Sociala Medier : Interagera, engagera och komplettera

Sammanfattning: Social media has made it possible to have a conversation in real time through audio, images and text, with anyone worldwide. The easy availability of social media has created a new society. Companies and organizations have the opportunity to interact with their audiences and their target in a way not previously possible. Welcome to the Web 2.0 world! Social media is a collective name for the communication channels that allow users to communicate directly with each other in real time through text, image or sound. Examples of social media are blogs, SMS, Skype, Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, Linkedin and Myspace. The purpose of this essay is to explore social media's role and opportunities in terms of being able to influence companies and organizations marketing communication. We have used a qualitative approach and our thesis is based on a qualitative text analysis study where we have analyzed 13 articles (the articles are from scholarly journals, magazines and trade/professional) from 2007 to 2009. During the analysis, we chose to make use of sub queries that would lead us to our main question, how social media can influence companies and organizations marketing communication. The results of our study show that social media includes everything that the traditional media is not. Social media is an arena dominated by the user and social media is about people. It gives us a unique opportunity to connect with other users. We can interact, socialize and create community. Social media serves as a good complement to other media to reach a certain audience or audiences. It requires no great financial need rather than engagement, says many of the article writers. Social media offers excellent opportunities for companies and organizations both for good and bad. Within just a few seconds, it can both help and destroy your brand. Companies and organizations need to change their mindset and approach and become more receptive to new ideas in the future. However, traditional media should not be excluded entirely from advertising work.