Introduction
Social networking can be defined as the use of the Internet-based social media sites to communicate with friends, classmates, and clients among others. It is done for different purposes such as social, marketing, and businesses by different people regardless of their age.
Social networking is about many other things other than just keeping up to date with friendships. First, there is crowd sourcing. This is what can be described as a process of obtaining required services, ideas or content by getting contributions from large groups across the globe and especially from the online community.
People use crowdsourcing for different reasons. For instance, firms use it to access ideas or information and resources for multiples of competent people outside the firm than what the firm can find internally. Crowdsourcing is also preferred because it saves on the cost of performing some activities or tasks.
It also increases competition. In this case, the internal teams in firms get to compete with the external researchers hence improving the performance of the firm. This is achieved by raising the incentives of the internal research teams and reducing the resistance to changes in the organization.
Crowdsourcing enables firms or organizations to outsource risks of failure since the firm spends money with an objective of achieving a successful performance (Brabham, 2008). The examples of crowdsourcing include micro-finance, Twitter, Wikipedia, the Hindu scriptures, the Vedas and Upanishads among others. Other than Crowdsourcing, there are other big collaborative projects that exist because of social media. This will form the major focus of this paper.
Social media marketing
Social media has been evolving over the past few years. Social media are very influential in modern days. Thus, every activity wants or is being incorporated with social media. A huge experience about social media is being observed in marketing. While working, marketers need to advocate, engage, converse, and interact with other people. Traditional marketing is currently fading away as marketers adopt digital marketing.
Through the Internet and a set of friends, followers and connections, marketers can work effectively. Social media marketing is the process whereby individuals advertise their websites, products, or services using the online channels and communicate with and to reach for a much larger community that could not be reached through the use of the traditional channels of promotions (Bodnar & Cohen, 2011).
Through social media marketing, one gets to know the types of people and his or her community well. In turn, this helps them attain their goals in an effective way. It should be embraced to replace the traditional offline advertising, which was expensive and difficult to measure.
Currently, marketers are using the Google Analytics offer up to measure success. At the same time, the plethora of free tools in conjunction with the social media can also cut down the high cost of artwork, as well as the design of offline campaigns. With the Wikispaces, organizations, individuals and groups can share and collaborate online, share ideas and work together.
Most people, especially the young generation spend most of their time online. This was proved by the IBM during the year 2007 in the survey of consumer digital media and the entertainment habits. Thus, marketers have turned to the social media and are seeing success in the performance of their organizations. In addition, the old days of using the brochures are long gone. The social media promote conversation.
This is very rewarding especially for the marketers. The current researches show that there are more than 200 million blogs in the blogosphere and 300 million active users with Facebook accounts. Many people are using social media marketing because of increased online visibility (Levinson, 2010).
The increased online visibility can be attributed to various factors. These include increasing visitors to the marketers’ websites and incoming links to the marketers’ websites. Moreover, it included increased RSS subscribers, views of marketers’ content on video and photo sharing sites like the YouTube and Flickr.
Furthermore, this included increased followers for the marketers’ Twitter account and more interactions with customers. It also included increased references to the marketer company, goods and services on blogs, podcasts, Twitter and the social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook (McKeague, 2012).
The use of Facebook has impacted on businesses in a positive manner. As Facebook pages continue to change, the same is happening to the business strategies. Businesses have been advancing their strategies with the help of Facebook. Social media marketing is doing well in the race for high-tech space. This rise can be attributed to the fact that many products can be purchased and downloaded online.
For companies selling products on the web, marketers with a shopping cart web or reservation system web, and if the marketers’ audience uses the web for research, then the use of the Internet is the best option. For instance, the free listing in Google’s Local Business Center makes sure that the marketer’s business address, phone number and website appear when clients search Google Maps for business or businesses in the marketer’s area.
In addition, by using Google maps, customers can easily review the inside of the marketer’s business. Social media marketing helps marketers build their reputation online. This enables them to bring more customers or people to their websites to buy their products and sign the marketer’s petition among other things.
Through social media marketing, organizations gauge themselves with the competitors’ online activities. In turn, this enables them to either rectify or improve the performance of the organization. The dedicated marketers through social media marketing monitor their web and develop a new campaign ideas. The social media marketing has replaced the lower value marketing strategies that in most cases do not produce satisfactory results.
Through the use of Adobe Acrobat, teams can work together, collaboratively on documents through their browsers. Additional channels of communication are provided with options for web conferencing and screen sharing.
A case study of Clorox Company is a good example of organizations that succeeded after incorporating social media advert to generate awareness and profits. In the year 2010, the company hosted a Green Works Webpage. It targeted the female audience aged between 25 to 34 years, and the objective was to create awareness of the Green Works brand of products that were environmentally friendly.
The company targeted Facebook users. On its profile, it listed “clean” and “green”. The follow up study found that the company succeeded by achieving an increase of 7 % for the intent to purchase the detergent and 12% increase in awareness of the brand.
Similarly, entertainment companies have made good use of Facebook, which is a social media site. Companies have made use of Facebook for movie promotion and theatre production. For instance, in February 2010, “Sony Pictures” publicized the movie, “Dear John”. More than one million people got connected to the Dear John Facebook page. A study by Nielsen found that because of Facebook, the company’s campaign achieved an increase of 16 % in overall audience awareness of the film.
