Multichannel management gets “social”

PA/LTC Goes Around the World in Online Communities

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to provide a rationale and framework for examining stakeholder reactions to crisis communication messages in various social media channels. Stakeholders can become crisis communications by entering various sub-arenas of the larger rhetorical arena. The concept of sub-arena is presented and a case analysis used to illustrate the application and value of examining stakeholder crisis communicators during a crisis.Design/methodology/approach– Content analysis was used to evaluate publicly available social media messages posted on the Livestrong blog and theHuffington Postonline news site.Findings– The paper demonstrates that monitoring reactions of stakeholders can reveal how individuals can act as crisis communications in social media messages can serve as barometers the effectiveness of an organization's crisis response. The importance of examining multiple sub-arenas is considered due to the influence of supportive stakeholders in organizational social media.Research limitations/implications– Only two sub-arenas were analyzed using one crisis response during a crisis that extended over a number of months.Practical implications– The paper includes implications for the examination of social media messages from supportive stakeholder and neutral sub-arenas. The results provide indicators of the effectiveness of an organization's crisis response and how stakeholder messages in social media may contribute to or undermine the crisis response.Originality/value– This paper demonstrates the value of monitoring social media comments to gauge reactions to organizational crisis responses and demonstrates how stakeholders can function as informal crisis managers. It also begins the discussion of the value and conceptualization of sub-arenas.

Social media is widely used in the field of tourism. And without the role of technology, it is unimaginable to travel these days, it would be like candy without sugar. Thus, social media plays a vital role in marketing and promotion of food tourism. The focus of the study is to analyze the role of information technology in food tourism marketing and to critically review the various social media channels that are used for food tourism marketing. The study was conducted over 45 tourists who have traveled to Delhi for the purpose of food tourism. The data has been analyzed using SPSS. The study clearly shows that social media platforms and food tourism has a positive relationship. Social media channels highly influence the perception, choices and decision of the food tourist at all the stages of travel. The study also reviews the various social media channels used by the food tourists to view the food related travel content.

Amaç: İnternet kullanımının yaygınlaşmasıyla birlikte insanların etkileşimli iletişim kurmasına olanak tanıyan sosyal medya mecraları kişilerin günlük hayatının bir parçası haline gelmektedir. Kişilerin sosyal medya mecralarında varlık gösterme arzuları artış gösterirken bu artışa bağlı olarak farklılaşma istekleri de kişisel markalama kavramını hayatımızın bir parçası haline getirmektedir. Sosyal medya mecraları, kişisel markalama çalışmaları için hem maliyet açısından hem de amaç açısından en uygun platformalardır. Bu nedenle, araştırmada sosyal medya mecralarının kişisel markalama üzerindeki rolünün gözlenmesi amaçlanmaktadır. Gereç ve Yöntem: Araştırma amacı doğrultusunda, örnek olay çalışması deseni tercih edilerek nitel araştırma yöntemlerine başvurulmuştur. Son zamanlarda popülerlikleri artan seyahat fenomenleri içerisinden amaçlı örnekleme tekniğiyle belirlenen 12 seyahat fenomeni ile derinlemesine görüşmeler gerçekleştirilmiştir. İçerik analizi ve betimsel analiz yöntemleri ile veriler analiz edilmiştir. Bulgular: Araştırma sonucunda seyahat fenomenlerinin sosyal medyada kişisel markalama çalışmalarına önem verdikleri, takipçilerinden gelen geri bildirimleri dikkate alarak sosyal medyayı kişisel markalarına katkı sağlayacak şekilde kullandıkları belirlenmiştir. Bununla birlikte sosyal medyada paylaştıkları içeriklerin kişisel markalama çalışmalarına katkı sağladığı sonucuna varılmıştır. Sonuç: Bu araştırma ile sosyal medyada kişisel markalamanın önemine dikkat çekilmiştir. Kişisel markalamada öne çıkan temalar kişisel değerler, kişisel farkındalık, kişisel imaj, hedefler, seyahat etmek ve iletişim olmaktadır.

