Beedie School of Business News

In March of 2011, in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan, Atlanta-based insurance giant Aflac Inc. was forced to confront a marketing fiasco with global implications. The voice of their famous Aflac duck, comedian Gilbert Gottfried, had used his Twitter account to make tasteless jokes about the natural disaster that wiped out entire cities on Japan’s northeast coast.

The online backlash against Gottfried’s social media outburst – and ultimately Aflac – was swift and forceful in the United States, but the repercussions were even greater in Japan, where the company insures one in four households.

To the company’s credit, a well-crafted public relations and social media response – along with the swift firing of Gottfried – quelled what could have been an overseas marketing (and financial) disaster – one that was triggered by poor comedic taste and the power of social media. Keep reading…

Tags: Aflac Inc., Beedie School of Business, Business Horizons, creative consumers, Daniel Shapiro, digital media, Facebook, Gilbert Gottfried, global marketing, globalization, Google, GREE, international marketing, Kirk Plangger, Leyland Pitt, LinkedIn, marketing strategy, mixi, Pierre Berthon, Research, sfu, social media, Twitter, Web 2.0

Ryan Holmes (left), founder and CEO of HootSuite Media, being interviewed by CKNW host Bill Good (right).

Ryan Holmes, founder and CEO of social media management system HootSuite, sat in front of a live audience at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business on September 27 to share his experience as head of one of Canada’s largest tech start-ups.

The event was part of the Beedie School of Business’ partnership with prominent Vancouver radio station CKNW, which sees SFU’s downtown Vancouver campus play host to “The Chief Executives”, a series of live radio interviews conducted by CKNW host Bill Good, profiling some of the country’s top executives.

Eschewing typical CEO attire in favour of trainers, jeans and t-shirt, Holmes cut a relaxed figure as he joked with members of the audience and host Good throughout the interview. Keen to engage with the audience, Holmes at one point asked for a show of hands to survey the number of HootSuite users present in the room, prompting Good to joke that Holmes was taking over his show. Keep reading…

Tags: Apple, Beedie School of Business, Bill Gates, Bill Good, CKNW, entrepreneurship, Facebook, hootsuite, innovation, Invoke Media, Marketing, Ryan Holmes, Simon Fraser University, social media, start-ups, technology, The Chief Executives, Twitter

The app was developed in-class by SFU undergrads (from left to right) Charlene Adomako, Randy Tarampi, Justin Lee, Joshua Horacsek and Kyle Krystalowich.

In 2010’s hit film The Social Network, a young Mark Zuckerberg knows he has just launched something special when – out of the blue – a fellow Harvard student asks him to “Facebook me.”

Simon Fraser University’s Justin Lee, a fourth-year accounting student in the Beedie School of Business who helped develop the pioneering new Beedie iPhone app, hasn’t quite experienced his Zuckerberg moment – at least not yet. “People have messaged me and said, ‘Good job,’” Lee says, “but it’s not like you walk around campus and everybody’s using it.”

Lee’s modesty belies the weight of his team’s achievement. Originally conceived in an innovative course combination that involved students from Bus 338, an undergraduate class on business innovation, and CMPT 275, an undergraduate course on Software Engineering, the SFU Beedie mobile app was eventually developed by students who laboured for the better part of a year on the project, developing, refining and beta-testing features. The result: a one-stop communication portal for the Beedie community, merging Facebook, Twitter and other social media with school news, customized transit information, campus maps and a unique Q&A forum for students. “The app integrates it all into one medium,” Lee explains. “It’s got all the services students need.” Keep reading…

Tags: app, Beedie iPhone app, Bus 338, business innovation, communications, Facebook, innovation, iPhone, Jan Kietzmann, Justin Lee, Mark Zuckerberg, SFU Beedie Mobile, SFU Beedie mobile app, social media, Software Engineering, technology, The Social Network, Twitter

For the second year in a row, SFU’s Beedie School of Business is enjoying some serious Klout on social media.

Tweeting since early 2010, Simon Fraser University’s business school (@SFUBeedie) has been rated as the most influential Canadian business school by a prominent social media metric known as Klout. The metric website measures influence by using data from selected media channels, such as Twitter followers and unique mentions and Facebook comments and likes.

With a Klout score of 46, the Beedie School has edged out business schools at the University of Toronto (44), University of Western Ontario (43), and Concordia University (41).

