My viewpoint on the
purpose and use of social media has somewhat changed while taking this class,
but not completely. My current opinion
on social media is that it is actually very useful for businesses, particularly
businesses whose customer markets include younger people who are more adept and
familiar with using social media websites like Facebook, Twitter,, Tumblr,
Pinterest, and Instagram. In fact, I
believe that small and large businesses alike, and not social media users that
want to just socialize with their friends, are ones that actually benefit the
most from social media out of all the users and individual entities that have
presences on there. I feel this way because social media has enabled even the
smallest of businesses to communicate with and possibly attract business from
consumers all over the globe, not just in the regions where the businesses were
originally founded. Because smart businesses focus on pleasing customers and
are likely to consciously avoid posting things that offend potential customers,
businesses with social media profiles often enjoy the benefit of not getting
into any comment wars with other users or not suffering the consequences of
posting anything that will cause outrage.
In the past, I thought
businesses having presences on social media websites would not be a
particularly good use of the businesses’ time and money because I believed that
very few customers would be interested in interacting with these business
online on platforms that were originally set up so that people could socialize
more easily with their friends, family members, and subscribers. While researching
various topics for the assignments of this class, though, I realized how very
wrong my assumption turned out to be. My assumption was based on the fact that
I myself, as a consumer (and as a student that does not have a lot money to
spend, anyway), had virtually no interest in spending time on social media
looking up the wares of a company that was probably selling products that I
either could not afford, nor had any use for in the first place. To my
surprise, however, I gradually discovered that my own lack of interest in
looking up businesses on social media is actually a bit unusual when I visited
several random companies’ pages on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest
and discovered that interested potential customers left hundreds or even
thousands (for more well-known, popular companies) comments on these
businesses’ social media pages. After seeing dozens of these heavily
commented-upon business profiles on social media and how customers were
responding to them, I changed my attitude toward social media halfway through
the class and began seeing it as a very valuable tool for businesses to use. In
fact, at this point, I believe that if businesses do not take advantage of
creating profiles on popular media and regularly communicate with customers on
them, they are not truly serious about attracting more customers and expanding
their businesses. Even though I do not own a business myself, I respect
businesses that use social media regularly to communicate with customers
because these companies’ presence on these websites shows that they are at
least willing to work hard and be ambitious about proving that their products
and services are worthy enough for customers to part with their own hard-earned
money for. In addition, it is obvious that we live in a digital age of high
dependence on technology, so it is only natural to expect that businesses will
take advantage of modern technology (such as social media websites) in order to
help themselves make a profit and make themselves appear more relatable to the billions
of people in the world who have Internet access.
However, I still stand
by my belief that overall, social media websites actually strain or even
destroy personal relationships between people because of my own personal
experience with Facebook and seeing how I have lost at least one friendship
over arguments that I had about politics, religion, and other sensitive topics while
I was conversing with a former friend on Facebook Messenger. Ever since I lost
that friend on Facebook (he unfriended me and never contacted me again), I
became more and more aware of how people I knew (even people that were normally
kind in real life) were using Facebook to personally attack and write demeaning
comments to each other over differing opinions, and my sorrow over seeing how
people have the ability to mistreat each other on social media remained the
same as I took this class. In fact, I have grown even more convinced that
social media use can even be detrimental for individual users because using
social media for several hours a day could also lower their self-esteem and
lead to depression because they might not feel like they “measure up” to more
popular social media users with celebrity status and acclaim. In spite of this
class, I also still feel that social media is often used negatively by
potential employers (and current employers) to search for information that
could lead to people being fired at their jobs or not even getting hired at
all.
I definitely have a better understanding of
how to develop a business than I did before I had taken this class, but I do
not necessarily think that I would be
a good entrepreneur because I am not inclined to risk-taking or a willingness
to financially invest in a business that might not survive within its first
year of inception. Nevertheless, this class has taught me several strategies
about how thriving businesses maintain successful profiles on social media, and
how these businesses interact with current and potential customers in a caring,
attentive manner that shows that they are willing to respond back to customers,
answer their questions, and make amends for mistakes that the companies may
have made while doing business with particular customers. As someone who has
worked in customer service positions in the past, a lot of the advice that the
lectures and class textbook suggested struck me as common sense because I
already know that people respond well when they feel like they are listened to
and that employees sincerely care about solving whatever problems and needs
that they may have. However, the newest lessons that I did learn from this
class was how to set up a business on Facebook and how to use Google Analytics,
even though I did not have the chance to thoroughly explore all the aspects of
Google Analytics. I also gained a better understanding of how to effectively
use different types of ads on social media, even though I did not create any
such ads myself because I cannot really afford to spend money on such ads.
With all honesty, I have rarely used social
media to research businesses, services, or products that I could possibly be
interested in during the course of taking this class. However, I will admit
that in the process of trying to figure how my fictional educational software
businesses, Codex Alexandria, could benefit from engagement with other users, I
stumbled upon Rosetta Stone’s Facebook, Google +, and YouTube profiles. When I
discovered the Rosetta Stone Facebook profile, I was especially impressed with how
Rosetta Stone managed to display several interesting, true testimonies about
how people used their language-learning software to travel the world and
interact with people who spoke the languages that they were learning. From
there, I then discovered Rosetta Stone’s YouTube account, which featured
intriguing videos that either featured Rosetta Stone instructors talking about
interesting language learners that they got to know more personally, or language
learners showing how they able to apply their new language skills in real life.
By visiting Rosetta Stone’s various social media profiles, I became so
impressed with the company’s reputation and language-learning software that it
almost convinced me to buy Rosetta Stone software for learning Russian (a
language that I have long wanted to learn) when it was on sale.
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