Development of Social Media

Question: Discuss about the Development of Social Media. Answer: Social media and Hospitality Industry Nowadays the development of social media has helped many business organizations to run their business socially by providing advertisement in social media. There are millions of users that are going through these sites regularly. Recently one of the most popular industries is growing with the help of social media and that is the hospitality industry. This industry is creating a new foundation in the market as the concept of social media helps to promote the brand name of the industry (Choi et al., 2015). In recent time the company is getting a huge response from the customers as they are provided with a full awareness of their products. Through a proper research, it can be said that social media is the place where we one can communicate with the customers and at the same time develop a good relationship with the help of its communication skills (Aaker, Kumar and Day, 1998). With the help of the social media, the organization can always be in touch with the customers and they can fulfi ll the queries instantly if any such queries take place. Facebook is the biggest social media interface in todays world with over 130 million users and if someone clicks a photo in the hotel and uploads it in Facebook, it would thus become highlighted and will automatically increase the brand value of the hotel. So the hospitality organization is adopting a new method of doing business as they are trying to develop business by the help of social media (Evans and Berman, 1982). Just like other places, there are not too many hotels and it is very hard for the tourist to search for a good hotel and by the help of social media these consumers can easily search for a good hotel at their budget without any problem. Role of social media Social media can be used in different ways depending on who is the one using and how it has been used for better results. Social media works with the help of the Internet and web-based tools which helps to publish information and videos (Guesalaga, 2016). According to the case study, we can give a review that social media marketing is a growing trend nowadays. The people who are working in the hospitality management should keep the benefits of the social media. The way social media is emerging, after few years it will be a part of our daily life. Online marketing has played a great role by using social media and the same strategy is used by the hospitality industry to expand their business (Singh, 2016). In hospitality industry each hotel is different and each hotel should take the step to promote themselves in social media like twitter Facebook, YouTube and corporate pages where high standard businessman as exquisite families follow. There are some international hospitality industries that prefer only some social media for their mode of advertisement (Good and Schultz, 1997). If hotel industry does not use any social media to approach the outer world then they are missing out a huge opportunity to grow their business and they cannot earn a huge name in the market because nowadays digital marketing is the main source of advertising. To stay in the perfect competition market, the hotel has to participate in various online discussion, seminars, and podcasts. Effectiveness of social media on hospitality industry The hospitality industry has managed to understand the effectiveness of social media use (Filiatrault and Lapierre, 1997). There are many advantages of using social media concept as it provides low-cost investment, direct communication with the clients and many more. By the help of social media, the verbal communication is also allowed with the clients. Social media acts as a direct communication method which allows two-way communications between the customers and the organization (Motameni and Nordstrom, 2014). There may be a question why the hospitality industry is using Facebook marketing. This is because Facebook is the main part of social media as it has 130 million users. As a researcher said that the users will increase by the end of this year. To promote itself, the hotel does not need to have a Facebook id as the hotel itself is a brand (Kerin, 2006). They also need to have a page where people can visit and go through their ads. The Facebook page should be customer friendly and it should be well decorated with hotel photos that will attract many customers and it will make an urge to know more which will result in better communication. Another form of broadcasting information is YouTube. YouTube provide videos in the social world where the hotel can upload their videos of rooms as well as parties to attract the customers. Nowadays people are resourceful and they have much knowledge about the hotel pages and videos on YouTube so they can select their hotels and they can plan their holidays as per their choices. Hotels with high brand value should continue their business and they should give healthy offers to the customers, so that more customers will be attracted and they can establish successful online business (Kotler, Jain and Suvit Maesincee, 2002). Social media and Brand loyalty The hotels should provide proper awareness at the time of online booking so that the customers should have proper faith on them. The management is the main pillar of the organization so the management should work according to the brand loyalty. It is also important to note down that the management should use proper way of the social media (McDonald, 1999). But on the other, there are many hotels which lack in resources as they dont have an employee to update images in social media and they even cannot communicate with the customers (Sharma, 2014). These hotels lack in customer service and they lose many customers. Many hotels lack proper customer care support to assist there customers in a better manner. This information are gathered from the findings of the research and also from the reviews provided by the customers. Customer satisfaction The hotel should provide schemes as they should offer some gift vouchers to attract customers. They should provide a holiday for the customers as a grand prize. They should also arrange a competition for its customers and all the information should be updated in the Facebook pages so that the customers should be well informed and most of the customers can join the competition. The winner of the competition should be given a holiday trip package in the hotel to attract customers. As many customers come to the competition, the more will be the brand value of the hotel. The officials must also make sure that the crowd is provided with proper service so that the image of the hotel is built and they provide good reviews to other people about the hotel (Kotler and Armstrong, 2006). The customer should be provided with proper increase brand awareness so the sale volume will increase. References Aaker, D., Kumar, V. and Day, G. (1998). Marketing research. New York: Wiley. Choi, E., Fowler, D., Goh, B. and Yuan, J. (2015). Social Media Marketing: Applying the Uses and Gratifications Theory in the Hotel Industry. Journal of Hospitality Marketing Management, pp.1-26. Evans, J. and Berman, B. (1982). Marketing. New York: Macmillan. Filiatrault, P. and Lapierre, J. (1997). Managing business-to-business marketing relationships in consulting engineering firms. Industrial Marketing Management, 26(2), pp.213-222. Good, D. and Schultz, R. (1997). 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