The Beedie School has used Twitter, Facebook, and other social media as a means to stay connected with the Beedie community—including current students, faculty, staff, alumni, industry and community partners, university partners, and employers. It has used Twitter specifically to follow and learn what they are up to, to disseminate school news and research, and to further communicate with its community.

The school’s social media strategy benefits from a number of influential users from the Beedie community. They include dean Daniel Shapiro (@SFUBeedieDean), Canada’s first business school dean to be on Twitter, who shares business and economic research and opinions via the medium.

Another prominent faculty tweeter is Ian McCarthy (@Toffeemen68), Professor and Canada Research Chair in Technology and Operations Management at SFU. McCarthy, who has over 10,200 Twitter followers, was recently named to OnlineMBA’s international list of the “50 Business Professors You Should Follow on Twitter.”

The school’s burgeoning social media environment also benefits from award-winning faculty research.

New marketing research from marketing professor Leyland Pitt, focused on the relationship between luxury wine branding and social media, has been awarded the Outstanding Paper prize for 2012 by the Emerald Literati Network.

The article, entitled “Luxury wine brand visibility in social media:  An exploratory study” and published in International Journal of Wine Business Research, garnered the top billing as part of the Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2012.

Last fall, the management journal Business Horizons and Elsevier awarded Beedie School researchers Jan Kietzmann, Kristopher Hermkens, Ian McCarthy, and Bruno Silvestre with the Best Article Award for 2011 for their paper, “Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media.”

This past year, the Beedie School also launched the popular undergraduate class Social Media and Business at the SFU Surrey campus – taught by Assistant Professor Kietzmann and instructor Ashish Gurung.

Related articles:

1. Academic award toasts SFU branding research
2. The School of Social Media
3. Students engage community with social media
4. Beedie prof. selected to prestigious Twitter “must follow” list
5. Social media research wins 2011 Best Article Award
6. Vancouver Canucks give MBA social media project warm reception
7. AACSB BizEd Magazine profiles Beedie Mobile: What’s App-enin’ At B-Schools

Tags: Ashish Gurung, Beedie School of Business, Bruno Silvestre, communications, Daniel Shapiro, Facebook, Ian McCarthy, Jan Kietzmann, Klout, Kristopher Hermkens, Leyland Pitt, Research, sfu, SFU Beedie, SFU Surrey, Simon Fraser University, social media, Surrey, Twitter

New marketing research from SFU professor Leyland Pitt, focused on the relationship between luxury wine branding and social media, has been awarded the Outstanding Paper prize for 2012 by the Emerald Literati Network.

The article, entitled “Luxury wine brand visibility in social media:  An exploratory study” and published in International Journal of Wine Business Research, garnered the top billing as part of the Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2012.

Pitt, a professor of marketing at SFU’s Beedie School of Business, co-authored the paper with Mignon Reynecke, a PhD student at the Lulea University of Technology in Sweden, and Pierre Berthon of Bentley University in Boston. The article was chosen following consultation amongst the journal’s editorial team, made up of eminent academics and industry leaders. According to Emerald Group Publishing, it was selected as “one of the most impressive pieces of work the team has seen throughout 2011.”

In the paper, Pitt and his colleagues set out to address the visibility of luxury wine brands in the social media environment, in particular the Bordeaux first growth brands. They explained that the Bordeaux wines were used because, given their retail price, reputation and rarity, they “epitomize not only luxury wine brands, but also luxury brands in general… they are the kinds of brands that legends are made of.”

They gathered social media data on the five Bordeaux first growths from the website How Sociable, comparing overall visibility scores and  visibilities in 32 different forms of social media. Ultimately, they focused on the brands’ visibility and intersection with “the most important and most relevant social media” such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ning and Digg.

Perhaps surprisingly, they found that that some of the luxury brands considered did not, at the time the data were gathered, have a clearly defined social media strategy.

That lack of focus in the social media environment may not last for long, however. According to the researchers, there are opportunities moving forward for luxury wine brand managers to use social media as a tool in their marketing strategies. They note that some threats may exist to these brands should they take a laissez faire approach to social media, particularly given the rise of social media’s influence and credibility among consumers.

“Social media are now as influential, if not more so than, conventional media,” they said. “This has a massive impact on brands.”

