1. Importance of Using Social Media
Prepared for:
Bob Smith, CEO
Prepared by:
Marah Bohn
October 15, 2014

2. MEMORANDUM
To: Bob Smith, CEO
From: Marah Bohn
Date: October 15, 2014
Subject: Social Media Marketing Benefits
Enclosed is the report that you requested about the benefits of using social media for our
company. There are many benefits to use social media. This will be cost-effective and also help
our company in multiple other ways by increasing revenue, raising brand awareness, and giving
us direct customer feedback.
Going forward, you should be aware that this will be time consuming to start up and keep
running. This means that you should determine which department should take over the social
media start up and monitoring. I have provided statistics for you to determine what other
companies have done concerning which department they chose to monitor their social media
pages.
I look forward to continuing this project with you. Please contact me with any questions.

3. Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 1
INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 2
HOW SOCIAL MEDIA CAN INCREASE REVENUE ……………………………………………………………………. 2
INCREASE IN BRAND AWARENESS ……………………………………………………………………………………….. 3
DIRECT CUSTOMER FEEDBACK …………………………………………………………………………………………….. 4
CONCLUSIONS ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………... 5
RECOMMENDATIONS …………………………………………………………………………………………………………... 5
REFERENCES …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………… 7
Illustrations
FIGURE 1.1 - SOCIAL MEDIA STATISTICS CHART ………………………………………………………….………. 2
FIGURE 1.2 AND 1.3 - COST EFFECTIVENESS CHART…………………..…………….………………….………. 3
FIGURE 2.1 - PRIMARY BENEFITS GRAPH …………………………………………………………………….………. 3
FIGURE 3.1 - CUSTOMER FEEDBACK CHART ……………………………………………………….……………….. 4

4. 1
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This report explains the benefits for our company to use social media as part of our
marketing. Social media is a growing way for businesses to advertise and keep in touch with
their customers. There are thousands of businesses that are taking advantage of social media
already.
First, social media can increase our revenue. This can be done by getting more
customers and brand awareness from social media. Also, the business can post statuses or
tweet out information about our products where our customers can see them where they
would purchase a product from the company again. Secondly, social media will help us raise
brand awareness. The more people who see the company social media page and follow the
page the more loyal the customers will be. Those customers that follow our page can then refer
our page to their friends and share our information to help grow our brand. Lastly, using social
media is better for our customers because they can give us feedback directly to our page. These
comments or tweets can help our business in two ways. One, if the customer posts a positive
comment about our products and/or company this will give prospective customers reassurance
that they are purchasing from a recommended company. Two, if a customer posts a negative
comment then we can respond publicly and privately to that customer. This shows other
customers that we do care about our products and the satisfaction of our customers.
We should do specials for our customers that follow us on our social media websites for
their loyalty and also post our hours, location, and main website on our social media page for
easy access for our customers. All of our social media websites should be overlooked by a
certain department. The most common department that businesses use are their marketing
department and this would be a good fit for our company as well. While determining the
foundation of our social media websites the company needs to consider the possible legal and
ethical liabilities that go along with this. There should be guidelines for all employees to follow.
After all the concerns are figured out, this will end up benefitting us in the long run.

5. 2
INTRODUCTION
Our business is not taking advantage of the social media outlets that other companies
are using. Customers are on social media and this is a financially capable way we can directly
keep in contact with them. Technology and constant contact is what this generation is all about
and in order to make sure our company is on the up-and-up we need to get on the level our
customers are on. Companies that have at least one social media site have noticed an increase
in brand awareness and customer following. Accord to the Harvard Business Review, 79% of
companies they surveyed are using or planning to use social media (Ennes, n.d.). Taking
advantage of social media outlets provides a benefit for our company because we can increase
revenue through advertisements, free options for marketing increase brand awareness, and be
able to get direct feedback from customers in order to provide better goods and services.
HOW SOCIAL MEDIA CAN INCREASE REVENUE
There are many ways that social media can help our business increase revenue.
Companies can get revenue by using YouTube. If a viewer views an advertisement before
watching a video this gives us revenue. If the viewer clicks on the advertisement then this
would bring them straight to our website. Whether they meant to click on it or not this can get
them to look into our products if they haven’t done so before. The more foot traffic our website
gets the greater opportunity for customers. To put our advertisements on YouTube it costs two
dollars per a thousand plays. Therefore, after a million views it only costs us two thousand
dollars. That is much more feasible than television or radio advertisements while reaching more
people.
As you can see in Figure 1.1, people are more likely to buy the brands
they follow on social
media. This helps our
revenue in two ways;
increased purchases
and no cost for the
social media pages.
Advertising the
business on a social
media site, like
Facebook and Twitter,
are normally free.
Advertising on social
media can help cut
(Mershon, 2011)
Figure 1.1

