Social Media for Business

Introduction

Social Networking sites, for years, have been one of the most popular methods of brand marketing, for a variety of businesses. By using social networking businesses are able to grow and succeed, because it helps them strengthen business relationships and generate a much larger customer base.

The speed at which people in both their personal and professional lives, have begun to use social media is unmatched. “While it took radio 38 years and the internet seven years to reach an audience of 50 million, Facebook achieved the same milestone in its third year. In this report, I will show how each platform can be used to strengthen and grow the company. Platforms this report will look at include Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. This report will be looking at the current and potential social networking activity of The Champions Life Academy.

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They’re a small business, based in London, that runs a student-orientated internship each summer; helping the students to increase their teamwork, management, and sales skills. Using knowledge gained while taking part in champions' summer internship, this report will be looking at the different platforms that Champions are already using, at the same time this report will access a number of different ways in which champions can improve upon their current social networking activity.

Because Champions are a student development company it is important that they stay on top of current and on-trend with technology. As well as looking at possible solutions that Champions could use in the future, this report will also look at the advantages and disadvantages of social networking platforms, and whether using them is the best way forward for Champions Life Academy. By the end of the report Champions will have a clear view of what is needed to continue the expansion of the company, and how social networking can help them in achieving this goal.

Main Findings

“Champions Life Academy is a student development program that prepares young people for the business world and beyond whilst offering those that excel opportunities to develop new enterprises within the organization. “ Champions are a small business, with only 6 full-time members of staff and 1 placement year student. It all started when the founder's Al Brown and John Pordum went on the BBC television show dragons den.

Even though their trip was unsuccessful, their past experience in door-to-door sales was interesting to Peter Jones, “who suggested that the sales skills they developed during that time, must have been instrumental in why they had gone on to run a number of different businesses”. At the start of the program, in 2008, they had a small group of 27 students, then 45 in 2009, and 95 in 2010. With its popularity growing it more than doubled to 200 in 2011; this has equaled an 800% increase in just 4 years.

Champions are now established as one of the top internships in the country, and their focus continues to be to create the best development program possible. With the company looking to expand it is important that they create connections with a variety of different other organizations, current connections include blackberry and KFC.

Advantages and Disadvantages of using Social Networking sites

There is no one way for all companies to use social networking sites, it all depends on the different platforms they use.

This can vary from allowing a company to improve communication and productivity with its employees, as well as with the users. Below is a list of potential advantages and disadvantages for Champions Life Academy when it comes to using social networking sites:

Advantages

• Open communication. They will be able to connect with people to form a web of connections that could lead to enhanced information discovery and delivery.
• - Builds Credibility. Being able to communicate with people on both a personal and professional level, gives them a chance to gain customer confidence as well as widen business contacts. This can all be done with minimal use of advertising.

• Low Costs. Using social networking is cheap for both personal and business use, mainly because the majority of the time it is free. A lot of the facilities available to businesses are underestimated; champions have access to potential customers and target markets with just a few clicks of the mouse. Having an insight into the likes and dislikes of their target audience gives a large advantage over companies that don’t use social networking. “Expands market research, implements marketing campaigns, delivers communications, and directs interested people to specific websites.

Disadvantage

• Scams and Harassment;

There is the potential for security failure against hackers attempting to commit fraud, as well as viruses. People are more and more often falling victim to online scams, which can result in identity theft.

• Time-Consuming;

Even though keeping each platform up to date is important, it can be time-consuming and cause a lack of productivity in other areas of work, particularly if staff is using it more for personal than business use.

Current Social Activity

Facebook

Facebook is one of the most viewed websites in the world, with over 900,000 active users, and over 500,000 of these people use Facebook on a daily basis. With access to such a large number of people around the world, users are able to view the business's website, blog, store, and articles as well as deals and promotions that may be going on. The current Champions Life Academy Facebook page is one of their main methods of advertising the company. It has over 750 likes so far, and this is continuously growing as more and more people hear about the company.

