WHAT MESSAGES TO POST? EVALUATING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SOCIAL MEDIA COMMUNICATIONS BASED ON MARKET AND OFFERING CHARACTERISTICS

Marketers are struggling with the successful implementation of social media executions in their marketing efforts. The effectiveness of their social media campaigns may be realized when their customers transmit company brand messages across their unique networks of friends and associates (Berger and Milkman 2012). Indeed, marketers using social media try to determine what messages will engage their customers. In essay one, we provide guidance to B2B (business-to-business) managers by examining the usage and effectiveness of social media message strategies. Building on B2B advertising, organizational buying, and word-of-mouth theories, we highlight key differences in B2B and business-to-consumer (B2C) social media message strategies in terms of branding, message appeals, selling, and information search. Analyzing 1,467 Facebook wall posts by Fortune-500 companies, using Bayesian Models, we find differences in the usage and effectiveness (message likes and comments) of social media. Specifically, the results indicate that the use of 1) corporate brands, 2) functional and emotional appeals, and 3) information search results in a higher percentage of message likes in B2B messages than in B2C messages. In addition, we find that B2B buyers, when compared to B2C consumers, demonstrate a higher message liking rate, but a lower message commenting rate. In essay two, we examine how and when social media communications get transmitted by estimating a Multivariate Multilevel Poisson Model. To answer how, we focus on the two primary modes of transmission, message likes and comments. To answer when, we examine the effect of offering characteristics, products (goods) versus services on the social transmission of content. Drawing upon the same Fortune-500 dataset, we investigate the effectiveness of social media message strategies in terms of branding, message appeals, and vividness. We find that the use of corporate brand names is more effective (in terms of likes and comments) for service messages, whereas the use of images, videos, and product brand names is more effective for product messages. Furthermore, the results indicate that the use of corporate brand names, images, and videos yields a lower commenting rate, whereas the use of emotional appeals results in a higher liking and commenting rate

Reclaiming Craftsmanship

In upcoming years, many institutions in the private and public sectors will lose valuable organizational knowledge due to organizational restructuring, departmental consolidation, retirements and attrition. This can have a potentially crippling effect on organizational effectiveness and service delivery. Organizations need to establish processes and develop tools that allow them to capture employees know-how-and-know-what, and disseminate that information and knowledge to other employees. In the age of the digital economy, the temptation appears to be to introduce technology to capture codifiable data, resulting in the inadvertent undervaluing of the personal knowledge and expertise accumulated by their employees over many years of practical experience. My focus is on personal knowledge, particularly concerning acquisition and transmission. Approaching the research from a post-positivist as well as a pragmatist approach, I have sought to identify and understand the factors that influence people to share knowledge and conversely how people learn from others, through mentoring for example. Within this context, I advocate for the return to the spirit of craftsmanship and reclaim the ideas of learning by doing, having more human-to-human connections to learn from, and taking the time to be engaged in mastering a practice. My goal has been to question rather than to pursue a definite explanation for how the acquisition and transmission of personal knowledge unfolds. As a pragmatist, I approach the idea of knowledge as a derivative of our engagement and active experience with the world. To this end, I added an applied element to this dissertation; I have included a working prototype of a platform for people to share their skills and interact with others in their network. This software application also acts as a repository of data for my research and for topics related to personal knowledge. For example, it includes an Alphabet of Personal Knowledge wherein I briefly examine the etymology and use of selected words in the context of knowledge acquisition and sharing. My interest lies in using multi-dimensional methods that complement each other with the express goal of creating new knowledge that can in turn be used to improve mentoring and knowledge sharing programs

Coping with unreliable automation: content/format/form in the design of human-automation systems

The research presented in this thesis is funded by the European Union and addresses the relationship between people and automated decision support in the context of Traffic Management. Given that automation might not always be 100% reliable, the first research question to be addressed is what effect does automation reliability have on human decision making? User trials contribute to addressing the question of, how can user interfaces be designed to cope with the effects of different levels of automation reliability. The thesis is developed around the concept of Content (the users’ information requirements), Format (the paradigm of interaction and communication protocols) and Form (how information is presented to the users). Results demonstrate that, even in the absence of explicit feedback, users are sensitive to automation reliability and can adapt their information search and decision making strategies accordingly. The user’s decision on whether or not to seek further information cannot be attributed only to information availability or accessing costs, but the visual appearance of the user interface can have a higher influence on user behaviour. These observations and conclusions led to the refinement of the Content/Format/Form concept to a broader sociotechnical design framework