Users of the world, unite! Challenges and Opportunities of Social Media

After reading the assigned reading for week 1, I thought I would write a brief overview of my thoughts on the reading about the challenges and opportunities of social media.

There was one statement made in the reading 'Today everything is about Social Media'. This statement could not be more true. Following reading this piece you see how social media is element in almost everyone's life. From college student who use a blog to track there academic progress, or even Facebook for social purposes and also college work, From an organisation who use social media in more ways than one from using it as marketing platform for example the movie Fred Claus created their own Facebook page to create some media buzz for the release of the movie, or they use it as a social forum, for instance Nokia have an internal wiki which updates employees on various project status.

We really see the full extent to the beneficial use of social media, especially for companies it is a high impact and low cost media coverage , which seem to be very popular recently. In this reading they have included ten tips for companies using social media for their firm. They are useful simple tips, yet very insightful , for example ensure activity alignment, companies must ensure that if they are using various social media applications such as twitter and Facebook, the information on these pages must be the same. Communication between company and consumer is so important and it must be clear, the company must eliminate any uncertainty.

Yet there is downfalls with social media, you must be careful not to spread your wings to far. There is constantly new social media applications being introduce, the company must choose one app and a specific target and focus on that. They should want to be the best on that app rather that have bad quality information on numerous apps. Another challenge of social media is in most cases is that it is very accessible from employees have access to social media pages and consumers have a place to express there thoughts.Companies must ensure they are constantly keeping track of the credibility of their social media devices.

Here an attached a link to the reading
http://michaelhaenlein.com/Publications/Kaplan,%20Andreas%20-%20Users%20of%20the%20world,%20unite.pdf