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Consumers tend to form their perceptions about a company via two associations: corporate ability (CA) that centers on expertise in producing quality products and corporate social responsibility (CSR) that focuses on societal obligations. To date, investigations on the adoption of such association-based corporate communication strategies are yet to address the interactive and multi-source features of social media. Drawing theoretical insights from corporate associations and the warranting principle, the purpose of this paper is to fill the gap and examine the joint effect of association-based corporate posting strategy and corresponding electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) comment valence on social media.

A three (corporate posting strategy: CSR vs CA vs hybrid (CSR + CA)) by two (eWOM comment valence: positive vs negative) between-subjects experiment (n=193) was conducted.

The effect of corporate posting strategy on consumers’ CSR associations was found to be significant only when eWOM comment valence was positive. Significant main effects of both posting strategy and eWOM comment valence were found on CA associations, perceived corporate reputation, and purchase intention.

This study extends the theoretical framework of corporate associations to the interactive context on social media and provides empirical evidence for the effectiveness of association-based posting strategies when they are jointly presented with eWOM comments at different valence levels. Findings of this study also provide implications for business and communication professionals to communicate with consumers on social media more effectively.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) within an entrepreneurial community engage in cross-promotion on social media via Facebook. This paper specifically examines how SME community members leverage their horizontal and vertical ties to generate publicity, improve brand perceptions and drive traffic to themselves or community events.

This paper uses a qualitative approach, examining 1,025 Facebook posts from 27 members of an entrepreneurial community in the southeast USA to develop typologies of posting strategies, post purposes and post functions.

This paper finds that in the entrepreneurial community of interest, many members engage in cross-promotion via social media at various frequencies and with distinctive purposes. This paper identifies five distinct patterns of cross-promotion – quality signaling, traffic driving, community amplifying, hybrid cross-promotion and infrequent engagement. This paper also notes differences between cross-promotional strategies of vertical and horizontal partners.

This paper advances understanding of social media marketing and identifies key patterns of SME social media behavior. Although previous research has noted the importance of social media for SMEs, there has been little research regarding posting strategies being used by these firms. Further, to this point, there has not been a framework to understand how firms can use social media to cross-promote one another. This paper seeks to begin filling these gaps by providing a useful framework that can be used by SMEs in coordinating their social media posting strategies as well as by researchers studying SME cross-promotion.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of post content, post media and post scheduling strategies on online engagement on Twitter in context of micro celebrities in Pakistan.

For this research, micro celebrities of Pakistan have been defined as the target population. Secondary data consisting of 464 tweets from walls of six micro celebrities belonging to both genders and diverse set of socio-political fields was collected. Tweedie estimation analysis was run to accept or reject the hypotheses. Mean values with standard deviations were utilized to analyze the different engagement patterns of dichotomous variables (content type, content language, mentions, hashtags, text, images, links, videos, hour of the day and day of the week) on online engagement.

Content type, content language, content length, hashtags, mentions, images, links, videos, hour of the day and day of the week have been found to have a significant relationship with online engagement on Twitter.

First, the study has been conducted in context of micro celebrities on Twitter. It did not include influencers on other social media networks. Second, study considered only quantitative aspects of engagement based on secondary data ignoring qualitative aspects of phenomenon due to time and methodology constraints. Third, study did not include link clicks as a measure of engagement as clicks data is not publicly available on the posts.

The study contributes significantly to find out valuable “micro celebrity” strategies in Pakistan. The study suggests micro celebrities to tweet soft content in Urdu language along with relevant hashtags and mentions to get higher engagement on their tweets. Further, tweets should contain maximum number of characters. Micro celebrities should not insert images, links and videos in their tweets as these media types result in lower engagement on Twitter. Micro celebrities should tweet at low hours and weekends.

As this study focuses on investigation of better engagement practices for micro celebrities, it will help general public to express themselves more effectively through social media.

First, this is the first study that investigates the online engagement model for micro celebrities. Second, the online engagement model designed in this study has yet not been investigated to best of our knowledge. The theoretical model combines multiple engagement factors discussed in previous studies conducted on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter.

