Executive Summary
It is no longer business as usual since the information technology field started making leaps after the invention of the World Wide Web. Technologies such as YouTube and Facebook have henceforth emerged and they are influencing business activities in a big way. YouTube has turned from a mere entertainment channel to a promising advertisement avenue, more so due to its availability to the public for free. YouTube has millions of viewers worldwide and businesses can tap it to advertise their products widely. The technology is opening up advertisement opportunities for small business enterprises among other tapped and untapped opportunities. Facebook on the other hand has created an avenue for social advertising. This comes with the benefit of customizing advertisements and reaching masses due to its open accessibility and widespread availability. These two technologies still have a place in the future as they are yet to mature fully and enhance their features comprehensively, all to the advantage of businesses.
Introduction
Emerging technologies in the information technology field are undoubtedly changing the way business is conducted in the modern world. The advertising industry is particularly positively impacted by these emerging technologies. Two of the most influential and promising technologies in this age are the YouTube and Facebook, a social website. These two information technology innovations have turned from entertainment and social tools into very promising advertising avenues that businesses can tap and increase their awareness in a tremendous way that defies the traditional advertising avenues. This paper discusses the enormous potential that YouTube offers as a tool for influencing business, given that it is a widespread tool that is open to the public. Banking on the massive numbers of people who visit YouTube, this technology can be productively tapped by businesses. The paper also discusses the significance of Facebook in making a business known to as many people as are available in the social site. Moreover, the paper highlights on the advantages of customizing advertisements based on the wealth of information presented in Facebook profiles.
YouTube
YouTube provides the largest online platform for users to share videos and communicate with each other. Nowadays, YouTube is no not restricted as an entertaining tool to public, but also an increasingly widespread marketer and promoter for business. The website attracts over 60 million visitors monthly across the globe.
The way YouTube is used in business influence business
The impact of social media on business is remarkable and companies use YouTube to market their business through their own Channel. Users can upload the videos to their channel on YouTube and the more people visit, the popular their site will be. Consequently companies who are promoting their business will get more exposure opportunities. YouTube is also used for creating advertisements. There are plenty of cases that demonstrate social media tools boost business (Benjamin 2011). For example, small South African businesses release one-minute videos introducing the reasons why customers should buy their products or services and open up for discussion and response.
Also, the Internet marketing dynamo has used YouTube creatively to help Canada-based Jewellery business—ice.com grow to an enterprise which generated more than $50 million in sales each year (Andrews 2009). This Jewellery Company has established a customer group who has no concerns regarding online purchase security. The video clips broadcasted through company’s YouTube Channel purely develop the trustworthy relationship between sellers and customers.
The YouTube is the best free advertising platform for business to catch attention of public. This enables businesses to display the products. For example, two realtors have competed with each other on a trading places programme shown on YouTube (Real Ralph Bending Estate Agency: Trading Places – Somerset Estate Agent Challenges London Estate Agent To Sell In The West Country 2009). The original inspiration is that one of the estate agents was banned from local newspapers as they simply tell the truth about the properties. So YouTube gives an alternative advertising and communication channel for small business that cannot afford to invest in TV commercials.
In addition, based on the functions of YouTube, business can make use of the channel to improve quality of customer service or promote their products. Some companies post solutions to frequently asked questions and products problems (Video Marketing 2011). Within the specific Channel or the link to firm’s website, customer support and product tours are provided to help customers get into know about products. Furthermore, companies will add the web address in the video, offer a contest or discounts. For most business users, YouTube has a free analysis tool available for users to take a glimpse of the results of video. Users can track the number of views, popularity and the ways videos are being found.
One of the most important features of Youtube is that people can get engaged with the whole YouTube community (Abrams 2011). By keeping up to date with community news and any changes in the website design and functionality, business can be informed of customer trends. It is equally effective to post link video clips on YouTube to other social media websites like Facebook and Twitter.
Founded just 6 years, the market value has been up to $70 billion. Facebook is a legend. Now when people mention the Internet, the first jump into their mind is Facebook. Not only has people‘s social has been change, but also it helps the advertising industry.
Facebook is an unprecedented open platform Internet. The users’ data such as file photo, friends, and relation status etc. is a great wealth to Facebook. No invasion of privacy, Facebook can easily acknowledge users’ name, age, looks, and friends circle through their profile or game information. So the advertising industry could use Facebook this priceless data platform to launch advertising or develop their markets.
Most of Facebook users are identified by their real information, So it will help advertisers to know the users information and their internet real track.
For the traditional Internet advertising, it costs a lot for advertisers to track users’ conduct trace to speculate their gender, age, hobbies, consumption ability. However this information is available on Facebook. Anyone can use Facebook to advertise. He/she just need to select the combination in the self-help advertising service. For example, only to a married 35 years old or above, live in Hong Kong woman display ads, or only for Taipei in a day to work of company white-collar display ads.
