Technology revolution has developed new approaches and has changed way of the living in our society. Communication has turned into new approach based on the technological generation of millennials and its new social world where traditional communication losing its origin value or even in some cases doesn’t have value at all. Our environment has new image, image that just twenty years ago wasn’t possible to imagine. Simply, world became social and we are its main drivers, either older or younger generation, we need to adopt to the circumstances that social world brought with.
We are connected mostly of the time and social media has become an integral part of our life. It is changing how we communicate with each other and share information. Social media presence nowadays is of vital importance for the professional success and success of hospitality organizations. On one hand, it doesn’t cost at all and can give significant help in all channels of internal and external marketing communication. On the other hand, organizations are able to weight out costs and benefits of social media use.
Internal communication followed by social media marketing is good indicator of better engagements and approaches between staff and depending on its satisfaction, better engagement with customers in hospitality organization. External communication is unreachable without well-organized entire structure and organization what implicate positive relationship between internal communication and employee engagement.
Sharing professional content on social media turned out to be related to necessary of organization’s existing. This, in turn related to a better performance of companies platform for doing successful business and empowerment of internal communication and expertise. Internal communication between employees and updates in their professional, social network are the way of obtaining personal goals and indirectly, important help in achieving company’s goals. Online community is an effective tool for building the relationship with consumers.
"Social Media is the collection of tools and online spaces available to help individuals and businesses to accelerate their information and communication needs”. (Axel Schultze, 2009). Live virtual world and take all benefits from it should be considered from each of us, personally and from organizations, professionally. Understanding it like a great opportunity can makes significant difference. Any organization should understand that engagement through social media can brought effective communication inside organization, help improvement of relationships with customers and make internal communication much better perceived by employees. Spending hours and hours online without any scope can be understood like waste of time if organization is aware about all possibilities that time dedication to social media marketing offers. Not seeing the added value of social media is probably the most common and solid reason why people do not use them.
At the same time, Kietzmann et al. (2011) define social media from a more functional perspective. They suggest a practical and understandable way to define and monitor social media by using seven functional blocks that outline the various levels of social media. Each block allows us to understand the structure of the social media site based on the facilities it provides to its users. This study attempts to understand the functions of the social media websites and their role in social media marketing. These building blocks are not mutually exclusive and also they are not part of every social media site. These building blocks are the constructs which helps us to understand how different levels of social media functionality can be configured.
The functional blocks of social media by Kietzmann et al. (2011)
- Identity – represents the extent to which users reveal their identities in a social media setting.
- Conversations – represents the extent to which users communicate with others users in a social Media setting
- Sharing – represents the extent to which users exchange, distribute, and receive content.
- Presence – knowing who is online and where
- Relationships – connecting/relating users in the system
- Reputation – represents the extent to which users can identify the standing of others, including themselves in social world.
- Groups – represents extent to which users can form communities.
This graphical representation can be used to contrast the functionality of different social platforms: Facebook like example of relationship and sharing in social world while LinkedIn is based more on Identity, reputation and relationship. The implications help a firm to identify what issues it needs to consider when choosing a particular social media tool and what the proper actions are in order to use the social media tool properly and gain proper engagement from the targeted audience.Very important advantage is that guests are willing to share their own experience with others, directly and through social media platforms. Thanks to this occasions, the hospitality organizations and its owners can predict guest preferences and get a sense of guests reactions, their needs and demands what can gives significant help to hoteliers and restaurants owners to make own strategy and the appropriate way of the customer engagement.
Social media requires time and resources. Even, if seems to, it doesn’t work without participation, interaction and time dedication. Nowadays, the most challenging for the hospitality industry is social media left apart without effective implementation of social media strategy that must be implement in each of hospitality organizations with competent, social staff that can makes two ways communication on relation social, hospitable staff-social customers.
Social media is present and is going to be in all sphere of the future. Adopting hospitality organization, internal communication to its leading trend means choosing right street for any kind of business. Most hotels either don't do social media marketing or they don't do it efficiently; Weber (2009) understands that marketers have to be aggregators not broadcasters; they have to be part of the consumer’s conversation, not bombarding them with constant sales pitches (Evans 2009). The most important hospitality chains in the world have fully integrated social media into their marketing strategy and well organized internal channels of communication, what is right street to walk in and follow up from the side of smaller organizations that can be used like relevant example. For that purpose of better internal communication, Social Media have been silently introduced inside big hospitality organizations. However, it must be taken in consideration more further considering all the helpfulness of social media tools in improving communication challenges that businesses face, and how employees perceive them.
Sources:
Kietzmann, Jan H. et al. "Social Media? Get Serious! Understanding The Functional Building Blocks Of Social Media". Business Horizons 54.3 (2011): 243. Web. 23 Jan. 2017
Russell, Jennie. "Evaluate The Effectiveness Of Social Media Marketing On Hotels". Ph.D. Sheffield Hallam University, 2010. Print.
Kozinents, Robert, V. (1999) E-Tribalized Marketing?; The Strategic Implications of Virtual Communities of Consumption. European Management .
Weber, Larry. Marketing To The Social Web. 1st ed. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2007. Print.
Krzman, Jugoslava. "Using Social Media for Internal Communication in Hospitality Organizations" University of Palermo, 2017.
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