Assignment 4: Internet Technology, Marketing, and Security
Marquisha Tate
Dr. Ingrid Wright
BUS 508 Contemporary Business
5-31-2013

Evaluate the reasons Social Media Marketing has become exceedingly popular among businesses of all sizes. Social media has received a lot of well-deserved attention. Highly accessible and scalable, it has changed the way we communicate, share, and interact. Companies have taken notice and now use social media to improve how they listen and engage with their customers. By monitoring streams of information from a variety of social media outlets, companies have access to large volumes of comments and discussions that are immediate and spontaneous. Best of all, they are top-of-mind thoughts coming directly from a company’s most important stakeholder – their customers (www.walkerinfo.com). Sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Friendster provide an unprecedented peer-to-peer communication channel, where people interact in an online community, sharing personal data and photos, producing and sharing all sorts of information and opinions, or unifying activists and raising funds. Smart companies are finding ways to benefit from the phenomenon. Work networks on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are exploding, and some companies, including JPMorgan Chase, and Lockheed Martin, are starting their own in-house social networks as a way to facilitate information sharing. In recent years, most organizations have incorporated the Internet as a part of their information technology strategy. Both business and nonprofit organizations quickly realized the potential of the internet for expanding their operations globally, improving business processes, reaching new customers, and making the most of their resources (Draft, pg. 586, 2010). Social media marketing offers plenty of benefits on its own, but business owners find