The Internet and social media have fundamentally transformed the ways in which individuals find jobs. Relatively little is known about how demand-side market actors use online information and the implications for social stratification and mobility. This study provides an in-depth exploration of the online recruitment strategies pursued by human resource (HR) professionals. Qualitative interviews with 61 HR recruiters in two southern US metro areas reveal two distinct patterns in how they use Internet resources to fill jobs. For low and general skill work, they post advertisements to online job boards (e.g., Monster and CareerBuilder) with massive audiences of job seekers. By contrast, for high-skill or supervisory positions, they use LinkedIn to target passive candidates – employed individuals who are not looking for work but might be willing to change jobs. Although there are some intermediate practices, the overall picture is one of an increasingly bifurcated “winner-take-all” labor market in which recruiters focus their efforts on poaching specialized superstar talent (“purple squirrels”) from the ranks of the currently employed, while active job seekers are relegated to the hyper-competitive and impersonal “black hole” of the online job boards.

Drawing on insights from social influence theory, the MAIN model of digital media affordances and the literature on the attention economy, this study aims to investigate how social media influencers’ community and content strategy contribute to follower engagement behavior in the presence of competition.

This study used a web-scraped data set of Instagram influencers. It measured community strategy using influencers’ number of followers, number of following and breadth of interest; content strategy using modality type and number of posts; competition using number of influencers operating in the same primary domain of interest; and follower engagement behavior using number of likes and comments. A negative binomial regression model was estimated to test the proposed hypotheses.

The findings reveal that elements of influencers’ community and content strategies, such as number of followers, modality type and number of posts, influence follower engagement behavior. Similarly, competition significantly influences follower engagement behavior both independently and by interacting with influencers’ community and content strategy.

The findings offer insight for brands to identify suitable influencers for partnerships. For instance, brands can judge influencers’ suitability for partnership based on how many followers they have, how many posts they share and how many competitors they have. Further, the findings offer insight for influencers on how they can drive follower engagement behavior by managing their social media community and content.

This study develops an integrated model of factors that determine follower engagement behavior for social media influencers. The findings emphasize influencers’ strategy as the primary driver of follower engagement behavior. Extant studies focus on followers’ motivation and perception to explain follower engagement behavior while the role of influencers’ strategy is underplayed.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a comprehensive metric for customer engagement in Facebook, the top social networking site.

The approach is conceptual and it makes operative customer engagement concept in the specific context that is Facebook.

In the new dynamic business environment fostered by Internet, where customer value goes beyond what the customer spends on a brand or a firm, firms will be able to fine-tune their customer engagement strategy by means of the metric results and its evolution.

The paper, which provides insight and a metric for customer engagement in Facebook, is a starting point for future conceptual and empirical research that might be conducted to further refine the proposed metric. The assessment of engagement achieved as a result of actions on Facebook will allow marketers to evaluate the efficiency of the action and, through its longitudinal evaluation, the fluctuation according to different posting strategies used, so managers can see whether engagement or disengagement is happening and then make decisions about which type of content generates better engagement.

The metric offered is unique, as it focuses on customer engagement on Facebook, and to the best of author’s knowledge, there is not any previous attempt to measure it.

This research examines the ways in which museums have utilised their Facebook platforms to communicate about climate and environmental-related challenges. The aim is to offer a snapshot of the phenomenon of museums as contributors to communicating climate-related topics and climate change education.

A content analysis of a purposeful sample of 10 museums’ Facebook postings was conducted. The study examines the themes and topics concerning climate issues that museums have posted and communicated about, the nature of the communication and an examination of responses from the audience.

This research reveals that not all museums in the study sample have communicated the different research-informed causes or contributors to climate challenges confronting societies today. There is also very little evidence of dialogic engagement with audience and the public-at-large. Most communication is still one-way focussing on the relaying of information.

This research highlights the roles of cultural heritage institutions such as museums in communicating climate change-related topics and the need to move towards a more dialogic mode of engagement with their audience. Museums have a role in serving as a trusted and inspirational space for public debates and community empowerment for dealing with climate challenges.