Social Media has changed the communication process for people. It has become a two-way communication facilitator to share information, create awareness, purchase products, etc. Social Media is encouraging consumers to easily interact with the brands, forming an unbreakable bond known as relationship marketing. However, when it comes to menstrual health and hygiene, many studies have shown that there are various taboos and stigmas associated with it which hold consumers back from communicating or interacting openly. Although digital and social media channels are helping to increase consumer engagement and interaction, marketers or brands working in this sector, are still struggling to maintain the right relationship with their consumers due to these taboos. This has developed the need to study consumer engagement or interaction with Indian Menstrual Brands via social media channels. The data was collected through questionnaires among social media users and Whisper, Sirona, Nua, Pee Safe, and Sanfe were the menstrual brands selected for the study. The results highlighted that people do interact or engage with menstrual brands through social media to give feedback, and to purchase their products, but the popular reason is to get informed about the menstrual products. It was also found that Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube are popular social media platforms for interaction or engagement among respondents. This study contributes to the understanding of consumer engagement and interaction via these channels in the menstrual hygiene sector.&nbsp

The primary research question investigated was: What is the effect of social media channels on e-commerce expansion and marketing by Jordanian firms? The specific objectives included examining social media channels' effect on Jordanian companies' marketing and exploring social media's impact on Jordanian e-commerce expansion. To achieve the research goal, a quantitative method was used in which fifty social media managers of Jordanian firms were recruited and surveyed. A key result from the analysis conducted was that social media enables word-of-mouth expression by users regarding certain brands that positively and significantly increase the marketing effect of the firms. The other result noted from the analysis is that an increasing number of loyal followers can eventually lead to reduced e-commerce of firms if they fail to align the products and services with customers' interests. One limitation of this research was a small sample, which reduced the generalization of the results. One recommendation from this research is that Jordanian firms should create entertaining and engaging social media posts that ensure customers can share their posi-tive experiences using specific products, leading to significant marketing impact.

Due to the widespread use of social media platforms, social media has altered or impacted the consumer experience today. The pleasant connections possible on social media can lead to long-term relationships and involve looking up product details, transactions for purchases, and/or the provision of services. The study assessed how social media affects public sector customer experiences of Huduma centre GPO in Nairobi County, Kenya. Research specifically assessed the effects of social media data gathering, mobilization and usage on customer experience. The research was anchored by agenda-setting, technological determinism and service determinant logic theories, respectively. A descriptive study design served as the foundation for the research. Target population comprised of 1200 customers of Huduma Centre GPO in Nairobi, Kenya. Employing a random sampling approach, responses were generated from customers totalling 360 respondents. First-hand information was collected via a questionnaire. The study looked at reliability and validity of research tools. Data was analyzed using both inferential and descriptive analysis. Inferential analysis employed regression techniques, while descriptive analysis used tables. Moral principles were upheld fully. Findings revealed that social media data gathering had a positive and insignificant effect (B = 0.084; p = 0.068) on customer experience. Results showed that social media mobilisation positively, but insignificantly, affects customer experience (B = 0.086; p = 0.219). Using social media also positively contributed to public sector customer experiences of Huduma centre GPO in Nairobi County, Kenya significantly (B = 0.308; p = .000). The study recommends that the matter pertaining to Huduma Centre GPO in Kenya needs to be dealt with by providing better training regarding data collection tools, which should relate to metrics, as well as analytics analysis, in order to derive insights from data collected. Government institutions, including other stakeholders, must provide customized training to employees regarding using tools for demographic analysis so that they get an opportunity to convert data into actions to work upon complaints received by them. The study also focused on usage patterns’ influence as far as customer experience. The output disclosed that customer experience has a strong direct positive influence on usage patterns for customers of social platforms and services.

Nowadays social media data has grown very rapidly by producing a huge amount and variety of data everyday. Those data can be analyzed and processed to deliver useful information especially for public needs. However, most of the data available in social media are unstructured. This paper proposes a recommendation system for public facilities by utilizing both structured and unstructured data gathered from multi-channel data sources. The system uses single-criteria rating, multi-criteria-rating, and text data as the inputs. The challenge is how to handle data variety such that any kind of data from any channel can be integrated. The second challenge is how to extract location-related data from the raw data. There are four data channels used in the system. Three of them are social media channels, i.e. Twitter, Instagram, and Foursquare, while the other is internal data channel built as a part of the system itself. The system deals with three categories of public facility, i.e. park, hospital, and mosque. The whole system consists of two sub systems, i.e. the extractor system including the rating input module and the recommendation system. The recommendation system is implemented as end-user mobile application such that the users are able to use it anytime and anywhere. The system successfully integrate data from different social media channels and in different format to provide users with useful information concerning public facilities in the form of recommendation (rating) and popularity of the facilities. The experiment has shown that above 90% of the data collected from the social media contains location-related information that is useful for further processing. The system has been tested using usability test, and it obtained an average users score 3.9 on a scale of 1 to 5.

