The first deliverable for my MBA research project is a project proposal, consisting of some rationale and objectives behind the topic. Not a huge component of the project, but getting this down on paper plus working through a provenance table has helped to narrow the focus.
Rationale: Social media use among the global internet-using community is growing at a rapid rate and managers throughout the world are looking at ways to utilise social media applications and websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube etc in various ways to enhance their businesses. The growth rate of social media usage and new application development is out-stripping companies’ ability to learn and experiment with these new tools, deeming ‘best practice’ in social media a fast-moving target.
Already companies have had huge successes and huge failures through (mis)using social media and there appears to be a lot of fear and uncertainty surrounding it. There is no denying the potential and power of social media, suggesting if it can be harnessed effectively, will be beneficial in a number of areas of businesses, such as marketing, public relations, recruitment and product development. Discovering if there is a best practice or better practices will help create a direction for companies who would like to develop a social media presence to enhance their businesses and increase profitability.
The research project will not focus on a particular company, industry or sector but will have a natural bias towards those companies that are using social media as part of their business strategy. The project will not be a case for or against social media, comparing companies that do and do not use social media, but rather look at those companies that are using social media and the experiences, successes and failures they have had, and why these have occurred.
Objective: The objective of the research is to firstly ascertain if there is a ‘best practice’ for the business use of social media. If so, what this best practice consists of and if not, what practices are more likely to have positive effects on areas such as brand perception, employer reputation and competitor analysis – what the better practices are.
By researching and comparing a variety of companies’ strategies in social media use, trends can be discovered as to what they’re doing, how and why they’re doing it and the results of their efforts. Immediate observations as a result of conducting the research will be which companies and industries are actually using social media, uncovering who are the adopters of what are a relatively new set of business tools.
Rationale: Social media use among the global internet-using community is growing at a rapid rate and managers throughout the world are looking at ways to utilise social media applications and websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube etc in various ways to enhance their businesses. The growth rate of social media usage and new application development is out-stripping companies’ ability to learn and experiment with these new tools, deeming ‘best practice’ in social media a fast-moving target.
Already companies have had huge successes and huge failures through (mis)using social media and there appears to be a lot of fear and uncertainty surrounding it. There is no denying the potential and power of social media, suggesting if it can be harnessed effectively, will be beneficial in a number of areas of businesses, such as marketing, public relations, recruitment and product development. Discovering if there is a best practice or better practices will help create a direction for companies who would like to develop a social media presence to enhance their businesses and increase profitability.
The research project will not focus on a particular company, industry or sector but will have a natural bias towards those companies that are using social media as part of their business strategy. The project will not be a case for or against social media, comparing companies that do and do not use social media, but rather look at those companies that are using social media and the experiences, successes and failures they have had, and why these have occurred.
Objective: The objective of the research is to firstly ascertain if there is a ‘best practice’ for the business use of social media. If so, what this best practice consists of and if not, what practices are more likely to have positive effects on areas such as brand perception, employer reputation and competitor analysis – what the better practices are.
By researching and comparing a variety of companies’ strategies in social media use, trends can be discovered as to what they’re doing, how and why they’re doing it and the results of their efforts. Immediate observations as a result of conducting the research will be which companies and industries are actually using social media, uncovering who are the adopters of what are a relatively new set of business tools.
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