Content area
Full Text
Introduction
Recent changes in the business environment have prompted scholars to pay particular attention to social networking sites (SNS) as a new medium of business communication. In the growing body of literature on SNS, several papers have focused on Facebook in particular (Mayer and Puller, 2008; Lewis et al. , 2008; Hughes et al. , 2012). Facebook and most SNS offer a strong platform for creating empirical studies because of their public features, although their measurement is not easy. The advent of the internet not only reorganised the way in which companies collect information, but also redefined stakeholders' expectations. A study of governments showed that Web 2.0 applications are creating new features of innovation and improved transparency (Meijer and Thaens, 2010) and in some sense their stakeholders are recognised as partners and co-creators, not just consumers (Chua et al. , 2012).
Companies use social media for communication purposes with stakeholders. The field of marketing and PR is generally well studied within the topic of communication, for exmaple how firms support their brands (Michaelidou et al. , 2011; E-Marketer, 2010; Breslauer and Smith, 2009). The goal is to identify Facebook metrics to help the measurement of this online SNS channel for professionals focusing on stakeholders, corporate social responsibility and social legitimacy. This study provides insights into some specifically corporate Facebook practices and offers new measurement metrics of popularity, commitment, and virality, stakeholders' mood and content analysis. Thus it also examines the online reputation of a firm. The aim was to develop a new dimension of measurements from which new findings and implications can be drawn. They not only can be used by practitioners, but can also help scholars identify how to use Facebook as a tool for online reputation management.
For these reasons the paper seeks to address the following research questions based on three theories as explained in the corporate Facebook metrics section:
RQ1. How can reactivity and dialogic communication be measured on corporate Facebook?
RQ2. How can stakeholder engagement be measured?
RQ3. How can stakeholders' mood be measured on corporate Facebook?
RQ4. How can social legitimacy be measured on corporate Facebook?
Previous research
Social networking is part of Web 2.0, which means the user is no longer just a consumer of the content, but...