It is used to promote the Champions Life Academy internship as well as competitions that are being run by the company. Most of these are for students who have already taken part in the program, but it is also a place where students looking to take part in the program can find out about the company and what they’ll get from the internship. Even though there are semi-regular posts on the page and there is a reasonable amount of information about the company and its awards, there need to be more photographs uploaded as well as information about daily life as a champion’s fundraiser.

Twitter

Twitter has become a major player in the social networking stakes, with over 500 million users who generate over 340 tweets each day. By a business using Twitter, they can directly communicate with their customers, “Businesses that reply to customer tweets are likely to have 27% more followers than a company that doesn’t reply to customers”. The Champions Life Academy Twitter page currently has around 335 followers, even with this level of followers the page has been neglected in a way, and there isn’t enough post, especially for this ever-growing platform.

With such a large number of people using Twitter on a daily basis, it is important that this research is used to its full potential. Current post works in conjunction with what is going on within the company, but they are few and far between.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is not the average social networking site. It is for people with professional occupations and can be used to communicate with employees, customers, and rival organizations. It allows people to find out current and up-to-date information about an organization and individuals.

LinkedIn is a more business-orientated social networking site. Through LinkedIn, champions are able to connect with a variety of other companies and past and present students. Using LinkedIn has allowed champions to connect with past students who are now working in a variety of industries, and want to continue their connection with the company. It also allows current students to connect with champions and make the most of using their references to help them with their future employment.

Social presence is used in conjunction with the other offline and online marketing channels

As well as being on a number of different social networking sites, Champions Life Academy is also a part of the website: ratemyplacement. com; where students can apply to take part in both the summer and Easter programs, it is also a place where students who have taken part in the program can leave reviews about their experience of the program.

Through this website, they have won a variety of awards including NCWE 'Overall Work Placement of the Year,' 'Work Placement of the Year winners, and Highly Commended 'Work Placement of the Year - as Voted by a Careers Service' 2011. Through the award they have won; it is clear that using this website has enabled them to become exclusive and much-wanted interns. Even with an 800% increase over the past four years, the program is still only able to take on less than 20% of the people who apply for a place in the program.

Analysis and Conclusion

Analysis and Conclusions – clear and well-defined summaries that are supported with discussions and justifications on effective solutions for building a social presence for your chosen business.

Time Plan

When coming up with a time plan for champions to use, it is essential to know which social channel to use. We are going to make a time plan that will give different approaches and methods to help champions increase their presence on Twitter.

When it comes to using Twitter to help your business, there are a number of steps that can be taken to ensure that you make the most of this ever-growing social platform.

Final Strategy

The best method for champions implementing this strategy will be to use a six-stage social media framework.

The six stages are:

1. Plan: Discover what you want to achieve by using social networking sites and how you need to approach social media as a whole.
2. Monitor: Evaluate the conversations on each social media platform, and with the organization. This will allow you to gain insight into the wants of your customer audience Listen to the social media conversations taking place about your organization and brand while gaining insight into your customer’s perceptions (Google alerts, monitoring tools, etc. ).
3. Engage: Establish your organization’s presence in the social media world, if you don’t start the social media conversations then someone else will.
4. Manage: make the most of the social media craze, and use it to establish and manage relationships that support the goals of the business; announcements, resolutions, new products/projects, campaigns, and recruitment (e. g. Facebook activity, responses to tweets, etc.).
5. Measure: Recognise the impact of your social media strategy and repeatedly adjust it to improve the outcomes.
6. Integrate: Integrate your social media activities with your other online and offline.

Conclusion

This report has looked at a variety of social media platforms and has analyzed both their advantages and disadvantage. After looking at champion life academy’s current activities on these websites, it became clear that this is one of their main areas to advertise. Using these platforms allows them direct access to their target audience, students. As well as looking at these individual platforms, this report has also looked at social networking as a whole.

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