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Annotated Bibliography

How Has Social Media Effected the Business Industry?

Mackenzie Amirfar

Professor Malcolm Campbell

UWRT 1104

March 16, 2018

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Annotated Bibliography

Bahn, Chris. “Media Firm Leverages Blog Buzz.” ProQuest, Arkansas Business, 13 May 2013,

search-proquest-com.librarylink.uncc.edu/docview/1370933449?accountid=14605.

Accessed 27 February 2018.

This academic article examines the idea that consumers are just as effective marketers as regular

marketers. This type of marketing is recognized as word-of-mouth advertising, and this works so

well because consumers who have a good experience with a product or company will most likely

share the experience with family and friends, which opens up a market that the company may

have never had if they only used traditional marketing strategies. A big way that consumers

share their opinions on such products is through social media; for example, we all have a family

member or friend on Facebook that shares everything they buy with their friends and writes a

whole review on the product so that their friends will want the product. This is an example of

how word-of-mouth advertising through social media works. The author also provides specific

information from “Collective Bias” which is the leading website for influence-generated content

marketing. Collective Bias lists “think community” as No. 1 on its list of founding principles.

This means to utilize your market to expand your business to their communities by making your

market feel special and like they are a part of your community. The details and facts he provides

give him credibility and back up information to refer back to, so that the information is not just

coming from his opinion, it is coming from another credible sight on the topic. The author also

presents different speakers, like Calvin Peters, who has formerly praised social media shopping

and influencing and what it has done for the business and retail market. The article contains

specific chains who have increased sales and social media followers after they invested more in

social media influencers and bloggers. This article provides me with statistics and facts about
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consumers playing the roles as marketers and companies using more social media marketing

strategies.

Crosman, Penny. “Social Media Requires New ROI Approach.” Ebsco Host, American Banker,

26 June 2012, http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=a2c882f3-91e6-

446599b56ea4f86514ab%40sessionmgr4007&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY

29wZT1zaXRl#AN=77357331&db=bth. Accessed 5 March 2018.

This peer-reviewed article has been very helpful because it provides me with information I have

not found in any other source. The article talks about different ways business’ can see a return

on investment (ROI) through social media marketing in other ways that increase in sales. The

other way business’ can excel with social media is to engage with customers and hear their voice

about what they want and think should be improved. Without customer input, a business owner

will never know what their customers really want or think needs to be changed. Crosman talks

about Frank Eliason’s view on ROI through social media marketing. Using quotes from Eliason

gives Crosman credibility because Eliason is the senior vice president of social media at Citi, so

he is in fact very knowledgeable on the subject and works within it every single day. One thing

Eliason says is “People are still missing the boat with ROI. It’s not how much you sell in social

media, it’s how much you engage your customers. The ROI is in the information that’s out there

that leads to change and process improvement.” I like this quote because it shows another way

business’ can improve from social media and it gives insight on how they can do it, especially

for small business owners who value reviews more than any other business’. For example, if I

own a local boutique and I get a hurtful review online for everybody to see, this will hurt me

more than it would hurt Walmart. Although this review would be felt at heart, it allows me to

personally and publicly reach out to the unhappy customer, apologize for whatever may have
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happened, and assure them that the problem will be fixed for the future. This article will help me

tremendously because it shows another way social media effects the business industry and

broadens my topic slightly, in a positive and effective manner.

Moorman, Christine. “Measuring the Impact of Social Media on Your Business.” Forbes,

Forbes Magazine, 9 Oct. 2017,

https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinemoorman/2015/01/18/measuring-the-impact-of-

social-media-on-your-business/#119a8de315e5. Accessed 5 March 2018.

This article from Forbes Magazine, a popular magazine, gives me an alternative view of my

opinion on the impact of social media. Moorman suggests that many businesses are upset

because they do not see any positive impact on their sales after investing in social media

marketing in fact, many of them have seen a great rise in the number of “hits” on their social

media pages, but a decline in sales. Not only does this article provide me with a

counterargument for my paper, it also provides a step-by-step method on how to effectively and

efficiently use social media marketing to get the best outcome and increase in sales. The ten-step

method includes using goal-driven metrics, demonstrating metric validity, uncovering and

verifying leading indicators, creating dashboards, developing meaningful benchmarks,

conducting experiments, allocating funds to measurement, considering the cost of ignoring social

media, building predictive models, guiding future actions, and sticking with your metrics.

Christine Moorman is a credible author because she is the T. Austin Finch Senior Professor of

Business Administration in the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. As a business

professor, you instruct how to effectively run a business and be successful in the business

industry; with that being said, Moorman is likely to be knowledgeable on the subject of

marketing strategies. This article is credible because Forbes Magazine is one of the most widely
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influential business magazines and websites and has been on the top-tier of business reporting for

over 100 years. The article also shows real numbers on impacts that a number of businesses

provided about the statistics they have recorded and the article is also sponsored by the American

Marketing Association.

Pliska, Robert J. “Social Media: Identifying the Business Opportunities: The Personal

Experiences of a Social Media User.” ProQuest, Real Estate Issues, 2012, https://search-

proquest-com.librarylink.uncc.edu/docview/1080971055?accountid=14605. Accessed 11

March 2018.

This database article presented a real-life experience of how social media helped Robert Pliska in

this business industry, in this case it was the real estate side of business. Pliska was very

reluctant to enter the realm of social media, and he did not enter until he felt it was absolutely

necessary. Not only did social media, like the website he made for his business, help market his

company, but social media also worked in other ways for him. He was able to join LinkedIn and

the Real Estate Cyberspace Society, both in which connected him with other business

professionals, which helped him network and extend his credentials to others quickly and

efficiently while doing little to no work. The reason Pliska was so reluctant to join social media,

was because he thought that it was just another passing fad that would, in the long run, be a

complete waste of his time. He soon learned, that social media was not a fad, and it was here to

stay. A statistic he included to prove this was one which showed that eighty-three percent of all

due diligence and decision making starts with a Google search. People find people, jobs,

substantial research for important projects, and much more on the internet and through social

media sights. When the economy took a downturn in 2008, Pliska knew it was time to innovate,

because innovation was going to be the only thing to keep his company alive and running. He
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started using LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube in 2009, saw he saw immediate results;

for example, he found future clientele whom were looking for agents to sell their estate and even

potential buyers for the estates in which he was selling. He was able to accomplish much more

through social media, and this shows us that social media is impacting the business industry even

further than the retail industry. It shows that a very efficient way to get your name and business

out into the world is through social media. Robert Pliska is a reliable source because he is the

business owner and real estate agent himself whom experienced this first hand. This article will

be very valuable to my final paper because it provides me with another first-hand experience

where social media helps a business thrive; I will definitely use this article for examples of how

social media marketing has helped the Real Estate Industry.