In addition, it was also found that the company gained an increment of 2% in its sales for the film. Since the company succeeded to improve its performance, the company got encouraged. Thus, it has been actively using the polling feature available on Facebook to gauge the interests of the audience in its upcoming titles.
Social media for mobile learning
Other than using the social media in making and chatting with friends, learners, and trainers can use it while working on researches, doing assignments, and finding answers to questions. In this case, they seek answers from different people online. After assessing the answers, they find and choose the best solutions to their questions. The use of wikis and the Google apps is common among students who compare the works of the authors to choose their best answers.
Through the social media, collaborative learning is enhanced. Many students and the younger generation together with their teachers or trainees currently depend on the media in their studies. Social media play a major role to the learning institutions. Social networking takes a big percentage in the social media facilitates group activities leading to many educational benefits and potential concerns. Its definition continues to evolve with the change and expansion of platforms and technologies.
It involves participation, openness, conversation, community and connecting. There are many uses of social media. As a center for learning, students benefit a lot from it. In learning, social media can be used for blogging, collaborative calendaring, podcasting, RSS readers, collaborative mind mapping, micro sharing or blogging, presentation sharing, photo and video sharing, and social bookmarking among other uses.
Social media fits into all aspects of learning. It has numerous sites that favor all learning levels. In this case, students in elementary or primary schools, secondary schools, and those in tertiary institutions have theirs. There are sites that can be accessed by all people regardless of age. These include Facebook, Second life, Ning, YouTube and MySpace. The social networks engage, converse and interact leading to collaborative learning.
There are many cases that can be used as a testimony of how social media has been of great value to learners. Robbi and Zeeng from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia described how image storage and photo sharing site could help improve visual literacy. The results were rewarding. They said that social media were instrumented to the improved quality, the amount of feedback and increased motivation.
Students can also use YouTube in projects that require to be reflected upon. Guthrie from Florida State University in Florida tells about a project that required education leadership students to create videos and reflect upon them using YouTube. The project was developed out of a belief that students had to learn in virtual spaces where they spent their time. A perception study proved that the large percentage of the students felt that the project had a positive learning value (Lastufka & Dean, 2008).
Currently, students in their social life use social media interfaces like Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter and many others for connectivity in their everyday lives. The sites in the social media allow students to create personal profiles as they connect with other users of the sites.
They upload photographs, post what they are doing regardless of what time, and send personal or public texts to people of their choice. Social media sites are growing in popularity rapidly amongst the student population. A recent study noted that students’ use of blogs is more engaging than using email. Students are utilizing podcasts video blogs and webcasts share their work, faculties, visiting scholars and alumni across the globe.
Twitter and Facebook are the most prominent interfaces in social media. This enables students to express their interests and discover the commonalities between them. Tweeting is being used in courses as a medium of discussion by students. A study in 2012 showed that over 90% college students globally use Facebook and Twitter (Friedman, 2013).
These social media plus others are for communication, collaboration, multimedia and entertainment. In entertainment, students use virtual worlds, online gaming and game sharing. In multimedia, students can share photos, share movies or videos. In addition, there are live casting, audio and music sharing.
In collaboration, there are the wikis, social bookmarking, social news sites and opinion sites. In communication, there are events, micro blogs or presence apps such as Twitter and pounce and social networking like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and the avatar’s united. The blogs are great for learning from other people. They are beneficial for reflection, story sharing, connections facilitators among people, and philosophizing. Facebook and Twitter are for networking. Students use them for interactions.
With LinkedIn, students can connect with royals and professionals across the world where they get to share and find inspirational stories. These stories help to motivate students towards their career objectives. The Google and the YouTube help students to find resources for their assignments and questions that have close connections to their academics or good working.
Conclusion
From the overview of the social media, it is clear that it is still evolving. Every activity is in the race for a space in the technological world. It is clear that the traditional modes of networking are slowly fading. They were costly and time consuming.
Those modes are being replaced by the online user content and online user opinion. People, organizations, and teams are innovating and inventing new technological strategies that are fast, cost effective and efficient. The professional marketers are busy online tries to convince and woo customers to buy their products or services.
Consumers have made marketers and their organizations to be proactive as they try to empower them. Through collaborative sites, marketers easily get good ideas and creatively incorporate them with theirs. Marketers have seen success in their organization when they incorporate social media in their strategies. Social media marketing helps marketers build their reputation online in order to attract customers or people to their websites.
Students’ performance and commitment to their studies has been on the rise ever since social media were integrated. Currently, mobile learning is the common mode of teaching and learning. Social media technology has facilitated e-Learning and Mobile learning. Social media marketing helps marketers build their reputation online. The social networks consumption is tremendously growing with Facebook and Twitter are in the lead. The social networks engage, converse and interact leading to collaborative learning.
Reference List
Bodnar, K. & Cohen, J. L. 2011, The B2B social media book: Become a marketing superstar by generating leads with blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Email, and more, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken.
Brabham, D. C. 2008, Crowdsourcing as a Model for Problem Solving: An Introduction and Cases, Convergence, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 75-90.
Friedman, B. 2013, social media: The Library Of Congress Archives Your Tweets. Web.
Lastufka, A. & Dean, M. W. 2008, YouTube, O’Reilly, Farnham.
Levinson, J. 2010, Guerrilla Social Media Marketing: 100+ Weapons to Grow Your Online Influence, Attract Customers, and Drive Profits, Entrepreneur Press, New York.
McKeague, C. P. 2012, Intermediate algebra, Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning, Australia.