With the pandemic slowly taking over our lives, businesses are transferring everything to digital. Whether it be working, client meetings, parties, concerts, team activities, everything has gone digital. All thanks to social media.
When we say social media, people usually think of Facebook, Instagram, or Whatsapp, but tons of social media sites work better than that. Though it has its demerits, the pros weigh more than the cons.
Importance of Social Media in Organizations
When it comes to defining the benefits and importance of social media, there’s a long list. It brings brands and people together. Besides, you can also use social media sites as a platform to promote your business. There are many such benefits that we have discussed below.
Social Networking
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The main agenda of social media was to connect with people. And that’s what companies are doing now—connecting with people on a professional level.
Social media sites have helped a lot in improving the networking skills of people. You can easily connect with the founder of any company over LinkedIn, get to know about various opportunities through HR, and even get clients through a simple conversation.
Gone are the days when companies had to form a team of their best employees to manage clients and investors for new projects. One can easily connect with potential clients over professional social media sites and send them a project preview. It not only helps in saving time but money as well.
Social Media Marketing
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What’s the one thing where companies spend tons of money? Marketing! Yes, organizations spend millions on marketing their product to get customers. But, with the help of social media, this cost can be cut down to at least 80%.
A company can easily market its products on social media through different mediums. You can post the benefits of your product, videos, and much more. Apart from that, you can also promote the products on Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and Instagram.
As the majority audience is on social media sites, it’s a perfect space for marketing business. It helps the customers know the various products, features, and other parameters of an organization. Besides, most customers directly visit the company’s official website, further increasing traffic.
Nowadays, social media marketing has become the new norm in the market. It’s important to make a good social media presence to connect with the audience. Social media managers help companies cope with the ever-changing algorithm and accordingly show customers their desired products.
Connecting with Audience
Have you seen notifications of Zomato, Swiggy, or other food-delivery apps? Those quirky, creative lines attract customers to the app and encourage them to order food. Besides, most customers also post about such notifications over social media sites, which helps the company get free promotions.
Moreover, with constant updates, a company can easily target a suitable audience and connect with them personally. Customers will also get instant notifications about any updates or products of the company through such promotions.
With a proper social media presence, an organization can identify the various needs of customers, their issues and formulate solutions as per that. One of the best methods to connect with an audience is to conduct polls on Instagram or LinkedIn. Based on the percentage of votes, the team can easily understand the changes required in their product.
Moreover, customers can also directly review, complain, and post their issues on social media sites. By doing so, the company can directly converse with customers on a personal level. This further gives people the satisfaction of getting good service, and the company gets another loyal customer.
Enables Transparent Conversation in Teams
Due to the pandemic, it has become difficult for teams to communicate and work properly. In such situations, social media came to the company’s rescue. The invention of various apps and social media sites helped the teams to converse easily.
Moreover, such apps also help the employees to conduct office meetings from the comfort of their homes. Social media is also helping employees in maintaining transparency amongst their colleagues.
It has become difficult to work without getting the office environment, but social media has made it bearable and fun while working from home.
One of the major concerns of companies while shifting to the digital platform was connecting their employees. But, various communication apps such as Slack and Skype, removed this fear.
With the help of social media, employees can easily converse with their colleagues and get motivation for work. We know how boring it can get while working from home, without any tea breaks with colleagues. But with the help of messaging apps, employees can easily chat and remain connected throughout their working hours.
Learning New Things
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Social media has also introduced new courses for people. Five years earlier, one wouldn’t have imagined that there would have been posts like social media strategists, meme writers, social media managers, and much more.
With the constant growth of social media, new talent and resources have been recognized. Not only that, due to such vast requirements, various online learning platforms have introduced new courses.
Due to remote working, employees can upgrade their skills by taking such courses. Earlier, one had to take out time to work and take classes simultaneously, as everything had a fixed time.
But now, one can easily take such courses at their own pace. You don’t have to immediately start taking courses after office timing as these learning platforms allow you to learn in your free time.
Whether you are on vacation, enjoying your weekend, or have some extra hours left for the day, you can easily take such courses anywhere at any time.
Cut Down Expenses
Yes, social media can also help in cutting down expenses. On a normal working day, the company has to pay rent, taxes, electricity bills, internet bills, food, and other miscellaneous costs. But, with the help of virtual offices, all these expenses can be removed from the annual financial report.
Social media helps you do all your work from the comfort of your place. You don’t need to travel to the office, set up your desk, and work. You can simply work in your pajamas from your bed or the mountains. All you need is a good internet connection, and you are set for the day.
Besides, with the help of social media, you can also save money on campaigns, office meetings, team outings, and much more. By saving up that money, you can invest it in the betterment of the organization, conduct virtual parties or concerts for the team, and do various other things.
