How Social Media can help in growing the Business?

Social media is the use of web based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Social media is the next big thing currently. It is one of the finest ways of marketing your brand, product across the globe using a single click. Social Media giants like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Digg, Stumbleupon and LinkedIn are making millions and millions of dollars right now. Let’s see how social media is changing our lives.

Social Media platforms

Starting it with my article on the advent of Facebook as a tool connecting people over the internet, Social media has really reshaped the society. The society, globally, has become more digitalized as people tend to spend most of their time online. People are communicating more often over the internet, getting into relations online and making revenues by Electric commerce. This gives us an insight about the penetration level of Internet in our daily lives. The social media is one of the most happening things over the internet now days and is one of the vital elements for any business.

Social Media Circle

What is the role of Social Media in business?

Branded companies like Coca Cola, Wal-mart, Nike, Gucci etc are spending billions of dollars on advertisement every year. The main aim of the advertisement is to remind the consumer about the brand every now and then. Since these companies are already well established and they don’t even need to advertise still they are spending huge amount of money for making sure that the end user always has the name of their brand in his mind. With the technological advancements in the IT industry people are leaning more towards online world. An average person spending almost 13 hours on the internet clearly suggests the rapid growth of internet. Companies have learnt this fact and are inclining towards online marketing more. Social media marketing has the same impact as of advertisement.

Why Social Media is the better choice in Marketing?

Using social media marketing you can create a social presence for your company over the internet and with an average user spending more time on the computer than on TV; you have every chance to get more attention. There are other benefits of that too.

Social Media Features

• The reach is extensive in Social Media. You can target more people from diverse geographical, cultural, economical areas. Because of the reach, things get more viral over the internet.
• The cost per reach is not that high. When you get the chance to reach millions of people through the same banner advertisement the cost automatically gets lower than that spent on TV advertisements.
• More ways of advertisement, you get a variety of ways of advertising your brand including videos, photos, updates etc.
• You can directly interact with your end user and get very up to date Feedback regarding your product. You can ask questions, debate, comment, reply to the consumer’s queries more conveniently and you will be able to know where you product stands.
• Blogging is another key feature which helps you in sharing your opinions with your users. You can share your views, reviews and get to know more about your users this way.

The importance of Social can’t be denied and I won’t be wrong in quoting that Social media will become the most important part of marketing for every company working. Digital world is progressing rapidly and has a promising future, with a scintillating prospect without a doubt it can become the most significant platform in changing the course of online World making it more interactive and lively.

Why Blackberry RIM is losing its market share to other Smartphone manufacturers?

Blackberry RIM (Research in Motion) is a Smart phone manufacturing Canadian firm operating since 1999. It is currently the fourth most popular smart phone with 11.7% market share of the world behind Ericsson, Google and Apple. Blackberry started as the market leader introducing the push e-mail, mobile telephone, text messaging, internet faxing, web browsing and other wireless information services back in 2003. It started off as a hardcore professional smart phone manufacturer and soon gained commendable publicity worldwide. Lately Blackberry RIM has been declining significantly and losing its market share especially to Android and iOS. In this blog I’ll talk about the reasons which led to its downfall and we’ll see if BlackBerry has any chance of survival in the coming time.

How Blackberry is losing its market share?

Starting from the recent outage of Blackberry services in October, 2011; when an open letter to RIM CEOs came up addressing the failure of Blackberry PR, nothing really turned out good for RIM. New launches were not that successful and nearly 60% of Blackberry RIM users in US are planning to switch to either Android or Apple by the end of next year. Let’s see how it all started. Blackberry was Wall Street’s baby until Apple and Google launched its first iPhone and Android in 2007 respectively. For RIM’s adversity it never felt the need for a real innovation. Blackberry users were using the same technology for years and they needed a change which Android and Apple provided. It all started there and then. Blackberry didn’t realize the need of an hour, which was innovation, and it kept on giving the same services thinking that who’ll mess with RIM. This is where it all begins, RIM never went too far to feel a need of marketing intensely and the other companies made use of its over confidence.

According to Michael Mace

“In my opinion, RIM’s real problems center around two big issues: its market is saturating, and it seems to have lost the ability to create great products. This is a classic problem that eventually faces most successful computer platforms. The danger is not that RIM is about to collapse, but that it’ll drift into in a situation where it can’t afford the investments needed to succeed in the future. It’s very easy for a company to accidentally cross that line, and very hard to get back across it.

There’s a lesson in RIM’s situation for every tech company, so it’s worthwhile to spend some time understanding what’s happening.”

Why Blackberry is failing as a product?

Primarily Innovation was the main reason because of which Blackberry is facing such a rapid downfall. Most of the smart phone users have gone so far and called the upcoming launches of RIM “Boring”. Another reason is the lack of applications in Blackberry. Looks like even the developers don’t like the idea of making Blackberry apps. Since its debut in 2009 only 26,000 applications of Blackberry have been developed as of April 2011. Blackberry’s core competence were its push e-mail and BBM (Blackberry Messenger Service), of late almost all mobile phones have push e-mails and the new iMessage introduced by Apple is gunning for BBM.

What Blackberry should do to strike back?

Blackberry OS 7 is already facing the downfall despite the fact that it’s yet to be released. Blackberry’s future looks blurry with no real hope as it also lost its competitive advantage of BBM which ensured its sales in Middle East and Africa mainly. There are certain things which could be done to save Blackberry for all the right reasons. As Michael Mace says,

“To fix their problems, RIM needs to create rigorous up-front planning processes in its software team, with someone who has dictatorial power placed in charge of overall software integration for a device or OS release. Also, the product manager needs to be empowered (actually required) to delay shipment of a product if it’s not right. I’m sure someone at RIM knew about the problems in the Torch. The fact that the company went ahead and shipped it is almost as disturbing as the problems themselves.”

What Blackberry needs is a visionary innovation that will give RIM a reason to stay in the market and compete at the top level. Along with that the company needs to change its development process to guarantee proper design and integrating all products. There’s a lot of work needed to be done if Blackberry RIM really wants to make sure that it stays in the competition and reclaim its lost market share.