Approximately a decade ago, no one had any knowledge about social media, but currently, social media websites such as Twitter, Linked-in, Facebook and Instagram boast of having over 1 Billion subscribers. This implies that the social media covers over one-quarter of all Internet use in the world (Piskorski, 2014). Social networks now play a significant role in everyone’s lives ranging from disseminating information in the form of news, dating, and business. The most successful social media websites are the ones that allow users to accomplish and satisfy their needs that cannot be achieved offline. In business, most organizations in the United States and elsewhere around the world continue to rely on social media to reach their customers and advertise their products and services. Such competitive companies allow their employees to interact with each other and other people before they can market and promote products to their clients. One such company that has edged social media sites to establish a competitive and sustainable advantage is the Amazon.com. The following paper analyzes the social media metrics of Amazon.
Question 1
Amazon is the largest Internet-based retail electronic commerce and cloud computing company in the world by total sales and market capitalization. It currently has over 23 million likes on its Facebook page (Turban, 2015). The internet based company keeps the huge number of Facebook clients by responding to any inquiries and complaints as quickly as possible. The effective response that Amazon provides to their customers keeps them satisfied and ready to continue using their products and seeking their services. The company also highlights products and offers coupons to their clients to increase sales (Kotler, Burton, Deans, Brown, & Brown, 2015). It also hires qualified developers and engineers in building a “Social Games Group” to take on Zynga, a competitor in the social games sector (McCuller, 2012). On Twitter, for instance, Amazon engages heavily on promotions and engagement with customers. The company also uses “Pinterest,” a social media site where buyers go to search for purchase ideas. Once potential online buyers identify a pin from Amazon, they can be redirected straight forward to the page where they can add the item of interest to the shopping cart. Such convenience adds to the strategies that Amazon employs on social media.
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Reasons for trusting the information
I trust this information because it has been sourced from a reliable article written by John Waldron, a business and technology writer from MarkITwrite digital content and marketing agency. He writes articles on aspects of social media, applications and software development. More information was derived from How to recruit and hire great software engineers: Building a crack development team, a reliable field guide used by companies in hiring qualified and excellent software engineers who can drive the company to success. Marketing by Kotler et al. (2015) is a book that provides cutting edge content on principles of marketing resource and has comprehensive contributions by industry-recognized authors.
Question 2
Amazon’s use of social media is more geared towards better engagement with their customers, rather than recognition. The company’s aim is not just to gain recognition in the market but to build a large customer base and develop a long-term interactive relationship with them. The company also uses the social media to help their clients to pick the right products and identify great gift ideas (Kelly & Williams, 2015). As other major online retailers focus on achieving brand to consumer engagement, Amazon uses sophisticated algorithms as well as crowd-sourced product information to improve and personalize the online shopping experiences for all their customers. Social discovery is a crucial aspect of social commerce. Product reviews and feedback are certainly important indicators of customer satisfaction to Amazon as an online retailer (Fertik & Thompson, 2015). Through the reviews provided by customers on social media, the company can make adjustments to achieve optimum customer satisfaction. Advertising is also an important role that social media plays for online retailers such as Amazon. According to Turban, Strauss, and Lai (2016), advertisers often use social media to build quality customer relations, create brand awareness, increase the size of followers, build databases and direct traffic towards an online destination.
Reasons for trusting the information
This information is trustworthy since it has been derived from the book Social Commerce: Marketing, Technology, and Management , a reliable reading material that is multidisciplinary in nature. In the book, leading authors, as well as many industry experts, have made contributions on aspects such as e-commerce and e-marketing. The book examines trends in social business, e-commerce, innovations and social networking. The other reliable source used is BUSN which is a major source which the most current context for learners who use it as the main course source. The reputation economy: How to optimize your digital footprint in a world where your reputation is your most valuable asset is the third reliable source that has been used to get this information written by Michael Fertik who is one of Silicon Valley’s advanced contributors. The book contains up to date, cutting edge content.
Question 3
In the Securities and Exchange Commission report of the year 2005, Amazon recounts the online retail environment as highly competitive. Some examples of competitors include; Catalog retailers, physical retailers, indirect competitors such as shopping websites, companies providing e-commerce services and other online e-commerce websites. Competitive aspects include accessibility, customer service, brand recognition, price, customers’ experience trust and fulfilment. Other important competitive factors include quality of service and rate of performance. An example of an online retailer that is a fierce competitor of Amazon is e-bay (Dixit & Sinha, 2016). While other online retailers’ posts are majorly focused on news and random questions to ignite dialogue with its clients, Amazons’ posts on social media platforms focus more on promotions. Despite the posts on social media being majorly promotional, Amazon is ranked 12th in the Top 500 Guide, having over 420 comments per Facebook post. Its average likes per post are approximately 2,900 likes per post ranking Amazon at 43rd on the guide. The guide ranks online retailers according to the number of users redirected to their sites from social media. Similar to other retailers, Amazon includes other social aspects to its site such as having a Facebook Like button for its Facebook connections as well as a Tweet Button and a Pinterest pin which makes it easy for its clients to share products with their friends and followers (Morley, 2014).
Reasons for trusting the information
I trust this information because it has been derived from credible reports done by the Securities and Exchange Commission which is an agency that regulates the securities industry in the United States. E-retailing challenges and opportunities in the global marketplace is a comprehensive text that explores the latest transformations that take place in the current virtual market space which can constantly change consumer needs and preferences. The third source used to obtain this information is Understanding computers in a changing society , a book that provides trends and the changing dynamics of the internet use and how it affects online businesses and retail stores.
