How New Media Affect Business

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Rui – gang, Gu (Ray)

Wen – ngai, Lung (Ricky)

ENGL 102 Y1

Essay 4 Research paper

Troy Wolff

How New Media Affect Business

Since the launch of the Internet, human's life has been moved into a new revolution. The Internet is connecting all the people of the world very closely. We can know the latest news and information from all around the world in just a blink of time by accessing the Internet. Today a lot of people prefer to start an online business instead of going to search for a good job. Moreover, since technology is getting better, online business is also becoming more popular. People can use new media in many ways such as sell ads, content and platforms (newspaper, cable). Also, the study from Borrell Associates shows that most of the growth in local advertising comes from some companies delivering lower cost advertising that intercepts consumers not as they are reading news online, but as they are using the Web to research products and prices. According to the Netcraft March 2012 website a survey discovered 644,275,754 active websites in the world, to be precise, to be precise right now. The Internet is still growing by leaps and bounds. The March numbers were up by 31.4 million, which were 5.1 percent higher than last month. Moreover, 1.97 billion people were using the Internet worldwide by June 2010. Because the new media is so popular, it must give influences to business such as reduce the cost of advertising and overhead, bring more clients and saving more times and build a strong connection between companies and employees. However, it also brings some troubles to business. If we know the influences of new media, we can use it to improve our business better.

New media can help companies reduce their costs. The method of advertising is very important because the price can be very different for different format advertisement. Compare advertising on newspaper to posing advertising on new media, we can save the cost of paper and ink. In addition, we pay much less to post things on the Internet so many companies like to post advertisements on website. For example, according to research by myadbase.com, posting advertisements on some media like magazine advertising, usually, prices start at around 1500 dollars per color page and go above 15,000 dollars per page in certain publications. For Outdoor Advertising formats, prices can vary from around 3000 dollars for mobile billboards on vehicles to 13,000 per month for large billboard advertising on the high way or roadside. That is so expensive. However, if we advertise on new media, the price is lower. In new media, the price can be 2.5 cents per click for PPC(called Cost per click) advertising. Therefore, posting advertisements on the Internet is the cheapest way to publicize companies. That is the reason that online advertisements are so popular. When we access a website, we always can see many advertisements. For example, when we access our Facebook’s homepage, we can see advertisements fill almost the whole right side.

New media can even save more cost so that normal people can start their own business. Online shops like eBay, give us a convenient stage to sell things, and we can sell thing which we want to sell. We just need to post the pictures and information of products on EBay and there is no cost. Compare to normal business, we do not need to buy shops to display our products which cost so much. As far as we know, renting a shop needs at least $225,000. Therefore, we do not have to need a huge amount of capital to start our business and it will encourage more people start business.

To begin a business is easy, but to make it to a big business is very hard. Since the technology is getting better, new media becomes more important to business. The media usually is doing the advertising for business; such as social network (Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, etc.) and content (news, coupon’s, reviews, comments, etc.) Media is one of the most important thing that people can never skip when they doing a business. Different ways of advertising can make a different result. Media advertising is usually cheaper than others. Although media advertising is cheaper, it could have a better result. People are always remembering the TV advertising more than paper advertising. Also, there is another advantage when using media advertising. Every media advertising must have the record of quantity of people have been seen the advertising. It is very important to take into consideration customer needs and buying habits. Depends on this information, a company can improve the advertising to make it popular, so it can have a good response from customers.

Moreover, using media is very easy to get more customers, because the Internet advertising can be seen by everyone in the world. For example, it could be something as simple as: "Receive 10% off your next visit, when referring a friend". This kind of advertising can almost go though everyone even someone does not interested in the product. Sending advertising to everyone in the world, the Internet advertising is one of the best ways to do it. We have so many languages in the world but we can’t do one advertisement in each language. The Internet can do translate a lot easier than others. It is fast and easy to show the advertising in different language.

Media brings the concept of "word of mouth" to the web, it’s about expanding the number of followers your business has through relationships already established by your existing consumers. Although only 14% trust advertisement, 78% of consumers trust peer recommendation. Media also can provide a means to communicate with your consumers in a brief and more forward manner unlike traditional methods such as press releases and white papers. This is not easy to create a good "word of mouth" in the Internet world. In the Internet, it is hard to find out who he/she is, it means the freedom of speech is very large. There is a quote from Thinkexist.com, and it says "The media's power is frail. Without the people's support, it can be shut off with the ease of turning a light switch. If a company has a good "word of mouth", I think the company does not need to make any advertising because people are the best advertising for a company.

