Please feel free to join this week's discussion on the topic of Social Media vs. Websites.
Hi Team Five, Hope you all had a good weekend and I am looking forward to an engaging discussion.This week I found Ch. 14, Integrate Social Media into the Entire Customer Experience particular interesting and wanted to know if you guys had agreed with Kerpen’s statement that some companies only ‘website’ is their facebook/twitter and blog pages and if you felt there is a disadvantage to using social media as the only source of information or would the company benefit better from having a website and using the social media as a promotion tool? Do you see a future of “no websites” and only social media taking charge? Looking forward to your responses!
http://vest-socialmedia.blogspot.com/ - this week's team leader.
Hi Sandy-
ReplyDeleteI do feel there is an advantage for an organization to use a website in conjunction with social media. A website offers an organization real estate to provide information and documents, capture information (leads) and communicate a message through a digital channel.
However, for smaller organizations I believe a few social network presences is enough. I will use my mother's landscaping business for my example, her business Facebook page can be seen here: http://facebook.com/ASCGardens.
Facebook is an easy tool for my mother to use to update her audience with current projects and share inspiration for future projects. While my mother does have a website for her business, http://ascgardens.com - she has not updated in over 5 years. It is much easier for her to update Facebook - and better, her updates are served to an audience and has a much larger reach.
For a large organization or an e-commerce business, I believe a private domain presence is imperative. Social media is a great way to promote a cause, event or product. And, it might be more cost effective for the organization to use a website to house digital assets for the users to engage with.
Peter
I am active in the Order of the Eastern Star. We have both a website and Facebook. I feel that it is a good idea to have both...not just for our fraternal organization but for businesses as well. There are people who are very adamant against Facebook and all social media..and do not use them. Then there are people who go mostly to Facebook and not go to websites. There are in my opinion advantages and disadvantages to both of them. Social media is a fast growing trend for sure but I feel that a mix of both is a good idea to be able to reach a wider base of people. Mary G.
ReplyDeleteIn today's market a business needs to be accessible to the public as much as possible. I learned in my Web Design and Strategy Master's program at Mercy College that whether a small business or a large company there needs to be strategic action plan that includes business, financial, and marketing in place when building a web site.
ReplyDeleteThe MIT Sloan authors, Paul A. Argenti, Robert A. Howell, and Karen A. Beck, state that a business should also define its strategic approach for its communications that includes: "communication functions, objectives, constituents both primary and secondary, and channels" (Argenti, P., Beck, K., and Howell, R., 2015). A communicative approach will assist company leaders with strategic positioning of the business. Issues companies are faced with are building trust with the public online on its own site and social ones, determine who can share and where to share their web content, and to budget their resources not just financially, but with time and people to accomplish the strategic action plan.
Kerpen (2015) strategic media three part action plan is crucial for a company to succeed online:
1. Determine how departments such as: advertising, marketing, public relations, customer service, operations, sales, research and development, senior management including the CEO, and information technology will contribute to the ultimate customer experience.
2. Join Facebook, as it is known for having over billion people going on their site every day, so it is considered an excellent place to tap into for finding new customers.
3. Integrate our web site and social media sites to include Facebook's like button. The easier it is for a customer to navigate both sites the more likable you will be. (Kerpen, p. 173 & 174).
While some companies are thriving very well online without their own web site. However, I believe that web sites are here to stay because there are some major issues with social media sites such as: 1. You do not control the social media sites, 2. Nor do you own the content that placed on them, and 3. Any web site can go down at any time whether it's yours or social media site.
I agree with author Kerpen (2015) that staff needs to be educated in social media to build a trustworthy community that is, "listening, transparent, responsive, and engaged" (p. 172). It is important for companies to remove silos, build an integrated team, and be sure your strategic media plan includes a communication approach to succeed online not just for the short term, but for the long haul.
References:
Argenti, P., Beck, K., and Howell, R. (2005, April 15). The strategic communication imperative. MIT Sloan. Spring 2005. Retrieved from http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-strategic-communication-imperative/
Kerpen, D. (2 015). Likeable social media (2nd ed.). New York : McGraw Hill Education
Sandy,
ReplyDeleteI looked at the comments in the links and here is my take on Do you see a future of “no websites” and only social media taking charge?
Realistically, no. But that depends upon the use of social and the goals that are to be achieved. From a truly social perspective, websites never played a role. It is all about communication between friends on Facebook, business networking on LinkedIn, quick, real time messaging on Twitter, and image sharing on Instagram.
As soon as you turn to business use of social, the goals and thus the need for a website changes. While Pinterest and Twitter now have a “buy button” option, the link has to go back to a shopping site/cart. Facebook has begun testing the buy button application but it has not been released globally. Once it does, it will be similar to the others mentioned…you need a destination to complete the transaction.
The website offers the structure and promotional capability that social media, by itself, does not. Mobile access to sites now integrate various instant payment methods via Apple Pay, Android Pay, and PayPal. No social media channel to date is getting into payment technology as there are too many risks involved.
And the reasons why a website is needed in addition to any social platform when one considers business applications is never ending. I just touched on a few of the reasons above.
Hope this helps add to the discussion!
Mike