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The COVID-19 lockdown severely impacted organizations in the cultural and tourist business as their products all of a sudden “disappeared”. This study aims to explore if and how the unexpected and disruptive nature of the pandemic accelerated the development of new communication strategies on their social media.

The study draws on data from 24 midsize cultural institutions and tourist attractions in Denmark over the first two months of the lockdown in 2020. Approximately 900 posts on Facebook were collected and analyzed through the netnographic method. The analysis followed a two-layered qualitative approach. First, open coding to identify typologies and enable a comparison with established strategies from the literature review. Then, an exploratory examination was conducted across the typologies.

Nine different content categories were identified in the data and subsequently assessed and discussed in relation to the literature on strategies and dialogic intentions. This resulted in the emergence of two new overarching strategies: hope and host.

While hope is particularly relevant in crisis situations, the utilization of employees in the host role presents an opportunity for further development and engagement. Further, the results call for future research that breaks with the traditional quest for ideal strategies for the benefit of exploring the notion of “strategic doers”.

The identification of the hope and host strategies, along with the analysis of content categories and their alignment with various strategic intentions, contributes to the existing knowledge in this field. Further, the classic perception of engagement as driven by explicit interaction and dialogue is also challenged.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of social media marketing on new venture performance utilizing Structure-Conduct-Performance (SCP) theory.

A survey approach was employed, and questionnaires were sent out to the representatives of new ventures established in the previous six years at the time of data collection. Measures were adapted from SCP theory and the measurement model examined. A total of 248 responses were analyzed using structural equation modelling (LISREL 11).

The results indicate that social media marketing capabilities have a positive impact on the marketing performance of new ventures through a mediating effect of social media marketing performance. Thus, social media marketing performance affects new venture performance through marketing performance.

This research supports the vitality of social media in the lives of new firms and the importance of social media when executing marketing activities. The perceptive measurement of social media marketing capabilities on the firm level can be useful for new ventures to evaluate their competencies related to social media, and thus help firms improve those capabilities over time.

This research contributes to the existing knowledge on linkages between social media marketing capabilities and new venture performance acknowledging the role of a turbulent market environment. Therefore, the recognition of industry structure articulated by a turbulent market environment, social media marketing capabilities and social media support for competitive marketing strategy answers the question of how social media marketing capabilities drive competitive marketing strategy and subsequently influence performance.

After identifying two kinds of internal knowledge transfer strategies, the purpose of this paper is to examine their effectiveness and whether they induce knowledge spillovers among firms.

This study collected data in China and 219 questionnaires were achieved. Then, structure equation model by LISREL was used for hypotheses testing.

The empirical results suggest that both codification and rich‐media strategies have positive effects on internal knowledge transfer. Moreover, codification strategy has a negative effect on knowledge spillovers while rich‐media strategy does not influence knowledge spillovers significantly. Thus, codification and rich‐media strategies are not double‐edged swords.

This study provides firms with two strategies, codification and rich‐media, to promote internal knowledge transfer. Moreover, these strategies do not accelerate knowledge spillovers, and codification strategy even reduces knowledge spillovers. Firms can use these strategies to construct and sustain competitive advantages.

While many knowledge creation, storage and protection strategies are studied, little is known about internal knowledge transfer strategies. This study suggests two internal knowledge transfer strategies and confirms their effectiveness. Moreover, because the relationship between internal knowledge transfer strategies and knowledge spillovers has been puzzling for a long time, this study clarifies the relationship and finds that these strategies do not accelerate knowledge spillovers and some even restrain knowledge spillovers.

This study examined whether individuals' coping strategies and their motivations for social media use act as mediators between actual COVID-19-related stress and the perception that social media use can reduce stress.

This study empirically develops and tests a research model with data (N = 503) collected through Amazon Mechanical Turk. A path analysis was used to test the research model.

The path analysis indicated that active coping initiated by individuals under COVID-19-related stress was more likely to be associated with information and social interaction needs, leading the individuals to perceive the use of social media as the cause for stress reduction. The expressive support coping strategy motivated the individuals under stress to seek social interaction, leading individuals to perceive that activities on social media reduced their stress during the pandemic. Emotional venting and avoidance coping strategies significantly impacted escape, social interaction, and entertainment seeking by allowing individuals to get absorbed in social media activities and forget unpleasant thoughts associated with the pandemic.

