Date of Award

12-28-2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Specialization

Communication and Leadership

School or Department

School of Leadership Studies

First Advisor

Dr. John Caputo

Second Advisor

Dr. Alex Kuskis

Abstract

Social media can serve as a powerful relationship builder when used by organizations to connect with their stakeholders. In the course of this study, the social media activity of six non-Drit organizations were analyzed and evaluated over one month. Three of the organizations were nationwide non-Drits and three were local non-Drits located in central North Carolina. Each of the organizations used more than two social media applications, however, Facebook and Twitter were the only applications used by all of the organizations. Other social media platforms that were used included Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn, Vimeo, blogs, and organization-specific applications. For each of the organizations, their social media accounts were evaluated for relational content versus transactional content and the engagement rate between the organization and their followers were calculated. All counts, totals, and analysis of content were collected manually by the researcher. To better understand the importance of social media use by organizations, the Excellence Theory, Social Information Processing Theory, and Social Penetration Theory served as communication frameworks and beacons. Humans inherently want to connect to others and according to Buber (1958), relationships are the building blocks to life. This study explores how social media aids in the development of relationships. Despite the application used, all six of the organizations attempted to establish relationships with their stakeholders through the posting of value-added content that appealed to the common interests of the stakeholders and the organization. As to be expected, the nationwide organizations had much larger followings on social media than the smaller non-Drits. Despite this size difference, all of the organizations had online engagement with their stakeholders. The data collection from this study indicates that there is a positive trend between relational content posts on social media and online engagement. The higher the number of relational posts, the higher the level of engagement on social media. Non-Drit organizations are able to capitalize on the benefits of social media and to use their online presence as a way to build relationships. Facebook and Twitter were the most commonly used social media applications utilized to reach an organization’s supporters. By developing and sharing relational content on social media, non-Drit organizations can maximize their ability to reach their supporters and build relationships through social media use.

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