Social Media in the Work Place

Social Media in the Workplace

by Daishia Sloan

As part of one of my Communications courses, I was asked to reflect on social media and its professional purpose. Over the years, I have found that as a Communications student I have encountered social media in both the educational and professional realm. Technology and Social media seem to be an increasingly important component to a business’s success. When asking why social media has become so important to companies a few things should be considered: cost effectiveness, accessibility, trend, and relationship building.

I’ve been reading about the connection between social media and communication in Social Media Communication by Jeremy Lipschultz. This book covers the aspects that I mentioned above. Social media gives a company the ability to link and communicate with the public through technology (Lipschultz, 2018). Technology provides the public and companies with a convenient way to communicate with one another. Social media provides a way to actively engage and promote one’s brand while building relationships. Relationship building has been a reoccurring theme in my studies. A business relies on customers and stakeholders to be successful. Engagement with these groups is important to gauge how a company is doing. Social media is a direct way to do this.

In my own experience, I have witnessed or used business related social media at each job that I have had. At one job, I was in charge of social media for the department. At this particular job, community involvement was important. We utilized social media as a way to inform and interact with the public. Without social media, it would have been difficult to analyze public interaction or opinions of the company. Social media gave our office a direct line to the public that we wouldn’t have had otherwise. I was able to let the public know what events were coming up or provide information on what we were focusing on.

Social media serves three main purposes: to inform, to entertain, or to inspire (Lipschultz, 2018).  Our company’s page covered all three of these aspects at some point. We put emphasis on informing the public on relevant information pertaining to services our office provided. At this particular job, we relied on social media. Our company website was for every department and only offered basic information for each department. Social media was a way to personalize what each department wanted the public to know.

Other positions I have held used social media as a way to promote the brand or different promotions that were going on. Social media also gave the public a direct line of communication to the company and offered a way for the public to share about their personal experience with the company. Social media was also used as a way to get the public to navigate to the company website.

I think that social media gives a more direct connection between the company and the public. While websites are still important to businesses, social media provides a option to personalize content that is appealing to the public.

Retrieved from https://visual.ly/community/infographic/technology/advantages-social-media-and-websites-business 

Reference
Lipschultz, J. H. (2018). Social Media Communication, 2nd Edition. [Chegg]. Retrieved from https://ereader.chegg.com/#/books/9781315388120/