Hire Global Talent
In-house offices created a barrier for hiring employees from all around the world. Before the pandemic, it was beyond question to get a job in another country, as one had to go through many processes, relocate, settle down, and then perform effectively. These things caused a lot of money, time, and stress for both employee and employer.
Omer Usanmaz, CEO of Qooper Mentoring & Learning Software, says that “with the digital transformation and the growth of social media, it has become easier to get a job in any company, regardless of its location.” You don’t have to travel far to work in a company. All you have to do is apply for the job, go through the interview process, know the team, and you are ready to go.
A normal recruitment process costs a fortune to the company. That’s because the recruiters have to travel to different cities, conduct several tests, technical exams, interviews, and after that select the candidates. It costs not only money but also time.
This online process of remote hiring has made it easier for the employees to get better opportunities from various companies without thinking about any additional expenses. Apart from that, online onboarding also helps companies to save money on the recruitment process.
A recruiter can easily find suitable candidates for the company through social media by going through their profile and conducting an online meeting. Online process only requires the internet and nothing else.
Proper Project Management
Though it might seem bizarre, social media does help in keeping proper track of all ongoing projects in the company. With remote working coming into action, companies have discovered the importance of project management tools.
These tools help both employees and employers to maintain transparency in work. With proper tools, you can easily feed your project details, inform the team about sudden client changes, and get regular updates regarding the project.
Besides, you can also track the performance of each team, divide projects into several tasks, set deadlines, and inform the client about the projects as well. You can easily manage multiple projects at a time with these tools.
Most of the tools also can be integrated with various communication tools such as Slack, Twilio, etc. and some even have inbuilt communication features.
Work-Life Balance
Yes, social media can also help you maintain a proper work-life balance. Continuously working 24*7 can give stress to anyone. In such times, social media sites help maintain a proper work-life balance. It allows employees to have a flexible schedule and work at their own pace.
Tyler Quiel, CEO of Giggster, notes that “most companies are shifting towards flexible work timings instead of fixed working hours. This shift will further help employees have a proper schedule according to their living style. They can spend time with friends and family, go on vacations, learn new things, and work accordingly.”
It’s quite common for youngsters to work at night and with flexible timings, they can easily complete all their work during the night and have enough time to spend on other things.
Besides, social media can also help you to work from anywhere. You can easily book a staycation, where you can enjoy your vacation and work simultaneously. With this, you are not missing out on your professional or personal life.
Moreover, you don’t have to worry about getting leaves and traveling far to see your family during festivals. With complete digital transformation, employees can stay at home, enjoy various festivals, and work.
Helps Understanding Employees
Yes, social media also helps companies in understanding their employees better. Based on that, the company’s software team can easily create a social media site specifically for their employees, where they can share everything.
For example, in companies like Deloitte and IBM, most employees fall in the age range of 25 to 30. As this age group is most active on various social media sites, the team can easily create a platform where an employee can know his/her colleague on a personal level.
Deloitte has created an internal Facebook like-site, where all their employees post various things related to work, personal life, and much more. Some companies invest in blogging and micro-blogging sites, where all their employees can start discussions, state their opinion and solve issues.
However, for finance companies, or organizations where most employees are above the age of 40, such websites are not needed. A simple site for communicating with employees related to projects and tasks will work wonderfully. Here, the employees don’t have to connect on a personal level.
With the help of social media, companies can easily find ways to connect their employees and maintain proper workflow.
Rules To Follow While Using Social Media
Though social media is excellent for remote working and organizations, it does have tons of demerits. One can easily get distracted through various sites and get deranged from actual work. Hence, it’s important to have some rules set for employees while working remotely so that they do not get distracted.
- Use time management tools to detect the amount of time a team member has worked. A time card calculator would help the project managers to keep a proper track of work and give feedback accordingly. Besides, employees will focus on work more if there is proper time tracking to manage the risk of them becoming distracted.
- Organizations should set rules for employees to post sensitive content over internal social media sites. Various teams work in an organization, which increases the chances of information leakage from one team to another. Therefore, every team should have a closed group to share project-related things without any difficulty.
- Moreover, companies should have social media policies for personal and professional accounts. Before sharing anything work-related on social media, the entire team should be informed. Such policies will make it clear for employees to understand what to post and what not to post.
Wrapping Up the Importance of Social Media
Social media has proved to be a lot of help for established companies, startups, and various small businesses. It has helped in marketing products, getting loyal customers, and understanding the various needs of their audience.
You can work from anywhere, at any time, without any difficulty. Though there are tons of disadvantages, social media can be a great ally for budding businesses if used correctly.
Though the importance of social media cannot be stated in a few words, it has made remote working a lot more fun and bearable. Besides, it has also shown people that there’s no need of having a fixed office for working.
