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Employee brand engagement on social media: Managing optimism and commonality

Author

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  • Pitt, Christine S.
  • Botha, Elsamari
  • Ferreira, João J.
  • Kietzmann, Jan

Abstract

This article considers how employees engage with B2B firms on social media, a topic that is largely overlooked in the extant brand engagement literature. Using the results from a large-scale study of employee brand engagement on social media, we identify two key drivers of employee brand engagement using the content analysis tool DICTION—namely, optimism and commonality. Employees of top-ranked and -rated firms express higher levels of optimism and commonality in their reviews of their employers on social media than do their counterparts in bottom-ranked and -rated firms. This permits the construction of a 2×2 matrix that allows managers to diagnose strategies for increasing or improving employee brand engagement. This creates four different kinds of employee brand engagement situations, and offers human resources and marketing managers different strategies in each case. We demonstrate how practitioners and scholars can shed new light on the way stakeholders engage with brands.

Suggested Citation

  • Pitt, Christine S. & Botha, Elsamari & Ferreira, João J. & Kietzmann, Jan, 2018. "Employee brand engagement on social media: Managing optimism and commonality," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 61(4), pages 635-642.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:bushor:v:61:y:2018:i:4:p:635-642
    DOI: 10.1016/j.bushor.2018.04.001
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Anaya Kumar & Anuragini Shirish, 2026. "Exploring Digital Responsibility Enactment: An Evaluation of the Social Implications of Digitally Responsive Employee Advocacy Platform," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 127-155, February.
    2. Yogesh K. Dwivedi & Elvira Ismagilova & Nripendra P. Rana & Ramakrishnan Raman, 2023. "Social Media Adoption, Usage And Impact In Business-To-Business (B2B) Context: A State-Of-The-Art Literature Review," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 971-993, June.
    3. Sara Mohamed Abdelaziz El-Menawy & Pancie Salah Saleh, 2023. "How does the mediating role of the use of social media platforms foster the relationship between employer attractiveness and generation Z intentions to apply for a job?," Future Business Journal, Springer, vol. 9(1), pages 1-13, December.
    4. Agnieszka Izabela Baruk & Grzegorz Wesołowski, 2021. "The Effect of Using Social Media in the Modern Marketing Communication on the Shaping an External Employer’s Image," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(14), pages 1-23, July.
    5. Tiwary, Nishant Kumar & Kumar, Rishi Kant & Sarraf, Shagun & Kumar, Prashant & Rana, Nripendra P., 2021. "Impact assessment of social media usage in B2B marketing: A review of the literature and a way forward," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 121-139.
    6. Roslyn Cameron & Heinz Herrmann & Alan Nankervis, 2024. "Mapping the evolution of algorithmic HRM (AHRM): a multidisciplinary synthesis," Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-14, December.
    7. Korzynski, Pawel & Mazurek, Grzegorz & Haenlein, Michael, 2020. "Leveraging employees as spokespeople in your HR strategy: How company-related employee posts on social media can help firms to attract new talent," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 204-212.
    8. Srikanth Parameswaran & Pubali Mukherjee & Rohit Valecha, 2023. "I Like My Anonymity: An Empirical Investigation of the Effect of Multidimensional Review Text and Role Anonymity on Helpfulness of Employer Reviews," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 25(2), pages 853-870, April.

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