Online business brings a lot of benefits to people. How much time you need to spend to spread out the brochures from house to house and people by people? By using the Internet, you can send out a big swarm of email just within a few seconds. You do not need to travel from your house to your working place anymore. With a single laptop, you can start your business in any place where you feel relaxed and comfortable. That also means you can now be free from a traffic jam. You can save time to be with the people you care about. That is one of the benefits that most people need in today’s society. Following the United States Department of Labor report on 2010, the average time people who are aged 25 to 54 spend 8.6 hours each day on their work. Thirty-five percent of the populations aged 15 and over work every weekend. That study shows that today’s people don’t have much to spend time with the people they care about. Here is a quote from 2010 by Aaker, J.L. and Rudd, M. "If Money Doesn’t Make You Happy, Consider Time." So online business will be a good choose for people who want to spend more time with the one they loved the most. We also can easily see that most people are happier when spending times with friends, family, and significant others, while they are least happy with their bosses and co-workers. People will also have more time to improve their relationship with others when they choose to work online.

New media also can provide a new way to find talented people. Companies use Social Networking for finding talented people more than the past. Such as LinkedIn, it has been the main website for companies to find good employees because LinkedIn allows companies to research the degree of a person. Many companies will use social networking websites when they are hiring people. New media helps companies understand a person easier. "Social networking technology is the absolutely the best thing to happen to recruiting – ever" (Langfitt). For example, Facebook is a good tool to understand a person because companies are able to see the pictures and states in Facebook. In addition, Facebook represents our community and it involves almost all of our friends. Therefore, it can also tell companies who our friends are, how our ability is and what our social community is. If a person always posts his or her photo while he or she is in party, companies need to consider more serious about hiring that person. Otherwise, if companies see many personality opinions and brilliant ideas in someone’s social networking websites, they will be more willing to hire that person. In addition, searching social networking websites is one of the fastest ways to get information. Therefore, companies are able to save much time for finding more talented person. That is really a huge benefit for companies’ business.

Everything has two sides of effects- good and bad. Nowadays, social media has made a big improvement on business. It brings many new ways to make a business, also make the business can go easier and farther. Although it has many advantages, it also has some disadvantages. There are not many disadvantages but some of them could be hurt the business so bad.

New media brings us to the new generation, but there also have some defect when people choose to operate their business online. "Couch potato" can describe a lot of people in today’s society. Because of New Media, people become lazier to exercise in their daily life. According to the Netdoctor, UK statistics in 2009 showed that 44 percent of men and 33 percent of women were classified as overweight in 2009 (BMI 25 to less than 30kg/m2) and almost a quarter of adults 22 percent of men and 24 percent of women were obese (BMI 30kg/m2 or over). This is more than 12 million people, placing huge demands on the health service for diseases related to obesity such as diabetes and obesity, especially central or apple-shaped obesity are rapidly increasing, especially in young people. At least one in three children between the ages of 2 and 15 are overweight. Government statistics also show that children are more likely to have a weight problem if one parent is overweight, and this risk is increased if both parents are overweight or obese. However, if people choose to operate their business online that will leads more people to become obese and that will affect people’s health. Because Obesity is develop from overeating, irregular meals and lack of daily physical activity. People will spend most of their time to stay in front of their computer that will easily cause obese problem. This is why obesity has trebled since 1980, when only 6 percent of men and 8 percent of women were obese. In this time our lifestyles have changed rapidly, therefore, lifestyle is one of the most important factors that determine. The good news here is that we can make choices about our lifestyle to control this weight gain.

Social media is a very attractive tool. If a person uses time using social media for entertainment more than they use it for business purposes, then it is sure that they won’t get much in return except a few good stories and interesting attractive sidelights. There are certainly some social media pitfalls about business out there. Internet is like a fabrication world. We can see much personal information in the internet, but people can use whatever they want for their online name or any information. It is the biggest problem for using social media on business.

Online advertising is a very helpful for making a business. It usually brings lots of customers to the company. Sometimes, people thought a company might do anything for increasing their profit. Some companies might over-exaggerate the effect of their products in their advertising. For example, a company which is selling diet product and their advertising is showing like losing 20 pounds in 10 days. People who want to lose weight are very attracted by this kind of advertising. Even though the product has been prove is true, if one person say this is bad, this message will go through the internet very fast.

Another disadvantage of using social media for business is about the privacy of the company. Nowadays, the technology is very strong and there are many people are very good at using computer programs. In the business world, clients’ information is very important. If a company lost the client’s information, the client will never trust that company again. In the internet, it is very hard to protect all information in a secret. It always has some internet virus or hacker try to steal the company’s information.