6. 3
down the cost while advertising our business more and reaching out towards more customers.
On Twitter, our business could tweet special sales and this could get customers to “retweet” it
where their followers that wouldn’t have seen it before can now see our sales. This would get
their interest in our company
and would then follow us. Then,
purchase our products and
become a prospective loyal
customer. Seeing as the cost is
free for social media this helps
keep our marketing in our
budget but still reaches out to
more people on a one-on-one
basis.
Figures 1.2 and 1.3 show
how much money businesses
spend on their social media
marketing. Figure 1.2 shows that
almost half, 42%, of these businesses that took this poll spend absolutely nothing on their
marketing for social media. Also, our business wouldn’t have to hire another person solely for
managing social media. In Figure 1.3 most businesses state that they don’t employ anyone to
manager their social media pages. For our business, we can add that to a department’s
objective, for example, the marketing department.
INCREASE IN BRAND AWARENESS
Social media will
benefit our business by
giving us increased brand
recognition. An article in
Forbes states that “your
social media networks
are just new channels for
your brands voice and
content.” Having a page
on a social media sight,
like Facebook, gives
customers easier access
(Ennes n.d.)
(Mershon, 2011)
Figure 1.2 Figure 1.3
Figure 2.1

7. 4
to our business information and helps us keep connected with them so they will continue to
remember our name. A study that was published by Convince&Convert stated that 53% of
Americans who follow brands in social [media] are more loyal to those brands (DeMers, 2014).
The Harvard Business Review created an article where they surveyed 2,100 different
types of businesses about their social media experiences. As shown on Figure 2.1, 50% of the
surveyed businesses saw increased awareness of their organization, products, or services
among target customers (Ennes, n.d.). Increased awareness in products gives an increase in
sales. When there is more cyber traffic on our business pages then there is an increase in
chance that someone will buy one of our products and will also recommend a friend or family
member.
DIRECT CUSTOMER FEEDBACK
There are so many people that use social media that it would be very easy to reach
multiple prospective customers at once and get their feedback. In America alone, over 80% of
individuals use a social media website with Facebook being the number one social media site
(Mershon, 2011). Consumers who have social media interaction where members can become
familiar with one another provide them with a sense of trust for that company. This can
influence consumer’s intentions to buy from that company (Hajli, 2014).
Another positive aspect is that consumers have an easy capability to
write a review about the business’s product or service. This can benefit the
company for both
positive and
negative reviews.
Positive reviews
would reinsure new
consumers that this
is a good company
to purchase from.
Negative reviews can
also help the
company because
the company can
reach out to the
consumer to make it
(Mershon, 2011)
Figure 3.1

8. 5
right and also change the product or service if it is needed. Customers post about their positive
experiences on a company’s Facebook page and that has helped other people determine if they
were going to purchase from that company or not.
Companies need to talk less and listen more. Social media is all about making
connections and people will be more drawn to the company if they actually listen to what
consumers are saying than if the company tries to force their message upon them (Shontell,
2014). Figure 3.1 above proves that exact point. Mershon created an online poll where
businesses voted on what the most important reason for their business to use social media was
and connecting with customers was the most important.
CONCLUSION
The two major points that should be drawn from this are free advertising and increased
revenue. The more we can get our company’s name and products out there the more interest
we get. When a customer has a positive experience with our company they will like or follow
our page to remember us. They have the opportunity to share our posts on their own page
where their friends and family who don’t know about the company can then see our page and
what we have to offer. This increases revenue and brand awareness. We can connect to our
customers on a more personal level which will make them loyal to our company. We also need
to create a social media strategy and guidelines to follow before we launch any social media
site.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Before we go into launching a social media site we need to get a strategy and guidelines
set up so we can protect ourselves legally and ethically. Our social media sites should be about
advertising and also convenience for our customers. We should do specials for our customers
that follow us on our social media websites for their loyalty and also post our hours, location,
and main website on our social media page for easy access for our customers. The Harvard
Business Review surveyed different companies about which department they had create their
social media strategy and the top five departments were Marketing (69%), Communications
(43%), PR (35%), Web Team (30%), and Sales (17%) (Ennes n.d.). This would be helpful
information to our business because we could specify which department would go forth with
the social media planning and add it to their job descriptions. One big legal issue is if the
employee commits defamation, fraud, deceptive advertising, or any other tort in the course of
managing the company’s social media efforts, the company can be held liable (Sandilands).
These are just some things our company needs to take into consideration when going forth

9. 6
with making our social media pages. One other issue we should address is having some
employees monitor the pages at all times to make sure there are no negative remarks going on
and if they are to address them in a timely manner.

10. 7
REFERENCES
DeMers, J. (2014, August 11). The top 10 benefits of social media marketing. Forbes. Retrieved
September 17, 2014, from
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/08/11/the-top-10-benefits-of-social-
media-marketing/
Ennes, M. (n.d.). Social Media: What most companies don't know. Retrieved September 21,
2014, from http://hbr.org/web/slideshows/social-media-what-most-companies-dont-
know/1-slide
Hajli, M. (2014). A study of the impact of social media on consumers. International Journal Of
Market Research, 56(3), 387-404. doi:10.2501/IJMR-2014-025
Mershon, P. (2011, November 8). 26 promising social media stats for small businesses.
Retrieved September 30, 2014, from http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/26-
promising-social-media-stats-for-small-businesses/
Sandilands, T. (n.d.). Advantages and disadvantages of social media marketing. Retrieved
September 17, 2014, from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantages-disadvantages-
social-media-marketing-21890.html
Shontell, A. (2014, July 1). 16 Social-media mistakes you may be making. Retrieved September
21, 2014, from http://www.businessinsider.com/social-media-mistakes-you-may-be-
making-2014-7?op=1