Benefits and Limitations of Social Media including Risk or Misuse and Positive and Negation Effects on the Business

Question 1

What are the positive effects of social media?

Answer 1

• Can manitain and develop new realtionships with stakeholders and customers.
• Offers direct contact with a wide audience
• It is personal.
• Convinent to use as many can access it from many devices.
• Easy to use.
• Straightforward to set up so you don’t require special training.
• Cost effective as they are free to set up.
• Creates opportunities for individual and businesses to exchange and enhance knowledge, share best practice and create an open forum for discussions on specific topics and issue within a sector.
• Helps to promote a business’ services and products to existing and new customers.

Question 2

What are the negative effects of social media?

Answer 2

• Has the potential to lead to negative publicity for a business
• It is easy for dissatisfied customers or competitor to publish a review online which could damage the reputaion of the business.
• No definitive cost-benefit analysis for the time spent on social media by a business.
• Malicious attacks (hacking) may involve posting damaging content on a business’ social media site, resulting in loss of business or damage to reputaion. This means a business should have policies and procedures in place to monitor the social media accounts as well as restrictions on who can use them.