No previous study has explored the relationship between decisions around the type of coping strategy used and motivations for media usage, which leads to stress reduction. Understanding how stress-induced coping strategies influence social media users' specific motivations and reduce users' stress levels would help communicators understand how users' can encourage individuals to cope with stress by presenting individuals with more effective social media, resulting in stress reduction and improved well-being.

Contemporary businesses face rapidly evolving changes and complexities that challenge their respective managerial responses and capabilities. The natures of information and communication systems, ways of doing business, knowledge-transfer methods, diffusion channels of innovation, and industrial habitus are shifting. Additionally, methods, concepts, and frameworks to study these challenges need to be in accordance.

Many of these features characterizing the new business environment influence not only the consumer business, but also the business-to-business (B2B) sectors and their ways of functioning. Interestingly, the influence also connects domestic with international business through the global connectedness. This is particularly visible in marketing communication, as the difference between domestic and international business communication has further diminished due to digital and virtual dimensions and applications. In this new age, it is assumed that new ventures and small- and medium-sized enterprises can turn their vulnerabilities and size constraints into competitive advantages by addressing these challenges with efficient social media usage. To address this technology-enabled dimension of B2B relations, the authors present a case study illustrating how a firm advances its relationship management and communication by introducing social media instruments. The study contributes to relationship management and international marketing communication and provides new insights into the workings of social media within the B2B context.

Today, social media is counted as an integral part of marketing strategies, which has led to a paradigm change in this field. As reported, social media marketing has been growing over the recent five years and is predicted to be exponentially growing in the future. However, despite the huge promise and intention to adopt social media marketing strategies by organisations, there remain challenges regarding the successful implementation of these new marketing programmes. Accordingly, marketing managers’ awareness of the success factors of social media marketing is essential to return investment in this area. Due to the little research been accomplished in this field, this paper aims to identify the success factors of social networks’ marketing and to rank the factors by using of interval best-worst method (BWM).

To serve the research aims, an extant literature review is accomplished and a focus group approach is conducted to identify the main success factors and sub-factors. To analyse the focus group discussions, a qualitative content analysis approach is applied. Interval BWM is used to calculate the weights of each identified factor.

In the final framework, six main success criteria, including strategy, process, technology, content, performance evaluation and people are identified, for each sub-criteria are developed. The interval BWM results suggest the content criterion as the most important success factor in developing a social media marketing strategy.

First, this research provides a comprehensive insight into the success factors and best practices of social media marketing. This is the first to draw on the critical factors affecting the success of social media marketing, considering people in the organisation such as top management, employees and customers, strategy, process and performance evaluation focussing on the change management requirements for applying social media marketing and technology as the technical factor of the adoption process, simultaneously. Identifying critical success factors of social media marketing will help marketing managers to avoid falling into the trap of developing social media strategies based on less important areas and ignoring the critical ones. Besides, owing to the limited resources of organisations in implementing social media marketing strategies, prioritising and weighing the success factors will lead to a focus on more important areas.

Whilst the related studies have mostly concentrated on the capabilities and activities required to conduct social media marketing and the few research investigated the critical success factors most concentrated on the customer and the content-related factors, the finding of this research goes beyond that and suggests technical, process and human aspects simultaneously in the implementation process in a holistic view.

This study aims to examine how message strategy influences consumer behavioral engagement in social media. To this end, the study develops a comprehensive typology of branded content in social media and tests for its effect on consumer behavioral engagement.

A sample of brand posts derived from the official Facebook pages of top corporate brands was double-coded using an elaborate coding instrument. Message strategy was operationalized using three main message strategies (i.e. informational, transformational and interactional) and their paired combinations. Consumer behavioral engagement was operationalized using consumer actions of liking and sharing brand posts. Proposed relationships were tested with MANCOVA and univariate ANOVAs.

