Masters of Art / Social media has become a popular tool adopted by libraries and play a major role in marketing library services, facilitating communication between libraries and staff, and assisting libraries in connecting with communities. The use of social media by City of Cape Town Libraries has been recently established, and it has not yet been adequately assessed how Librarians have taken to this new implementation. Literature revealed that there is not enough research done in assessing Librarians’ perceptions on the use of social media for library work purposes, especially as a tool that is used to provide information services to users, and also how users responded to libraries’ adoption of social media in meeting their information needs.

The use of social media in nonprofit professional membership organizations affects how leaders communicate with members, consumers, the community, and other stakeholders. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore the social media marketing strategies that leaders in nonprofit professional membership organizations use to keep their organizations sustainable. Data were collected from 5 social media marketing leaders representing 5 nonprofit professional membership organizations in the Chicago region. Data collection occurred through semistructured interviews, review of organizational documents pertaining to social media marketing strategies, and review of the social media sites and websites of the participants' organizations. Rogers's diffusion of innovation theory served as the conceptual framework for this study. A thematic analysis of the data yielded 4 themes: social media platforms and engagement strategies, social media content, social media challenges, and brand awareness. Leaders of nonprofit professional membership organizations who want to gain a competitive edge by using the appropriate social media platforms, creating quality content, overcoming challenges, and increasing brand awareness might choose to align with the strategies identified in this study. The findings of this study could help organizational leaders use social media marketing strategies effectively for engagement and organizational sustainability. The implications for positive social change arising from the use of social media by leaders in nonprofit professional membership organizations include opportunities to connect with and engage the public to build stronger communities through collaboration.

This thesis was motivated by the widespread use of social media by children, and the lack of research on perceptions of their own use. It expands on previous research which, while sometimes including children’s voices, largely focuses on the negative impact that social media has on well-being. Instead, this thesis seeks insight into children’s views on their and their peers use of social media, what motivates their particular use, and how they describe the positive and negative experiences of it. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with children between 12 and 15 years old and thematic analysis was used to consider the data, along with an interpretivist and contextualist epistemological approach. The themes included, firstly; social media as a place for children to connect and to spend time, secondly; positive experiences that included, learning and inspiration, fun and happiness, and perspective taking, thirdly; negative experiences relating to privacy and anonymity, bullying and bad feelings, and a lack of social clues, and lastly; a particular peer culture which included gender differences as part of their experience of using social media. The study concludes that, though research on social media and children has been largely looked at in terms of risk, children see it as a normalized aspect of childhood where they socialize with friends, spend time playing and learning about different things, and hang out with their peers. Social media is described as a neutral tool by the children. With this notion of neutrality, by further understanding children’s experiences and perspectives, there could be more support in ensuring that this tool is shaped and used in a way that works more in their best interest. Social media is inevitably a big part of children’s leisure time today, and ‘moral panic’, being a persistent rhetoric around childhood, may not be helpful for children.

Social media content strategies have been created and used for years as a way to advertise and influence market decisions in various industries. The reason for their effectiveness should be adequately studied so that we can have a better understanding of which strategies are successful and which ones are not. This study identifies effective social media content strategies, with a focus on brand and customer-centric strategies. After a content analysis of 251 Instagram posts from Huda Beauty and Glossier’s accounts, the hypotheses stating that brand-centric strategies will be more effective and all the strategies will be a useful way to determine the outcome of future Instagram posts are partially supported. This research contributes to best practices in social media marketing in order to understand the effectiveness behind content strategies.

This qualitative study focuses on how social media policies and guidelines are used in practice within nine different Swedish industrial B2B companies. This study identifies their social media policies and guidelines in order to examine its content and investigates how the participating companies use their social media policies and guidelines in their marketing activities according to the interviewees. A qualitative research method with nine semi-structured interviews has been conducted and analyzed with a thematic analysis by using research and theory within the chosen subject.The findings of this study reveals that the companies have social media policies and guidelines in place in order to satisfy different needs, hence, some of the companies use it as a fundamental framework, while other companies incorporate it to a greater extent and use it as a way of handling risks.Through its managerial and social media policies and guidelines implications, this study contributes to the identified research gap regarding how social media policies and guidelines usage in B2B industries by providing insights from practice.

