the happiness because it seems so silly that a virtual action can change someones mood, but when you are an insecure high school student, and comparing yourself to everyone else, the difference a few likes could make was alarming.  This seeking of social media attention is now seen on all platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest etc) and it is sometimes obvious that people will post certain things just to get that attention. I truly think that a lot of ...