To this end, luxury marketers in the wine space will need to give serious consideration to every social media tool at their disposal.

“Astute wine brand managers will define the social media that they care most about,” say the researchers. “Brands can take directions in social media that would have been unlikely if not impossible just five years ago. Brand managers will not fully be able to control the destinies of these brands, but at least they should still be part of, and ideally, direct the conversations that occur around their brands.”

In addition to the Outstanding Paper Award, the article was also selected as the best paper of the year in International Journal of Wine Business Research.

Further information about the research can be viewed at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1912147

For more information about the Emerald Literati Network’s Awards for Excellence, visit www.emeraldinsight.com/literati

Tags: Bentley University, Bordeaux, branding, Digg, Emerald Group Publishing, Emerald Literati Network, Facebook, How Sociable, International Journal of Wine Business Research, Leyland Pitt, LinkedIn, Literati Network Awards for Excellence, Lulea University of Technology, luxury marketing, Marketing, Mignon Reynecki, Ning, Pierre Berthon, social media, Twitter, wine, wine research, YouTube

A course that was launched less than a year ago at SFU’s Beedie School of Business has provided students with unprecedented focus on analyzing and optimizing the value of social media for organizations and businesses. Through community-building projects, undergrad students applied the social media lessons of the course to new and established not-for-profits and social agencies on a wide range of issues, from life-saving transplants to disability in sport.

The course, Social Media & Business, was taught at SFU’s Surrey campus by assistant professor Jan Kietzmann and instructor Ashish Gurung.

Students used Facebook and the Twitter hashtag #BUS450 to engage with each other and their teachers, and to collaborate on assigned projects and readings. Throughout the semester, Kietzmann and Gurung invited industry thoughts leaders, entrepreneurs and businesses to share their insights and expertise in social media. In the classroom, students were joined by She & He consulting, Translink and Yelp. Via Skype, they also connected with University of Ottawa’s Michael Geist, and representatives from Badgeville and Crowdbooster. Outside the classroom, students visited Vancouver’s Invoke and Hootsuite to learn from two very successful global players in the Social Media space.

As a final project, students were tasked with developing a social media campaign for a community client or campus issue.

Among the highlights:

- The student project entitled “Don’t Be a Douchebag” used Twitter and Facebook to accrue over 100 registrations for the BC Transplant Society, with the aim of providing potentially life-saving transplants for British Columbians. The campaign’s social media messaging was endorsed and retweeted by the likes of musicians Jann Arden and Bif Naked, television personality Chris Gailus, and NHL hockey legends Doug Gilmour and Brendan Morrisson.

- Students with the #SIFEHungerArmy campaign raised over $500 for the Surrey Food Bank, and garnered over 1,000 blog page views to raise awareness of the food bank’s impact and needs in the community.

- A social media campaign addressing disability in winter sport, “Adaptive Sliding Canada”, was embraced by winter sports athletes and fans across Canada and is helping to build momentum for the inclusion of new sports in future Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.

- A group of students going by the moniker “Jersey Score” – through fundraising tweet-ups and other social media activities – raised over $1500 for sporting gear and apparel for soccer-playing youth in Manamani, South Africa.

- The students from the project “Chic Campus” engaged via social media with fashion events and fundraisers across the Simon Fraser University campus to highlight the role of fashion in the university context.

- A group of students from the project called “SimonFSays” parlayed user-generated social media content into the capturing of student and community sentiment at Simon Fraser University in the digital sphere.

Social Media & Business, launched last fall, was offered for the second time this past spring, and has quickly emerged as a favourite offering among Simon Fraser University students, especially those who are increasingly compelled by the intersection of social media tactics with overarching business strategy and societal change.

“Our students worked very hard and, among the many difficult deliverables they had, they impressed me the most with their social media campaigns,” said Kietzmann. “They truly engaged communities – local, national and international, and to that end I am very proud of what they accomplished.”

The Beedie School continues to enjoy recognition for taking a leadership role in the promotion of social media for entrepreneurs, managers and organizations.

Last December, Kietzmann won a noteworthy research award from the journal Business Horizons (along with co-authors Kristopher Hermkens, Ian McCarthy, and Bruno Silvestre.) His paper “Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media,” won the business journal’s Best Article Award for 2011, in great part for its industry impact and recognition.