Social media are central to the creation and maintenance of social relations, including romantic relations. While much of the scholarship has examined how social media play a role in the initiation and maintenance of romantic relations, little is known about their role in romantic dissolution. This chapter fills this gap by examining the kinds of strategies young adults employ to cope with the aftermath of a romantic breakup complicated by Facebook. Based on qualitative analysis of 10 interviews with young adults, the authors propose a typology of Facebook coping strategies for romantic breakups. The typology includes seven types of coping strategies with 12 subtopics and 25 specific actions linked to the subtopics. The authors find that those coping with a breakup engage in erasing and avoiding breakup reminders and digital traces, as they perceive them as hurtful. They regulate their use of Facebook and limit Facebook communication with the ex. An important coping strategy used was to express their emotions via Facebook content, often aimed at the ex-partner. They also use Facebook to seek support and new information about the ex, including about potential new romantic interests. Others preferred to avoid information about the ex and either deleted the ex and their friends or chose to unsubscribe to updates. Coping strategies included preventative measures such as changing passwords, blocking the ex, and adjusting privacy settings. We found our participants engaged in both goal-directed and emotionally based coping strategies. Yet, the findings suggest a tendency to rely more extensively on goal-directed coping strategies by actively addressing the breakup stressor. We also note that coping strategies specific to Facebook are more likely to be used than traditional offline forms of coping. This exploratory study serves as a starting point to better understand the role that Facebook plays in mediating online behaviors following a romantic dissolution, such that these strategies can be subsequently evaluated in terms of usefulness in clinical coping recommendations.

The COVID-19 pandemic had a huge negative impact on the world’s hotel industry from the beginning of 2020. As a result of the pandemic, the majority of hotels around the world have decided to close temporarily. It examines the challenges faced by hotel managers and the strategies used to survive.

This research can motivate hotel companies around the world to better understand pandemic situations and develop effective anti-pandemic policies. Based on online in-depth interviews with 25 hotel managers, the findings shed light on the various challenges to hotels.

Findings have shown that the hotel industry has been able to adapt their business for the short term with post-COVID-19 strategies still having limitations. To survive the duration of the pandemic hotels have adopted strategies: reducing employees, promotions and discounts and changing the market segment, as well as levels of maintenance of hygiene and cleanliness. The hotel industry can implement opportunities toward change through government support, crisis management, cooperation with travel agencies and technology.

The current research is to determine the impact of COVID-19 and the adaptive strategies on the hotel sector in the Siem Reap province by the following objectives: (1) To analyse the impacts of COVID-19 in the hotel sector, (2) To identify adaptive strategies in dealing with COVID-19 in the hotel sector and (3) To explore post-COVID-19 strategies of the hotel sector after the COVID-19 pandemic. A qualitative method was employed in the research online and in-depth interviews were conducted with the owner and general manager.

The study suggests that hotels focus more on survival strategies for the short term, so the topic for future research could be to investigate details of strategies after the COVID-19 pandemic in order to research what the hotels' strategic solutions will be and how they will manage the operation after the COVID-19 pandemic for long-term strategies.

This study examines how top global brands changed their corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication on social media during a victim crisis, and how their CSR communication on social media influenced consumer sentiment.

Using 18,502 firms’ Facebook posts and their most relevant consumer comments from pre-pandemic and during-pandemic timeframes, this study integrates machine learning techniques (BERTopic) with human-based qualitative analysis to analyze CSR posts. It also measures the polarity and magnitude of consumer sentiment with Google Natural Language AI. We tested seven hypotheses using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM).

The machine learning-based topic modeling analysis showed that firms increased CSR communications intensity on social media and they more intentionally chose different CSR communication strategies for different topics on social media during the victim crisis. The hypothesis testing results show proactive, accommodative and interactive strategies have a significant impact on consumer sentiment polarity and magnitude, and these effects are moderated by the level of interactivity and industry type.

(1) This study takes a dynamic view to examine the firms’ CSR communication on social media during a victim crisis. It used machine learning-based text analytics and found many interesting results on how firms changed their CSR communication topics and strategies on social media during the crisis. (2) It measures both consumer sentiment polarity and sentiment magnitude to conduct sentiment analysis. The results indicate that the CSR communication strategies have different impacts on the two sentiment components. (3) It integrates machine learning techniques with human-based qualitative analysis. It shows how researchers can gain the benefits of both approaches.