Results indicate that the transformational message strategy is the most powerful driver of consumer behavioral engagement, while no significant difference is observed between the informational and the interactional message strategies. Further, complementing the informational and interactional message strategies with the transformational message strategy markedly enhances their effectiveness.

Useful managerial guidance to develop effective message strategies is offered. In particular, the importance of transformational messages, both as a standalone and a complementary message strategy, is underscored. By mastering and deploying transformational messages more frequently in their social media communication, marketers could improve their effectiveness.

Drawing on a theory-driven typology, this study sheds light on how message strategy shapes consumer behavioral engagement in a social media context. Importantly, the study documents pioneering empirical evidence regarding the effect of combined message strategies on consumer behavioral engagement.

This study aims to investigate how business-to-business (B2B) companies use message strategies on social media platform and how these strategies are effective in improving customer perceived value and encouraging customer engagement, as well as how B2B companies differ from business-to-customer (B2C) counterparts in terms of utilization and effectiveness of social media message strategy.

Based on content analysis of Sina Weibo brand pages and survey of website visitors, this paper examines the differences of social media message strategies and their impacts upon customer perceived value and customer engagement between B2B and B2C companies.

B2B companies use more rational appeals and less emotional appeals, have lower degree of informativeness and perform better in interactivity and variety than B2C companies. These five dimensions of message strategy have different roles in engaging customers via perceived value across B2B and B2C settings.

The research makes significant contributions to B2B social media marketing literature by answering two interrelated questions, namely, “What companies are doing?” and “What companies should do?” on social media websites. Besides, it provides insightful implications for B2B companies on how to implement appropriate message strategies in their social media marketing efforts by conducting Importance-Performance Analysis.

Drawing on a unique case of a Web 3.0 recruitment campaign, the purpose of this paper is to explore how a Web 3.0 social media recruitment communication strategy influence, add value to and challenge conventional recruitment communication management.

The study draws on a reflexive dialogical research approach, which means that it is methodologically designed as a critical dialogue between on the one hand an empirical case and on the other hand theories on social media and strategic communication.

The study points toward a fundamental new approach to recruitment communication. The application of a Web 3.0 strategy entails what we term an open source recruitment strategy and a redirection of employee focus from work life to private life. These insights point toward ontologically challenging the basic assumptions of employees, work life and the employing organization.

The paper presents a single-case study, which prepares the ground for larger, longitudinal studies. Such studies may apply a more long-term focus on the implications of applying Web 3.0 recruitment strategies and how they may be integrated into – or how they challenge – overall corporate communication strategies.

A turn toward Web 3.0 in recruitment communication affects the degree of interactional complexity and the level of managerial control. Furthermore, the authors argue that the utilization of a Web 3.0 strategy in recruitment communication put forth precarious dilemmas and challenges of controllability, controversy, ownership and power relations, demanding organizations to cautiously entering the social media 3.0 employment market.

This study indicates how the value and potentials of social media as facilitating participatory processes and community conversations can be strategically used in and fundamentally alter recruitment communication, and hence offers new insights into a paradigmatically new way of understanding what strategic social media recruitment is, can and do.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a unique overview of business-to-business (B2B) companies engagement with and strategic approach to use of social media in brand building. This research complements the much more extensive knowledge base regarding social media use in business-to-consumer (B2C) contexts.

Since social media marketing is a relatively new activity for B2B companies an interpretivist stance that is inductive in nature is adopted. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with marketing professionals involved in managing social media programmes in France, Ireland, the UK and the USA.

The study found that the level of enagement with social media marketing varied, as summarised in the B2B Social Media Engagement Taxonomy. Enhancing brand image, extending brand awareness and facilitating customer engagement were the most common social media objectives. There was no evidence to suggest that companies saw social media as heralding a paradigm shift in brand management and control of the kind discussed and experienced in B2C social media contexts. The B2B social media strategy framework is proposed; this identifies the following six components of a social media strategy: monitoring and listening, empowering and enagaging employees, creating compelling content, stimulating electronic word of mouth, evaluating and selecting channels, and enhacning brand presence through integrating social media.

The research contributes to the knowledge base associated with social media marketing by offering insights into and a framework summarising B2B social media strategy.