And the innovation-focused tweets of SFU MBA professor Ian McCarthy have earned him a spot on OnlineMBA’s international list of “50 Business Professors You Should Follow on Twitter.”

Tags: Adaptive Sliding Canada, Ashish Gurung, BC Transplant Society, Chic Campus, Crowdbooster, Facebook, Hootesuite, invoke, Jan Kietzmann, Jersey Score, LinkedIn, SFU Surrey, SIFE, social media, Surrey Food Bank, TransLink, Twitter, Winter Paralympic Games, Yelp

Students in SFU’s Full-Time MBA program at the Beedie School of Business have garnered real-world marketing lessons that have taken them from social agencies in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside to a hospice society in Pitt Meadows to a seniors wellness centre in North Vancouver. In the process of helping these groups raise awareness or operating funds, they have enjoyed early-stage support from the likes of celebrated author Margaret Atwood and Vancouver hockey star Roberto Luongo.

The community interactions are part of the marketing class Business 702, taught by SFU marketing professor Leyland Pitt. Within the class, students are challenged to strategically design a social media marketing program for not-for-profit organizations in Metro Vancouver.

By working outside of the classroom with social agencies and community groups, the students have been able to broaden their perspective around business and society – and further integrate social entrepreneurship and sustainability into their marketing coursework.

A case in point is a group that worked with the Minerva Foundation for BC Women, which promotes community and workplace opportunities for women. The MBA students developed a successful “Leading by Tweeting” campaign – with the goal of raising awareness and support for the foundation via the microblogging medium of Twitter. They ultimately found online champions such as Patricia Graham (Editor, Vancouver Sun), Bridgitte Anderson (Vice-President, Edelman), and the aforementioned Margaret Atwood – and in the process guided executives at the foundation in the art of using Twitter and other social media channels. As MBA student Alice Longhurst noted, a retweet from Atwood helped put the organization’s message in front of over 280,000 Twitter users.

“As a business school, we believe that businesses can survive and indeed thrive by emphasizing sustainability and social responsibility,” said David Hannah, Academic Director of the SFU MBA program. “By involving our students in initiatives like this, we are preparing them to make this kind of impact.”

Another group of MBAs chose to support the Dugout, a local organization that provides daily meals and support services to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside community. The organization, which positions itself as the “community living room” for people in that neighbourhood, has roots going back to the 1960s.

MBA student Colin Stansfield said his group was compelled to help the organization given that it is one of the longest-standing venues for Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in Vancouver, and serves many clients who are either homeless or live in Single Room Occupancies.

To support the Dugout, the student group created a new website, along with Facebook and YouTube channels designed to enhance fundraising efforts. Along the way, they added some sporting sizzle to their campaign.

Upon discovering that the Dugout has long welcomed locals into the facility to enjoy Vancouver Canucks hockey games – since the NHL franchise’s inception in 1970 – student Alannah Cervenko took the organization’s story to some of today’s players, including Roberto Luongo, Sami Salo and Kevin Bieksa at an official team function. The response from the Canucks players was very positive – with all of the Canucks canvassed signing a commemorative playoff towel geared to support the Dugout campaign.

Left to right: Vancouver Canuck Roberto Luongo, MBA student Alannah Cervenko and Canuck Sami Salo

Other student projects delivered social media marketing campaigns for organizations as the Greater Vancouver Firefighters, Ridge Meadows Hospice Society, Downtown Eastside Kitchen Tables Project, the North Shore Keep Well Society, Maplewood Farms and We Canada.

“Throughout this project, these students displayed a remarkable ability to leverage the power of social media to help these organizations achieve their marketing goals more completely – and by extension make a real difference in the community,” said Professor Leyland Pitt.

Though the marketing class concludes this December, many of the MBA students will carry on with their efforts with the organizations into the New Year and beyond.

Tags: Alannah Cervenko, Alice Longhurst, Business 702, Colin Stansfield, David Hannah, Downtown Eastside Kitchen Tables Project, Facebook, Greater Vancouver Firefighters, Leyland Pitt, Maplewood Farms, Margaret Atwood, MBA, Minerva Foundation, Patricia Graham, Ridge Meadows Hospice Society, Roberto Luongo, social entrepreneurship, sustainability, The Dugout, the North Shore Keep Well Society, Twitter, We Canada

BY JANAYA FULLER-EVANS, BURNABY NOW

Ads on Naps co-founders Jag Manhas and Phil Chow entered the Dragon’s Den voluntarily, and survived.

