Social Media in Business

We all know how social media works. We've been in enough lectures over the past couple of weeks to practically memorise its definition, and we've also been using it for long enough to have a rough idea of its limits and capabilities, if not be fully conversant in its usage. Yet, a topic which is fairly new and not often discussed (this is changing, though) is the effects social media has on an organisation, particularly a small one. This is something I can relate with, because I once spent a year working for a small company, dealing in software consultancy and computer systems integration services, among other things. 
Before we begin, let me try to define social media. To many people, social media refers to the ways in which people can interact online. They can take on many forms: magazines, Internet forums, weblogs,social blogs, microblogging, wikis, social networks, podcasts, photographs or pictures, video, rating and social bookmarking. In all its forms, social media has become a large part of our everyday lives, proving itself to be extremely versatile and useful. This idea has been extended recently to businesses, who have been quick to see some of its uses. Let me name a few:

1. Social Networking Site (SNS) Pages Rather than Websites. 

Ask any web developer, and he'll tell you that his services are in high demand. To begin with, there are many costs associated with setting up a web page. First, one has to purchase a domain name. This is already an expensive option. Many blogs like this one offer bloggers the opportunity to use their own domain name (e.g. ABC.com rather than ABC.blogspot.com) and offer much greater server space for a fee. Wordpress, for example, offers this service for $99 annually. In addition to the cost, one has to spend time building an entire website from scratch, as well as maintaining it. It is possible to learn how to do it (I'm able to do some basics of web maintenance, myself), but it takes a lot of effort. Hiring professionals to do the same thing is also cost-prohibitive. Why? This website explains why.
A lot of time, a lot of effort. One single mistake with HTML and CSS can bring the whole site down, and finding and correcting the error can take ages. This is where social networking sites like Facebook come in. 

Ramen Monster. A family-run eatery in Velocity specialising in Japanese noodle dishes. You can see the full page here

This is all it takes: Creating a Facebook page for the business. No need to know HTML, no need to spend huge amounts of money on web maintenance. Facebook has taken care to make this available and extremely user-friendly, so it's essentially creating a Facebook profile for your business. Facebook's easy photo-sharing and tagging options, coupled with its "Wall" function, also allow for far greater interactivity between customer and proprietor than with a conventional website. More importantly, it saves the cost of creating and maintaining a website, which can literally cost tens of thousands. 

2. Saving Costs in Advertising through SEO

SEO, short for Search Engine Optimisation. On Wikipedia, it is defined as "the process of affecting the visibility of a website or aweb page in a search engine's "natural" or un-paid ("organic") search results." Generally, the higher on a list of search results a site is, the higher its SEO ranking. 

A search for a steak restaurant.  

 That, again, is a whole new ball game. SEO works primarily through the number of times a website is mentioned. It is also extremely competitive in the way it is structured, as well as being somewhat tedious. Optimising a website may involve editing its content, HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Promoting a site to increase the number of backlinks, or inbound links is another SEO tactic. Yet, as seen here, the cost of doing SEO is significantly lesser than advertising. It's also kind of like getting your business via word-of-mouth, albeit in cyberspace. 

Can you think of any other ways in which social media can help a business? Let me know!