Assessment details Essay – word limit – 2500 words excluding reference listing Write an academic essay on one of the following: How can social media such as Linked In, Facebook, and Twitter can be...

Knowledge
Knowledge & Organizational Learning Essay
Social media in context of Mc Donald‘s
Knowledge
Introduction to social media and Mc Donald‘s
Social media is an important part of present day organizations and their social capital
building processes. In case of usage of Twitter, face book and LinkedIn in present day
organizations, it is essential that these social media is utilized in favor of an organization in order
to build up a strong workforce, developing customer relations and formation of a platform for
knowledge sharing. In this way social media has become an important part of marketing and
business of several organizations. In case of companies leaving out this aspect of present day
businesses, it is quite possible that they may face a lag in the levels of competition as well. It
helps form the right levels of social support even for innovation and problem solving. Apart from
several other media, television and computers are the most popularly accepted and used media in
the world in the present era. In this way a combination of these two aspects, namely business and
technology is extremely important as the present day businesses are greatly dependant as well as
oriented towards e-commerce and other several applications using information technology.
Mc Donald‘s is a fast food chain spread over several countries. Being a global business, it
becomes essential that there be appropriate level of interaction that Mc Donald‘s has along with
it‘s consumers and communicates with them on a regular basis. Knowledge sharing, building a
social capital and developing appropriate levels of innovation are all possible only when the firm
understands its consumers all over the world and so development of social media presence has
become important for Mc Donald‘s. Mc Donald‘s has its own website as well as its own face
book page where in customers can avail offers and also information about the products including
the menu and details on outlets. It is also possible for consumers to provide feedback on this
page. Moreover bloggers do present their views on food related blogs and this helps Mc
Donald‘s understand consumer needs better. Also, employees and other stakeholders of Mc
Donald‘s are a part of this social media based networking where in everyone gets a chance to
voice their opinion freely (Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M, 2009).
Social media and its importance
The present era is of technology revolution and social media has a very important role to
play. It has impacted all of the businesses, professions and even the government. The rate of
adoption of technology is very high and this rapid change in the business environment is leading
to a need for businesses to bring in better levels of growth based on inclusion of the social media
for marketing of their businesses. Social media has given a new economic volume to several
businesses and a new vision to look at things from a global perspective. As businesses require
going global for remaining competitive, firms like Mc Donald‘s are also looking at it as an
attractive opportunity. In this way there have been a lot many uses of social media that
businesses have explored. This includes marketing, creation of customer relationship
management strategies, providing a platform for feedback, knowledge sharing and building of
social capital along with innovation and problem solving as well. These lead to a better level of
networking as well as formation of a stronger social capital. It helps create a better level of
Knowledge
growth in the organization as knowledge is shared and ideas are further explored. In this way it
helps form a stronger element of networking with the purpose of achieving an organization‘s
goals effectively (Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M, 2009).
Usage of social media in context of knowledge sharing and building of social capital
Face book, Twitter, Blog spot and LinkedIn as well as other social media have provided a
unique and effective platform that helps in the context of knowledge sharing and building of
social capital. Social capital is of great importance to present day businesses since they are
driven by customer satisfaction and provision of higher value to customers. In case of these
businesses not accepting or adopting the social media, they would lose out on a large market
share as consumers in the present era are extremely tech savvy. So organizations like Mc
Donald‘s which are consumer driven require being present on the internet in order to be noticed
by consumers. It is crucial that there be usage of social media for development of knowledge
sharing (Schau, H. J., & Gilly, M. C, 2003).
Open source technology in business is an extremely...