Building Social Media Capabilities in B2B Context – A Case Study
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
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Authors
Date
2019
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Information and Service Management (ISM)
Language
en
Pages
93 + 1
Series
Abstract
Social media has become an integral part of our everyday lives during the past decade. Organizations serving both the business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) markets have realized that social media provides an efficient medium to reach their target audiences and have started to adopt social media as part of their marketing toolkit. However, utilizing social media is not a trivial task, especially for B2B organizations who have been the last to take advantage of the opportunities that the phenomenon has to offer. This study explores the process of developing social media and content marketing capabilities in B2B context. Drawing in previous literature around social media and content marketing, it aims to examine the social media capabilities development process from the viewpoint of how B2B companies can build and develop their social media capabilities in the fast-paced marketing environment of today. Capabilities are defined as the pool of expertise and knowhow that an individual or a company possesses of a certain topic. In addition, this study takes a look at what B2B firms are using social media for, i.e. what the goals of social media are for B2B companies, and explores whether any generalizable social media best practices can be identified. In order to study how B2B social media capabilities are formed, a single case study was conducted by examining a medium-sized Finnish company offering financial management software and consulting services. Participant observation and semi-structured interviews were selected as the primary sources of evidence used in the case study, accompanied with supporting documentary evidence. The case study provides a detailed look at the case company and its social media journey, focusing particularly on the process of learning what social media can be used for and how to do so successfully. Based on the case analysis and existing literature, the process of building social media capabilities is one of continuous learning that requires companies to experiment with various ways of doing social media and learning from the results. A framework depicting this cyclical capability building process was developed. The findings also suggest that there are four main goals of B2B social media: 1) lead generation, 2) brand awareness (including thought leadership), 3) employer branding, and 4) recruitment. A second framework showcasing these goals and their interrelations was also developed. Finally, three different best practices of B2B social media were identified: 1) the inclusion of photos will increase the performance of social media posts, 2) maintaining a consistent presence on social media will help stand out from the competition, and 3) continuous learning is essential for the successful use of social media in marketing.Description
Thesis advisor
Hekkala, RiittaKeywords
social media, social media capability, social media goals, best practices, B2B, content marketing, case study