STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION OF SOCIAL MEDIA AS TOOLS FOR BR AND BUILDING

Social Media is one of the biggest platforms for the brands to connect with the students as well as build relationships with them. This research work attempts to answer the objectives: look at the perception or the way students see social media as a tool for brand building, trying to see if it can build the reputation of the brand and the way students feel about organizations using social media to build their brands. the objectives of the study are to ascertain if students are aware that social media can be used to build the reputation of brands, to discover what tools of social media do students feel help companies to build their brands, to discover the ways students are identifying that social media enables an organization to build their brands, to establish the challenges students feel an organization would face in using social
media to build their brands. The population for this study were residents of Ikorodu local government area, Lagos State, Nigeria. A total of 400 respondents were selected from the population figure as the sample size. The study revealed that students really see brands that are turning their organizations into brands on
social media, the ones who are forcing it, and the ones that are creating organic contents for students to relate to.. social media plays an integral role in the brand building and formulations. Irrespective of variables like, age or respondents, educational qualification of respondents, gender difference and marital status of the students, they all have a perception towards social media tools in relation to brand building. The following recommendations based on the findings and conclusion from this study were made; Organizations should conduct research to know which social media their audience are based on and create content in line with the social media. Organic content helps tremendously to reach the right audience so brands should always know what is trendy and never buy followers.