Social Media Communication in Organizations: The Challenges of Balancing Openness, Strategy, and Management

Does social media usage matter? An analysis of online practices and digital media perceptions of communication practitioners in Europe

“…Using social media strategically continues to be one of the main challenges for the profession (DiStaso & MacCorkindale, 2012;Paine, 2011;Lee & Bernoff, 2011) and for European public relations practitioners. Moreover, is it necessary to take into account the mentioned self-overestimation of practitioners' knowledge in the field (Macnamara & Zerfass, 2012), which means that real implementation of a strategic orientation could be adopted even less in real life. Social media have to be discussed as an integral part of communication management (Duhé, 2012;Zerfass & Pleil, 2012;Tench & Yeomans, 2013).…”

“…A recent study by Macnamara and Zerfass (2012) also showed that three-quarters of PR and corporate practitioners in Australia and almost 70 percent of European practitioners claim to have 'advanced' or 'intermediate' knowledge of social media. However, other findings of these surveys suggest that a number or these claims are over-stated.…”

“…However, according to Wright and Hinson (2013) the overestimation of social media by public relations professionals in three different ways: overestimation of their competences to deal with social media (Macnamara, 2010;Macnamara & Zerfass, 2012); overestimation of the importance of social media adoption (Zerfass, Verhoeven, Tench, Moreno, & Verčič, 2011); and overestimation of the influence of social media. Moreover a third party effect could be considered if professionals estimate that social media has a lesser influence on themselves than on internal and external stakeholders.…”

“…Rational arguments and suggestions include: to engage in direct and open conversation with publics, addressing the needs, concerns, and interests of publics while disseminating organizational information (Men & Tsai, 2012), to provide an easy-to-use interface for their stakeholders, keep visitors on the site, encourage users to return, engage in dialogic communication (Li & Bernoff, 2011;McCorkindale & Morgoch, 2013), to establish clear rules to encourage and facilitate participation (Kent, 2013) and to balance between participation involving openness and community and effectiveness in representing organizational objectives (Macnamara & Zerfass, 2012). In short, authenticity, transparency, dialogue, sharing and giving control are some of the 'social rules' that social media requires (Rodríguez, 2006 (Moreno, Zerfass, Tench, Verčič, & Verhoeven, 2013;Moreno, Zerfass, & Navarro, 2012;Tench et al, 2013;Van Ruler & Verčič, 2004), there is still much to understand about the use of social media by public relations practitioners from a cross-national empirical approach.…”

“…The focus of research shifted from normative propositions like the promise of more symmetrical and dialogical communication approaches (e.g., Kent, Taylor, & White, 2003;Wilcox, 2006;Duhé, 2012;Wright, 1998Wright, , 2001 to rational arguments about benefits, limits and structural prerequisites of online strategies (e.g., Treem & Leonardi, 2012;Zerfass & Pleil, 2012) to empirical studies on online practices in various regions of the world (Wright & Hinson, 2009, 2012Macnamara & Zerfass, 2012;.…”