Week 7 ③ : Strengths and Weaknesses of Using Social Media Networks and Online Communities/Groups to Facilitate Business Networking and Potential Market Research

Hello everyone, it's already the end of February and week 7! It's quite chilly these days, so keep yourselves warm everyone!

The assignment that we did for this week was interesting. It was my first time to join an actual online community and to communicate with the members! My previous online communities were just for school work which was just used to upload important upcoming events or assignment due dates, so there were absolutely no interaction between the members. Now that I think about it, that wasn't really a 'community'.  

However, the groups I participated just a few days ago were very informative and responsive. Many members were willing to share their thoughts and ideas by commenting and pressing the 'like' buttons. Especially, in the "Travel Community" group I really liked how people were suggesting the best places to visit and to eat (delicious food is definitely an important factor). I think that group can be helpful for me when I am planning my next trip!

The two groups I joined are "Travel  Community" and "California Photography". I chose these two groups because they are the groups that talks about what I am specifically interested in and both were very active. In each of the groups, I wrote several comments which I thought that was really interesting and screenshot of my comments can be found from previous posts in my blog ("Travel Community" Post, "California Photography" Post).

Using social media networks and online communities (or groups) to facilitate business networking and potential market research has both pros and cons. Let me first talk about the strengths of it. For business corporations, huge online communities can be a jackpot because their potential customers are all in that group. Online communities allow scattered customers to gather in one place that share the same interests, and this can be a helpful key to facilitate a business networking. In the other side, online communities can be an useless thing when there are too many 'Trolls' just like professor mentioned. Also, when there are too much information or members in the community, people can leave out the most important information.