Question 4
Measuring the success of any public relations strategy is a complicated task. Despite the availability of diverse media sentiment and monitoring tools, guidelines that are used to determine how well a company is selling out its brand and influencing its customers’ opinions remains uncertain. However, as far as social media is concerned, certain platforms can be of great assistance in measuring the success of social media presence, especially on online retail platforms. The Klout Score is a platform dedicated to measuring how much influence a network has on its users (Miryala, 2015). It indicates how many people the network influences, how much influence it has on the people and the influence across the organizations’ social media platform. The platform provides a map that indicates the social media activities linked to the company. Google Analytics is another social media indicator service that tracks activities on any website in real time (Ayanso & Lertwachara, 2014). The platform shows demographics of the users, how they knew about the site and how long they stay on the site. Wildfire , a social media marketing platform, indicates the Twitter and Facebook presence of any organization or company using it and also that of its competitors. According to Sterne (2010), tracking the variations in brand preferences of the public is required but measuring the results of social media activities is vital.
Reasons for trusting the information and sources
This information derived from “Social Media Metrics: How To Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investment” which is the only guide available and dedicated to analyzing metrics of the social media. Trends, Challenges & Innovations in Management - Volume III is a book that contains broad-based research on the changing dynamics of online businesses. Another source used to derive information on this section is Harnessing the power of social media and web analytics which contains high-quality research information meant to equip businesses to obtain intelligence from social media sites. Therefore, the information is trustworthy.
Question 5
According to Nemati (2008), the anonymity of the internet poses a great challenge to online retail stores such as Amazon since it is very difficult for a buyer to know and trust the seller. One ethical issue, in this case, relates to the theft of information (Trepte & Reinecke, 2011). Many customers provide vital information such as email address, physical address, credit card and debit card account details as well as card numbers. Since most of this information is linked to the social media accounts of the users, it is easy for hackers to access them and retrieve the users’ bank accounts. This damage the trust built between the online retailers and the customers. Promotion using mass e-mail encourages spams and scams on the internet (Battersby, Grimes, & Nuara, 2010). Online sellers often advertise irresistible deals on many products, but once curious customers click on the products, they are redirected to sites that are not, in any way, linked to the product or sites that have strict terms and conditions for access. A lot of information is often required to access such sites, and once a client pays for the product, he or she cannot get the requested item.
Reasons for trusting the information
The information is trustworthy since it has been researched and documented in informative and credible books like the Privacy Online: Perspectives on Privacy and Self-Disclosure in the Social Web. The book includes works of renown researchers from various disciplines such as communication and information science. “Information security and ethics: Concepts, methodologies, tools and applications” is a compilation by international experts with content in the aspects of cybercrime, monitoring systems and confidentiality applications important to online companies. Drafting Internet Agreements is a book that provides intensively researched information on legal requirements for companies that do business on the internet.
Question 6
Demographics, global presence, and diversity affect the choices that Amazon makes on social media use by increasing the number of customers that would prefer to purchase items online (Albarran, 2013). Social media sites like Twitter have a steadily growing number of users which means that more customers would have access to products advertised on the company’s website. This increase in users leads to an increase in sales of products by the online retailer shop. Diversity in the customers has an effect on the variety of products available for purchase (Moss, 2011). Different people from different parts of the world have a vast preference for products, thereby placing pressure on the store to increase the varieties of products available for sale (Shoemaker & Resse, 2014).
Reasons for trusting the information
This information is reliable and trustworthy since it has been obtained from, Mediating the Message in the 21st Century: A Media Sociology Perspective , an essential compilation important to students and scholars in the field of media sociology. The Social Media Industries is a textbook which examines social media on descriptive and analytical ways. The third source, Lessons on Profiting from Diversity outlines the importance of diversity to online businesses and how such businesses are affected by diversity. The book contains current examples of online retailers which deal with the issue of diversity.
References
Albarran, A. B. (2013). The Social Media Industries . Routledge.
Ayanso, A., & Lertwachara, K. (2014). Harnessing the power of social media and web analytics .
Battersby, G. J., Grimes, C. W., & Nuara, L. T. (2010). Drafting Internet agreements .
Dixit, S., & Sinha, A. K. (2016). E-retailing challenges and opportunities in the global marketplace.
Fertik, M., & Thompson, D. (2015). The reputation economy: How to optimise your digital footprint in a world where your reputation is your most valuable asset .
Kelly, M., & Williams, C. (2015). BUSN . Cengage Learning.
Kotler, P., Burton, S., Deans, K., Brown, L., & Armstrong, G. (2015). Marketing . Pearson Higher Education AU.
McCuller, P. (2012). How to recruit and hire great software engineers: Building a crack development team . Berkeley, Calif: Apress
Miryala, R. K. (2015). Trends, Challenges & Innovations in Management - Volume III . Zenon Academic Publishing.
Morley, D. (2014). Understanding computers in a changing society .
Moss, G. (2011). Lessons on Profiting from Diversity . Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Nemati, H. R. (2008). Information security and ethics: Concepts, methodologies, tools and applications . Hershey PA: Information Science Reference.
Piskorski, M. J. (2014). Social strategy: How we profit from social media .
Shoemaker, P. J., & Reese, S. D. (2014). Mediating the message in the 21st century: A media Sociology perspective .
Sterne, J. (2010). Social media metrics: How to measure and optimize your marketing investment . Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley.
Trepte S. & Reinecke L. (2011). Privacy Online: Perspectives on Privacy and Self- Disclosure in the Social Web. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
Turban, E. (2015). Electronic commerce: A managerial and social networks perspective .
Turban, E., Strauss, J., & Lai, L. (2016). Social Commerce: Marketing, Technology and Management .
