Social media websites is having positive and negative effects on companies. Word-of-mouth advertising has increased significantly because of social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, causing an increase in brand awareness and marketing sales. Marketwatch wrote an article about this topic, saying that companies that take advantage of social media will more likely have visibility in consumer generated content and effectiveness in marketing. With the decline of traditional marketing effectiveness, social media may be the future of marketing.
Even though word-of-mouth may spread good news, it can also spread the bad. ZDNet wrote an article about how social media may increase identity theft on websites such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. Most recently, a person on Twitter who claimed to be a representative of ExxonMobil was confirmed untrue. This has caused people to think that social media websites are untrustworthy and dishonest. These websites have been accused of not doing enough to secure a person’s identity (or brand, in this case). Despite incidents like this, the marketing world cannot ignore the rising influence of social media and must be prepared of how it will affect marketing as a whole.