The Dark Side of Social Media and Business

Technology has advanced in the past years to improve business relations as I have touched on in many other of my posts, but with these advancements come some negatives. These negatives are range from the small things like corporations need for more education to large issues about ethical decisions of workers' usage of social media. As time progresses these issues are predicted to continue to worsen unless action is taken.

Consequences of Social Media

Entrepreneur's Daily Dose

In a recent Smart Plant article touched on five issues that faced by corporations using social media. These five issues included social media threatening to overtake paid searches, the line between individual employee's tweets become corporate property, the need for social network training within business, and how to reach the correct audience with a message through social mediums like Facebook or Twitter. Because of these issues many corporations have decided to put the brakes on social media campaigns.

Hitting The Brakes
Many traditional corporations have focused on the traditional marketing strategy of the five "Ps": Product, Price, Place, Promotion and the most important to social media, Participation. Large Fortune 500 corporations are finding that

"Inherently risk averse and overly protective of their market positioning, corporate leaders have far too many lawyers and others spinning cautionary tales laden with drastic potential outcomes as a result of directly engaging their customers and prospects in full view of one another." 

This was a comment made by Daily Dose writer, Mikal E. Belicove in a Entrepeneur article called Why Big Corporations Are Putting The Brakes On Social Media. The article cites a report from the Center of Marketing  Research at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth which showed the slowing of social media growth within large Fortune 500 companies. The report states that only a bit more than half of these corporations are using social media like Facebook and Twitter.

Public Can Be the Biggest Enemy

Heidi Cohen.com

Through social media, the public has the ability to voice opinion as well has the chance to cause a corporate crisis. Marketing expert, Heidi Cohen published an article on her website titled When Social Media Goes Bad, that gave incites to how stakeholders like customers can start uproar in corporations that use social media outlets. She cites that corporations can't control or own the conversations as they are free and open to public as they can voice their own issues or opinions. Through this freedom, public cannot be stopped in expressing personal opinions therefore it becomes a problem for corporations to wait to respond to an issue or wait for it to disappear. Cohen also says that many corporations have hidden behind an avatar or medium which will just make the issue worse. She as well advises corporations to not use social media to get their response message out because as in so many cases it will be mocked or turn into an viral humor.

Is It Really That Bad?
Looking at these consequences and risks of using social media for corporations shows both sides to the story. If social media is not used effectively these consequences can be avoided with some action and effort, otherwise it is eventually that crisis or issues will occur. Bill Laberis, a social media and business lecturer agrees that Facebook and Twitter will only causes corporations issues, but he does argue websites like LinkedIn benefit because of the different formatting. Well whether it is any of social media mediums only corporates, stakeholders, and the public is decide its effectiveness.