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B2B brands on Twitter: Engaging users with a varying combination of social media content objectives, strategies, and tactics

Juntunen, M.
; 
Ismagilova, Elvira
; 
Oikarinen, E.-L.
Publication Date
2020-08
End of Embargo
Supervisor
Keywords
B2B advertising, Digital content marketing, Social media marketing, Brand management
Rights
© 2020 The Authors. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/)
Peer-Reviewed
Yes
Open Access status
openAccess
Accepted for publication
08/03/2019
Institution
Department
Awarded
Embargo end date
Collections
Management and Law Publications
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juntunen_et_al_2019.pdf
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Abstract
The objective of this research is to increase understanding about B2B company-led user engagement on social media content. Building on hierarchy-of-effects (HoE) theory, we explore how the world’s leading B2B companies use content objectives (why), strategies (how), and tactics (what) on Twitter. We first integrate B2B advertising and social media research on companies’ content objectives, strategies, and tactics. Then, using qualitative analyses, we examine the existence of objectives, strategies, and tactics in the most engaging tweets (N=365) of the worlds’ ten leading B2B brands, covering five industries, in 2017. Finally, we quantitatively examine how the use of diverse objectives and strategies differs between the most engaging tweets (N=318) and least engaging tweets (N=229) of the companies in 2018. The companies use objectives, strategies and tactics that relate to creating awareness, knowledge and trust, interest, and liking in the majority of their most and least engaging tweets, and express preference, conviction and purchase aspects much less. Differences exist in general, industry-wise, and company-wise. The study is a rare attempt to integrate the extant B2B advertising and social media research, and compare the most and least engaging B2B social media content.
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10454/17022
Version
Accepted manuscript
Citation
Juntunen M, Ismagilova E and Oikarinen EL (2020) B2B brands on Twitter: Engaging users with a varying combination of social media content objectives, strategies, and tactics. Industrial Marketing Management. 89:630-641.
Link to publisher’s version
Link to published version
Link to Version of Record
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2019.03.001
Type
Article
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