"Digital Business Card"---- Social Media

    No one can deny that social media has taken the world by storm; it is becoming a huge branding tool and “digital business card”. Many companies have come to recognize the benefits of social media, a more effective communication platform that facilitates both-way communication between the companies itself and its customers. Beside all the traditional advertising methods, such as newspapers, television, companies try to use social media to accomplish various business objectives, such as attracting potential customers, increasing sales growth, and build good brand image for business.

     Let’s take a look at this fun example of a small town Scoopville, which is famous for ice cream. After the technology innovation changes in a few years, almost every family know how to make ice cream in a cost-efficient way, and they try to create different kinds of flavors. As a result, this town attracts lots of tourists to come, but for the residents there seems to arise another problem of how to attract customers beside the flavor only. Family Franklin came up with an idea for his ice cream. Outside his house, he erected a board and invited his customers to share their thoughts on his ice cream. They can use words or drawings to describe it, stars to rate it, and leave messages for others. People loved it! Gradually, every family has its own board, and they are overflowed with all kinds of reviews and ratings, whether interesting, positive, awkward; at least honest…

    It’s clear that this magic board benefited the residents a lot in different ways, they can learn directly from customers and make improvements, in addition, free customer reviews value much more than costly advertising. And third, the boards create a novel way to attract the exact potential customers.

     The board, which we can see here is very much similar to social media, is like a digital business card of the product and the company. Social media introduces substantial and pervasive changes and interactions to communication between companies and customers, eventually make a difference and impact to all the stakeholders.  

     Act like the “business card” of the products and the company, social media reinforces and integrates traditional media methods to help reach out more customers and build up desirable brand image in a cost-effective way.