The Impact of Social Media on Improving Business Efficiency

Abstract

The exchange of information, experiences, novelties and knowledge has accompanied the human community
from the earliest history until nowadays. This is expected to continue in the future as well. Oral communication
and personal contact between people is recently being substituted by the Internet. Its technological explosion
in the late 20th century is changing the world radically, resulting in a process of powerful migration from the
real to the virtual in all segments of people’s life and work. The modern world nowadays cannot function without the Internet. It has become a dominant medium and the most significant communication channel.
Internet technology is the basis for the emergence of social media, which provide a broad spectrum of opportunities for contemporary communication methods, and the exchange of data, documents, opinions, views,
ideas and multimedia contents. Rapidly, in real time, reliably, simply, relatively safely and at a reasonable
price. Modern social media are not only virtual communication communities, but rather an increasingly powerful tool for influencing the business efficiency of contemporary organizations.
In addition to the conceptual determination of basic terminological categories, the authors of this paper consider: the types of social media and their characteristics, levels and phases of use of social media for business
purposes, rules of optimizing social media, and the impact of social media on improving business efficiency.
Bearing in mind that social media are nowadays used for marketing campaigns and activities to a significant
extent, the paper places particular focus on the metrics used for measuring the effects of these activities.