Usage of Social Media in City Marketing: A Research on 30 Metropolitan Municipalities in Turkey

Abstract

Rapid changes in information and communication technologies cause serious developments in marketing field similar to every sector. In parallel with these developments, the social media channels which appear as Web 2.0 applications have a number of advantages in comparison with traditional media channels. Social media gained a place in marketing activities because of its advantages. Social media is added on instruments in line with these developments that countries benefit in marketing activities for attracting more tourists, investment and becoming prominent against the other cities. Cities intensively benefit from social media because of social media's properties like reaching the large masses, low marketing cost, interaction, receiving feedbacks rapidly, etc. Within this context, the purpose of this research is to determine the use statuses of social media by metropolitan municipalities as part of city marketing. In accordance with this purpose, official social media accounts of 30 metropolitan municipalities are investigated between the dates of 01/09/2016 and 30/09/2016, then their shares in social media channels are investigated in the context of city marketing. It is observed that two metropolitan municipalities do not have official Facebook accounts, four metropolitan municipalities do not have an official Twitter account as well. Again, it is found that 19 metropolitan municipalities do not have an official Instagram account and 17 metropolitan municipalities do not have official YouTube account. In consequence, it is observed that, our metropolitan municipalities do not benefit from social media effectively for city marketing activities.

City image, city brand personality and generation Z residents' life satisfaction under economic crisis: Predictors of city-related social media engagement

“…Empirical studies (i.e., Cleave et al, 2017;Gümüş, 2016;Haro-de-Rosario, Sáez-Martín & del Carmen Caba-Pérez, 2018;Mainka et al, 2014) show that the social media platforms used mostly by cities are Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, although there are obvious differences between the respective popularity of social media services for each city.…”

A General Evaluati̇on on Soci̇al Medi̇a Usage of Muni̇ci̇pali̇ti̇es i̇n Kyrgyzstan

“…Teknolojinin hızla gelişmesiyle birlikte ortaya çıkan sosyal medya çok sayıda alanı doğrudan ya da dolaylı olarak etkilemiştir. Günümüzde sadece bireyler değil, işletmeler, markalar, kamu kurumları ve kâr amacı gütmeyen kurumlar da sosyal medyada yer almaktadırlar (Gümüş, 2016;Dessart vd., 2015;Yeşildal, 2019). Sosyal medyanın halka en yakın kurumlardan biri olan belediyeleri de etkilediği söylenebilir.…”

“…Sosyal medya, kurumların vatandaşlarla ve diğer kurumlarla etkileşime girmesine izin veren yenilikçi bir platform olarak da değerlendirilmektedir (Criado vd., 2013). Belediyelerin sosyal medya kullanımına ilişkin literatür incelendiğinde (Bennett ve Manoharan, 2017;Graham vd., 2015;Gümüş, 2016;Kaplan ve Haenlein, 2010;Kaygısız ve Sarı, 2015;Svidroňová vd., 2018), yerel yönetimlerin halkla olan iletişim faaliyetlerinde sosyal medyanın önemli yer tuttuğu görülmektedir. Bu konuda literatürde oldukça fazla sayıda çalışma bulunmasına rağmen, konuyu Kırgızistan örneğinde ele alan sınırlı sayıda çalışma bulunmaktadır (Talkanbayeva, 2019;Biibosunov ve Jumalieva, 2020).…”

Reproduction, cultural symbolism, and online relationship: Constructing city spatial imagery on TikTok

“…Social media has now become an optimal platform to share and improve one’s experience of visiting a city, where personal experiences and interactions are influencing people’s perceptions of the city in question ( Sevin, 2014 ). Therefore, it would be undesirable to not make full use of social media in the marketing of a city ( Gümüş, 2017 ).…”