The use of social media and other online platforms have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hospital is one of the institutions managing social media and other digital communication media during the corona pandemic. However, number of accesses to social media and other digital communication channels by the public has not been identified. Therefore, the study aims to describe access to the hospitals' social media and its impact. Two hundred sixty-two respondents were involved in this study, selected using a consecutive sampling method. Data collection was using an online questionnaire to obtain the social media's access information. Various variables are used in this research including demographic characteristics, social media ownership, frequency of access to social media and other digital communication channels based on personal perspectives. Results of this study showed that most respondents visited the official website, Instagram, and webinars managed by hospitals. Access to social media and other platforms give benefits for both, community and hospitals.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the factors that influence the success of internal communication in Spanish companies, specifically the importance of the channels used, activities conducted through ISM and the role played by the communication professional.Design/methodology/approachThe model employed argues that to obtain success in internal communication, three factors are considered necessary: first, communication professionals must participate in strategic decisions; second, they have to use together social media channel and classical channel to communicate with employees; and finally they must choose which activities they carry out during the use of social media. These elements are developed in the literature review. To research practices of internal digital communications and level of success of internal communication across types of organizations, a quantitative survey between professionals from Spanish companies was conducted.FindingsThe results revealed that the hierarchical level, participation in the strategic decision process and dedication of the communication practitioner, alongside with the use of face-to-face and online communication channels, and the perceived importance of communication activities conducted through social media platforms are the key factors that influence the quality of internal communication. However, no significant relationship between the level of success and the use of social media channels was found.Research limitations/implicationsThe current study has several limitations that should be noted and addressed in future research. The main limitation lies in the fact that the dependent variable – success in communication – is entirely based on communication professionals’ perceptions. Replication studies can be conducted to cross-validate the results obtained from this study using business outcome metrics to measure the communication effectiveness. A further limitation is related to the sampling procedure. Obtaining a representative sample of communications professionals in Spanish companies poses a number of limitations due to the impossibility of having accurate data on the total population.Practical implicationsThe findings of the current study provide important implications for public relations professionals on what (i.e. the content) and how to (i.e. the channels) communicate within an organization. In general, internal communicators should move from historical roles as information producers and distributors to advisory roles in strategic decision making. Additionally, the implementation and use of ISM should be carefully revaluated. Communication practitioners should examine and address the difficulties involved in choosing the correct channels, devoting the necessary time to their adequate management, analyzing employees’ feedback and improving the engagement.Originality/valueThe study shows that internal communication practices in Spanish companies are changing. The model used in this research can be applied in an individual organization to evaluate what factors improve the communication of its employees and carry out additional research in other countries or types of organizations to identity new challenges.

The chapter discusses social media within the context of Africa’s public sector. This chapter suggests that social media usage by governments and public sector organizations on the African continent displays remarkably different characteristics than how such communication and media channels are deployed within commercial settings. The chapter illustrates how social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Flickr, and LinkedIn are deployed by public sector organisations across Africa to achieve strategic communication objectives. The chapter argues that social media channels are pivotal in enhancing public sector communication due to their characteristics such as interactivity, participation, and user-generated value. Social media strategies adopted by government agencies on the African continent may involve a push strategy, which focusses on providing information to the public; a pull strategy, which seeks to engage and interact with target audience, and a networking strategy that focusses on information sharing. This chapter suggests that the use of social media vehicles among public sector organisations on the continent of Africa may go through diverse stages. These include an initial stage of using social media to provide information to target audiences, very much akin to propagandist, press agentry, and public information models. This is followed by an intermediary stage that involves employing using social media channels to engage and interact with the target publics in a manner that ensures receiving some feedback. Then, there is an advanced stage where public sector organizations employ social media use for two-way communication, collaboration and co-creation, but also for boosting service delivery. This chapter contributes to the relatively nascent literature streams on the nature of social media in the public sector in Africa.