Because Facebook is a platform associated with real life and social. Incorporation with Facebook, the space and form of advertising will be greatly expanded. Through the spread by SNS, the fission influence and transmission will be much larger. For Example, on Valentine’s day, Honda send out a virtual gift, this is a little love red heart, writing with “content moment also should fill the tank.” This is the Honda brand advertising. 750,000 gifs were sent out. When users received the gift, they will send it to their friends, another 750,000 people. People start to talk about Honda, as a result, Facebook helps Honda win 200 million times display. This is the interactive advertising model with Facebook. In the future, it will be more and more popular
Future Services and Benefits
In the future social media will provide so many new services compared to the services that they are providing to the customers now. One of the major service that social media will provide is to help companies to do the decision making process by allowing them to integrate the social feedback. Many companies use social media to make strategic decisions and execute organization’s marketing plans and objectives etc. This will allow creating new executives who think and behave in new ways.
Lots of people share their videos on social media on nowadays. People can shoot high definition videos and upload it to Facebook, YouTube and other social media networks. According to the article ‘10 ways social media will change in 2011’ by Ravit Lichtenberg (2010) there were 5.4 videos were viewed and among them, 2 billion are on Facebook. In present those videos can only be uploaded but cannot edit them. However in the future, this video experience comes with new technology such as filtering, tagging, editing and locating tool. Most companies will use videos to provide information, so that they do not need to present it via text form. For example in Tweeter, it will allow them to use video for status messages than using text so that people will get more attracted and understand more about the company.
It is bit hard to manage relationship in present social media. However in the future people believe that there will be simple platforms and applications such as Diaspora, Path and Looppa to make communication easier. This will help people to create smaller and context specific communities. For companies this will allow facilitating custom branded, dynamic and engaging experience on online properties.
Today Facebook credits have become the mandatory virtual currency, which allows people to purchase items in games and other applications on the Facebook platform. Unfortunately these credits cannot be used to purchase physical goods directly, but some websites allow watching movies with Facebook credits. For example Warner Brothers activated viewing of the Dark Knight via its Facebook page for 30 Facebook Credits. However according to the article “A look at the future of Facebook credits” by Jason Kincaid, it says that they have now introduced a new feature called App2user credit. This allows users to earn Facebook credits in ways that don’t involve paying with their credit cards. It has also been mentioned that these facebook credits could be used as the web currency in the near future. And these credits could offer a secure way to shop across a multitude of websites.
Another future service of Facebook is to allow people to create super public profiles. In this, people can create their profile and place their advertisements; pictures and parts of the profile will be advertised around the web. Updates of the profile will be posted on billboards as Facebook ads. With these profiles people can do their advertising. For example if a company has super Facebook public profile about the company, then they can do advertising via that profile, so that people who visit that website will intend to buy things from that company.
Nowadays YouTube can only upload videos and watch them via computers and smartphones such as iPhone etc. This is an disadvantage because people do not always use computers and also only few people have smartphones. However in the future YouTube is planning to allow people to upload their videos and watch those at anywhere such as living room, kitchen and outdoor etc. Therefore people can watch videos and upload them by using most of pocket devices such as phones and new video cameras.
YouTube movie rental service is another service that YouTube is planning to execute in the future. YouTube is making partnership with Hollywood film companies such as Warner Bros, Sony and Apple iTunes. This will allow people to watch new blockbuster full high definition and full-length movie for a cheaper price of $2. This will save time of people because they do not have to go to video shops to rent DVDs. With this service, people can buy or rent films and store it in the video store on YouTube.
Conclusion
YouTube and Facebook hold a promise of influencing businesses positively and enormously. If businesses are to utilize the opportunity of having customized channels as offered by YouTube, there is no doubt that such businesses will market themselves widely. Potential customers have the advantage of viewing the advertisement in video form, in addition to the chance of giving feedback as offered by YouTube applications. YouTube opens room for cheap advertising since it is free to the public hence allowing small enterprises to be seen. The functionality of YouTube enhances better customer service as the company can respond to FAQs via the YouTube channel or provide necessary links. It is also possible to assess the popularity of a given advert or product by tracking the number of views hence enhancing better decision making. It is also important to note that YouTube can be linked to other social sites such as Facebook hence giving synergistic results to the business. The open platform feature of Facebook plus the wealthy demographic data can be tapped by businesses to realize more effective advertising and marketing strategies. By tracking users, businesses can be able to customize advertisements. As a real life social media, Facebook is a rich platform for creating interactive and widespread advertising.
The future of the above two technologies is also very promising for businesses. Companies will have an opportunity to get social feedback thus enhancing decision making. The video feature in these technologies will be greatly developed and open up interactivity and customization. Facebook credits as a form of virtual currency is a foreseeable feature. Super public profiles will also enhance advertisement. YouTube services will soon be accessible using common handsets and cameras, in addition to promising rental services for the entertainment industry.
References
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Andrews, R, 2009, Gifts, networking make firm sparkle; online jewellery firm has used social media for 10 years to grow company to $50 million in sales, The Gazette.
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Real Ralph Bending Estate Agency: Trading Places – Somerset Estate Agent Challenges London Estate Agent To Sell In The West Country, 2009, M2 Presswire.
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