Manhas, a British Columbia Institute of Technology student and Chow, a Simon Fraser University alumnus, took part in a mini Dragon’s Den at SFU’s Surrey campus on Sept. 9.

The advertising company sells high-definition ad space on napkins, which are supplied free of charge to businesses in Canada.

The Ads on Naps team went up against another team – presenting a social networking venture called Caregaroo – and met with Jim Treliving and Bruce Croxon from CBC’s Dragon’s Den.

Treliving is the owner of Boston Pizza International and Croxon is the founder of Lavalife and Vida Spas.

The Caregaroo team presented the winning business pitch, but Treliving and Croxon were interested in the Ads on Naps concept, according to the founders.

“Both Phil and I started talking to Jim and Bruce,” Manhas says in a phone interview on Oct. 21. “Hopefully we’re going to get a deal done with Jim on the side, and we’ve been invited to the show in Toronto.

They’re working on getting their napkins in every Mr. Lube in Canada, according to Manhas, and possibly every Boston Pizza across Canada, as well.

The company also prints QR codes – scanable bar codes – on the napkins, with micro-websites attached to the codes. The codes can be accessed using a barcode scanner application on a smart phone.

“It’s not just a print ad, it’s a digital ad that goes right to your phone with a micro-site,” Manhas explains. “You can view video, galleries, get directions, click to call, play a game, or enter a contest.”

The company plans to supply the napkins to bars, restaurants, cafes, stadiums, airlines and other businesses free of charge, he says. The company hopes to have its napkins picked up by franchises, he adds.

Ads on Naps currently has a campaign for Open Road Autogroup for the Scion IQ.

The company uses Facebook and Twitter to engage with prospective clients and promote its campaigns, including a Scion IQ contest, Canucks ticket giveaways and gift card giveaways, Manhas says.

“Facebook’s starting to blow up pretty nicely,” he says. The company’s Facebook page had 161 likes as of Oct. 24.

The company is also holding a one-day event at a Blenz in Surrey in November, Manhas adds.

“We’re still pretty fresh,” he says of the company, adding that once the company completes its market research, it’ll take off.

Manhas and Chow, who attended Alpha Secondary together, have been working on the concept for a year and a half, Chow says.

Chow works full-time, while Manhas attends SFU, so the pair has worked on it on the side as much as possible, along with a team of helpers.

They’ve also put in some money, as well, Manhas says, so they hope to see a return.

“In other places around the world it’s really, really successful,” Manhas says, noting that no one is doing it in Vancouver as of yet.

The pair hopes to get the company’s napkins in businesses across the country.

“When the time comes to expand across Canada, we’ll look at investors,” he says. “Right now we’ve used our own personal savings to really get going.”

The mini-Dragon’s Den was put on by the Beedie School of Business, in partnership with Venture Connection and Coast Capital Savings. Venture Connection provides support and advice to student ventures at SFU.

Manhas and Chow have received support from Venture Connection, Manhas says, and are open to being contacted by entrepreneurs to give back that support to new ventures, as well.

For more information on Ads on Naps, go www.adsonnaps.com. The company is also on Twitter @adsonnaps, and has an AdsOnNaps page on Facebook.

Read more: http://www.burnabynow.com/Burnaby+advertising+company+meets+with+Dragon/5708378/story.html#ixzz1e0pK9dy8

Tags: ad space, Ads on Naps, advertising, Beedie, Coast Capital Savings, digital ad, Dragon's Den, entrepreneurship, Facebook, Phil Chow, print ad, QR, School of Business, sfu, social media, Surrey, Twitter, Venture Conenction

The following was originally published on Invoke’s blog and authored by Justine Yu.

Ashish Gurung teaches an undergraduate social media course at SFU Beedie School of Business. He is also involved with a bunch of other stuff ‚ some startups, some consulting and lots of non-profits. Find him@ashishgurung and http://www.ashishgurung.ca

Tell us a bit about the social media course you created. What motivated you to create an entire course about social media at SFU’s Beedie School of Business?