From Obama's success to the Arab spring, from Kolaveri Di in India to Gangnam style, social media is omnipresent. We no longer go to the news, news finds us; we no longer visit merchandise, merchandise find us; social media has shrunk the globe beyond imagination. Social media is based on the combined notion of influence and participation -.tools that synchronize their voice with the company's voice and that combined voice affects the next customer. The development of social media networks have made it feasible for the customers to speak to thousands of other customers concerning a particular brand or a company. This communication between one to several additionally referred to as word-of-mouth marketing, isn't new to marketing, but the distinction is that currently these communications are on the far side boundaries. With the growing effect of social media on consumer buying behavior, it becomes imperative for a business to understand the competitive advantages of assorted social media avenues across diverse markets. As the world of online marketing is continuously progressing, the marketers must understand how these changes may influence buyer practices, and consequently promotional programs and strategies. Choices on how and when to successfully use the traditional as well as the social media alternatives require careful thought and consideration. This paper aims to throw light on the recent social media marketing strategies and demonstrates how this platform of online networking helps organizations to captivate their clients in a finer manner, thus building a stronger relationship with them. Also the present paper offers significant understanding to the marketers in knowing the vital role social media marketing plays in the formation of a strong brand. The present paper is conceptual in nature, and through the intensive literature review identifies the latest social media practices being adopted by the 21st century marketers. The study is an endeavor to see how advertisers are utilizing social networking as a strategic tool for advancement. The study finds that enhanced presence and communication on various social media channels help the firms in creating a better brand image while reducing promotional budgets. The paper additionally indicates how the exceptional attributes of correspondence by means of online networking help organizations not only in building a superior connection with their customers but also in converting them into their brand advocates. Thus, these network platforms are helping the businesses to engage with the purchasers, influencing them, connecting with them and finally changing them into their evangelists.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the drivers of firms’ sociability on social media (SM), an unregulated area, in an emerging country, namely, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The sample of this study is 345 non-financial listed firms on Tadawul stock exchange during 2016-2019. Data are collected from several sources such as annual reports, the official website of the sample companies. Other data are collected manually such as the presence of the CEO and the sampled companies on SM. Our findings show that firm size and leverage level are important firms’ characteristics that drive firms’ sociability on social media. The finding shows that CEO sociability on social media is a key CEOs’ characteristic that drives firms’ sociability on social media. Further analysis reports that there is a complementary effect between CEO’s sociability on social media and firm size in increasing firms’ sociability on SM. The findings also show that there is a complementary effect between CEO’s sociability on social media and firm leverage in increasing firms’ sociability on SM. This study contributes to the disclosure literature by providing empirical evidence of the drivers of firms’ sociability on SM, an unregulated area in KSA. It also complements the considerable literature on voluntary disclosure which ignores the use of SM platforms as a “new” voluntary type of reporting. The present study complements recent literature on the adoption of SM by providing evidence that the sociability of top leaders is a driver of firms’ sociability on SM.

The importance of social media in reinforcing brands is generally recognized by taking into consideration several benefits, such as: generated content, messages adapted to the customer profile, one-to-one communication, open interaction and feedback. Communication and community have become essential for the online learning environment. Fast but very seriously, social media were considered the best channel for information. Nowadays, the interest of universities in social media as marketing tools has increased, based upon the influence of social media in choosing a study programme or selecting a university.This article refers to the importance of social media networks in promoting the university educational offer. The study will underline the social media campaign, developed in 2020, for recruiting students realised in the Project: "Student at UBc! Access to Education for Disadvantaged Student Groups" developed by our University. Statistics concerning likes, clicks and visualizations will be reinforced by the comments, questions and feedback given by the candidates. The research is focused on quantitative analysis which is completed by the qualitative one in order to achieve a double perspective about the efficiency of the digital marketing for this university. Three main campaign were implemented between May and September 2020 in social media: a teaser campaign, a revealing campaign and a call-to-action campaign. Their purpose was to dismantle the stereotype according to which it is difficult to enter and attend a faculty, with an emphasis on creatively promoting the benefits of the university. On a subliminal level, the messages conveyed were profound, relevant to the decision-making process and, although seemingly simple and easy to understand, they aimed to influence the decision-making, rational and emotional behavior alike, particularly complex and important for each of the potential students concerned. We consider that for universities, especially nowadays, under these circumstances, it is important to reassess the most efficient promotional strategies and tools. The use of different social media channels in designing an efficient university brand are essential based upon the teenagers' expectations and the educational context focused on on-line communication tools.

Social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn have been used as tools in health care research, opening new horizons for research on health-related topics (e.g., the use of mobile social networking in weight loss programs). While there have been efforts to develop ethical guidelines for internet-related research, researchers still face unresolved ethical challenges. This article investigates some of the risks inherent in social media research and discusses how researchers should handle challenges related to confidentiality, privacy, and consent when social media tools are used in health-related research.