S&d Consulting Group - Competitors Use of Social Media

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S&D Consulting Group

Introduction

In an age with 219 million worldwide social media users, growing more with every passing day (Chaffey, 2016) social media is undoubtedly now essential to business life. Companies must have an active social media presence to engage with both current and potential customers to meet their evolving needs. As requested, we will now outline the uses of social media for Lava plc’s operations, potential future trends and effective change management processes to ensure these technologies are effectively implemented.

Competitors Use of Social Media

Advertising

Organisations today are primarily using social media for advertising.

Using social media, organisations are allowed to extend beyond the traditional forms of advertising towards new modern methods. We have found that the most popular form is using social media platforms, mainly Facebook, to reach out to millions of users. Recent figures show that 74% of all adult internet users have and social media sites (Source: Pew Research Centre, January 2014).  Using social media to advertise means corporations can constantly communicate with a worldwide audience.

In our opinion, Paddy Power are a prime example of a company who have perfected this type of advertising. PP’s marketing strategy is reaching out to customers using Facebook and Twitter. They post regularly, using humour and by relating to current events. By building a following on social media, a company can increase its customer base.

Internal Chat

Companies are now expanding on the social media trend of instant messaging. Although the medium has existed for a number of years, Facebook have revolutionised instant messaging with their Messenger app.

Organisations have incorporated this idea and have introduced it into the company internally. Through this set up, employees can chat with co-workers in an instant manner. This makes communication much more efficient. Workers do not have to move around to interact with one another and it is also faster than traditional methods such as e-mail.  

It is definitely an idea that should be incorporated.

Future Trends

Customer service can be effectively performed through the use social media rather as a primary option to phone calls and emails. Previously, social media such as Facebook and Twitter was used by customers to inform others of their experiences of products both positive and negative with no engagement from the company themselves, now customer services representatives are actively trying to engage in these discussions to resolve any issues that users may face as they are aware that these posts last forever, a simple google by another customer may direct them to the solution previously given to another, drastically reducing time wastage responding to similar issues.

Companies can also provide customers with more intimate service. For example, airlines now remind their passengers of flight times/schedules via Twitter and are able to instantly notify passengers of any changes. Furthermore, using social media can cultivate fans culture. If customers receive good service, they are likely to share this company’s post. However, social media customer service also has some drawbacks, such as customers don’t want private information disclosed in social media engagements. We strongly recommend Lava implement an active customer service team on social media to strengthen their consumer brand.

1. Social media plays a more important role in the workplace. On June 25, 2012, Microsoft acquired Yammer for $1.2 billion. Yammer is an enterprise social network established to foster tam collaboration which enables employees to collaborate in real time across departments, geographies and business applications. It also helps them create groups to collaborate on projects, share and edit documents. Besides Yammer, there are many kinds of social media like this. For example, one of functions of Dropbox is sharing documents and Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides allow users to create and edit documents online while collaborating with other users in real-time. These social media applications improve workplace efficiency and solve some common business obstacles, especially for Lava whose aim is to increase the success of expansion to other markets in the EU, and worldwide. Social media can assist with this goal and aid in gaining a competitive advantage in doing so through eliminating obstacles Lava will face.

1. Social media payment may become popular in the future. Wechat is a social app established by Tencent-a technology company in China. At first, Wechat was just like the combination of messenger and Facebook which can send messages between friends, read posts by friends and follow official accounts. Now Wechat has introduced Weixin Payments. Tencent added support for brands to allow customers to purchase items or services inside Wechat. It works for both in-store payments (where retailers will likely scan a QR code generated by your order inside WeChat) or for purely online purchases that would then be delivered to you. WeChat users in China can now find this option inside official accounts of many brands. It works only with ‘service accounts’ which are designed to support companies and retailers in offering things like loyalty cards, customer service, and online selling. Tencent already has Weixin Payments in place as the messaging app’s main e-payment option. Lots of big-name companies have WeChat service accounts from McDonalds to Starbucks, Samsung to Huawei. Also Facebook, Twitter have now added the “buy” option. In a word, one thing is certain: social media payments services are on the rise. Lava should carefully analyse the data surrounding their customers on social media and investigate whether they are capable of implementing a social media transaction system into their operations.

Change Management

Changing anything is difficult, but changing a company to be more social media focused is especially hard. A recent PwC survey (2013) showed that only 54% of attempts to change aspects of a business culture or operations succeeded. The reasoning for this near 50:50 success rate were, “change fatigue” i.e. too much was changed too fast, lack of competency to carry out change & exclusion of low-level employees in any change management plan. These are all aspects of change management which Lava plc should be aware of when implementing any change management plan.

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