Background: Event marketing is a way for businesses to entertain consumers and promote the brand or product through the use of events. Within event marketing, entertainment, excitement and enterprise are important concepts to include in order to create a successful event. Purpose: The purpose is to explore event marketing in a social media context. The research question is “How is event marketing on social media experienced?” Methodology: This research undertook a qualitative research approach of explorative nature. Un-structured in-depth interviews was conducted with seven participants, sampled with quota sampling. The participants were selected with the criteria of being between the ages 16-34 and using social media and having previously experienced event marketing on social media. After these seven interviews had been conducted, saturation was reached. Conclusion: The main findings of this research are that entertainment, authenticity, innovation and quality are important categories of event marketing in a social media context. Thus, all four categories have an impact on the experience of an individual seeing a marketing event on social media. The category entertainment was shown to be influenced by authenticity, innovation and quality, which in turn has an effect on the experience of the viewer of the event.

With the rise of social media and the emergence of smartphones, new possibilities have arisen for companies to create and maintain customer relations. Today, customers expect companies to be represented on social media platforms. Customers today will discuss companies and products on social media, regardless of whether the companies are represented on the platforms or not. Therefore, it is important for companies to be present on these platforms in order to be a part of the discussion. On Instagram, a company can share content that would perhaps be unfitting for any other medium. This thesis researches how the top five Interbrand companies on Instagram have worked with marketing and PR, and how their posted content affects the users’ level of interaction.    Two methods of analysis have been used in the writing of this thesis. In the first one, content analysis, the content and level of interaction of 200 Instagram posts were examined. Furthermore, a survey was conducted, with the aim of investigating Instagram users’ motivations for using the platform and of following a company profile on Instagram.   The material has been researched with an overall marketing and public relations perspective. Other theories that have been used concern customer relationship management, self-representation and self-disclosure, back stage and front stage and word-of-mouth theories.   The results show strong indicators that different kinds of posts evoke different levels of user interaction. The companies mainly use Instagram to market their products and to share information about events and new releases. These kinds of posts mainly receive a low level of interaction, with as little as one percent of the companies’ followers liking, and two in 10 000 commenting on the pictures. However, when the companies utilized Instagram’s co-creative features, for example by encouraging the users to use company specific hashtags, the level of interaction increased by as much as five times. Other interesting results concern back stage sharing and how interaction affects trust in a company’s message.

The purpose of this thesis was to gain an understanding of how the use of social media can build customer relationships and how interactions in these communication channels can be managed and optimized. A qualitative and deductive method was chosen for a deeper, more detailed and descriptive explanation of the considered topic. Three case studies have been implemented since this method was optimal to the purpose. Creating customer relationships through social media demands an understanding from a company perspective regarding how to treat customers well, encourage interactions and offer valued information. There are challenges working with social media and it is essential to consider the risks because the word-of-web can spread quickly.

This thesis addresses the influence that social media sites have on the behavior of online customers (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, etc.). The thesis combines information from three different approaches that study how social media sites are used by online stores to help increase their sales: 1) Google Analytics; 2) Crazy Egg; and 3) an online Survey. Firstly, Google Analytics was used to collect data from three online sources. The data was used to determine the path that customers took to arrive at the online stores. Using data only from those customers who completed a transaction. The researcher found that revenue generated from search engines was approximately four times higher than from typed URLs, online ads, as well as Twitter and Facebook. The researcher also found that revenue generated from Twitter traffic was increasing. Secondly, Crazy Egg was used to collect information on event actions (e.g., button presses) that generated more webpage specific details. In particular, we were interested in knowing how often customers clicked on an online store’s social media buttons (e.g., on Facebook and Twitter). The Crazy Egg data indicated that customers only used the online store’s social media buttons (i.e., Facebook and Twitter) about 1% of the time. Finally, an online survey was conducted in order to capture the opinions and attitudes of customers who used social media, including their tendencies to follow stores online, and the frequency of their visits to the store’s social media sites. We found that all participants used at least one social media site. Approximately 69% of the participants followed stores online using social media (Facebook and Twitter being the most common) and they used these sites to look for offers, find product information, and read reviews from other customers and the online stores’ owners. The survey also showed that 47% of participants reported that they had used social media buttons while visiting an online store, which was much higher than the results generated by Crazy Egg.

The study examines the role of social media in non-profit organizations using the case study from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Thailand Country office. As Social media become a significant channel to raise the visibility and promote the work of the organization. The focus of this research examines what drives organizations adopting social media through a model built round four key factors, 1.) The importance of social media, 2.) The impact to image of the organization, 3.) Communication strategies and, 4.) Characteristics of content on social media channels. The research aims to analyze mediums that affect the behavioral transformation of the four factors by integrated with the existing theoretical perspectives. The research was conducted in the UNDP country office social media channels mainly on Facebook from December 2013 to February 2014, using content analysis and interviewing as main methods. With the adoption of social media, the main conclusion of the study: gradually impact of social media in the enhancement of NGOs images, the changes in the construction of the content, the popularity of the themes in social media influenced by the domestic environments in the country and yet a substantial potential of social media in organizational advocacy.