A Social Media Upgrade for Businesses and Entrepreneurs

How is it that social media helps identify problems for entrepreneurs and manage their products with greater care? Ever since the inception of social media marketing, entrepreneurs who used this lucrative medium effectively have seen stable earnings in the market and experienced greater profit margins.

Be it Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, more and more manufacturers and entrepreneurs are joining the social media bandwagon. It is always important for manufacturers to get substantial feedback on their products and services.

A perfect example of how businesses can do wonders with the power of social media is the Facebook page of Pottery Barn.

• The Facebook fan page of Pottery Barn, a leading home furnishing outlet, boasts more than a million fans and draws more customers for the company than any other retail outlet.

From Kylie Jenner to Selena Gomez to Rihanna, a majority of celebrities have used social media platforms to build their business empires, which shows how critical it is for businesses today to use social media effectively. Feedback, sales, and customer service are the three crucial aspects of any business that are being influentially shaped by social media.

• KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, the flag carrier airlines of the Netherlands, worked closely with Tata Consultancy Services to create a Social Media Hub and enhance the customer service experience across its website, mobile application, and all social media platforms simultaneously. The company also created direct messaging functionality to improve customer interaction through channels such as WeChat, Facebook, and WhatsApp.
• H&M, a leading clothing brand based in Sweden, has amassed a massive following on social media platforms that have supplemented its rapid growth and popularity on a global scale. The company has more than 40 million followers on Facebook and around 38.2 million followers on Instagram, which provide more than adequate feedback for its products and allow the brand to grow in an uninterrupted manner.

An increasing influence of social media on people’s lives and growing Internet penetration on a global scale are set to bolster the importance of social platforms in the eyes of entrepreneurs, businesses, and customers alike. Moreover, increasing shopping activity through online channels will also play a crucial role in fixating on the importance of feedback through multiple channels and platforms.

The advent of new platforms such as TikTok, Discord, and Patreon in recent years has also influentially bolstered the focus of feedback through social platforms in different formats that allow better insights into consumers’ mindsets. Before the advent of social media, receiving feedback from the consumer end was quite challenging and two-way interactions were next to impossible besides being unsustainable, as setting up such infrastructure incurred huge costs.

So what do we understand of social media? To keep it simple, ‘people connect with people’, to create connections. Thanks to the internet, it has arrived at our doorsteps ushering along the world with it. Today, if consumers are not satisfied with a product they need not make much efforts to express their sentiments regarding them as they could simply lend their feedbacks and comments on the particular page of that product on any of the social networking sites.

Similarly, it also helps that manufacturers and entrepreneurs understand the needs of the consumers, their expectations and demands, providing an avenue which facilitates reception of feedback and suggestions. Moreover, it gives the entrepreneurs an opportunity to promote their product even if they are facing financial constraints, as the buyers come to know of their presence in the market and manufactures can assess their position with the competitors in the market.

Studies have shown that social media marketing has in fact raised product popularity with covert promotions, along with the motion of continuous churn on total functionality for entrepreneurs to manage their products better.

Case Study

Dove launched its latest hair product which prevents split ends and came up with an idea to initiate a blogger’s group for getting feedbacks from users.

As to get instant feedback on its latest product Dove partnered with ‘Indi Bloggers’ an Indian association of blogger group. In this blog, Dove invited bloggers to write about their beautiful braids and asked for suggestions on how to create braids without using hair designing tools. A huge number of people responded to the blog making it a complete success.