Jan Kietzmann, a SFU professor, had the idea to bring social media to the business school. We noticed students were entering the work force with little or no formal education in social media. So, we paired up to teach this course. This is the first course dedicated to social media at the SFU Beedie School of Business. It just makes sense — students need to be educated about social media, especially from a business-driven context. It’s a natural and needed extension to our undergraduate program. Plus our class reached the waiting list within a few days of registration.

Why do you think it’s important for students to learn about and familiarize themselves with social media?

It’s important for our students to not only learn about current trends in social media, but to understand social media as a whole – from learning about behavioural economics, to virality and building communities. We’re bringing the gap between the classroom and industry. We’re skyping in awesome startups like Summify and Launchrock, and the students get a chance to meet leaders from Invoke, HootSuite and EA. It’s a great balance between theory and practical applications. Students will be leaving our class with a greater understanding of social media and its impact on both society and businesses.

Why do you think it’s important to incorporate social media in universities and lecture halls?

I think it’s very important to incorporate social media in our classrooms. I know many instructors who still don’t believe in the power of social media and refuse to integrate it in their classrooms. It’s how the students communicate with each other — it’s how they hear the news. There’s a high probability that students are browsing Facebook while in class. It’s important to now use these tools to enhance the learning experience.

Invoke: Where do you see the future of social media in the classroom?

Our class uses a Facebook group and Twitter chat (#bus495) to communicate with each other and it’s awesome. Students are posting articles, comments and having discussions everyday on our Facebook group and Twitter chat. I’m surprised by how much the students have embraced it — they’re communicating with each other, getting to know each other and are having intelligent conversations over these channels. As the instructors, we’re using Facebook to post online notes, presentations and class updates. I’m hoping to see more classrooms embrace social media. The goal is to create a culture in the classroom where students are learning from each other and from the instructors. I believe we’ll start to see educators adopt web apps that encourage a social learning environment.

What are your top five industry sites that you check out on a regular basis?

Hacker News,  Summify, 
Hootsuite , Social Media Examiner and TechCrunch.

Read more at Invoke’s blog: http://www.invokemedia.com/blog/

Tags: Ashish Gurung, Beedie, BUS495, business, communication, education, Facebook, hootsuite, invoke, practical skills, sfu, social learning, social media, Twitter, undergraduate

The management journal Business Horizons and Elsevier have awarded Beedie School of Business researchers Jan Kietzmann, Kristopher Hermkens, Ian McCarthy, and Bruno Silvestre with the Best Article Award for 2011 for their paper, “Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media.”

“The article is an excellent exemplar of the best of Business Horizons in that it addresses an important and timely topic while offering practical lessons for managers,” said the journal in a special announcement. “It also reinforces our commitment to be one of the leading publications for social media research and practitioner usage.”

Business Horizons also noted that the paper has been widely cited in industry and academic circles. It appears on a list of articles recommended by the US Department of Health for health care professionals to understand emerging health communication issues, and is listed as a key reading by the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) policy paper on social media and its impact on employers and trade unions. The paper is also currently listed among the Top 10 of ScienceDirect’s hottest 25 articles published in its portfolio of business management and accounting journals.

The research, published in the journal’s spring edition, argues that for managers to effectively use and respond to social media they need to understand the different functionalities behind different social media platforms.

The Beedie School authors present a framework and recommendations for how firms should develop strategies for monitoring, understanding and responding to different social media activities — on the premise that different social media arenas correspond with different organizational functions — from employee recruitment to customer service to public relations.

“The social media ecosystem is rapidly evolving, and many managers struggle to understand the implications, both opportunities and threats, posed by this ecosystem, and as a result they are feeling the pressure,” said Ian McCarthy, Beedie School of Business Professor and Canada Research Chair in Technology & Operations Management. “There is an abundance of evidence indicating that it can significantly impact a firm’s reputation, sales and even survival.”

The research concludes that by carefully analyzing the layers of the social media ecosystem, firms can understand how these activities vary in terms of their function and impact — and act accordingly.

“Differences do matter in social media, which is why you need to set your priorities,” said Jan Kietzmann, Assistant Professor at the Beedie School. “That’s why it is important for companies to understand and where necessary develop these social media platforms.”

Tags: awards, Bruno Silvestre, Business Horizons, Facebook, Flickr, Ian McCarthy, Jan Kietzmann, ScienceDirect, social media, Twitter, US Department of Health, YouTube