Usage of Social Media for External Stakeholder Relationship Management -- A Study of German Companies and International Non-government Organizations

Social media enable Internet users to create and edit web content on their own. A growing number of individuals publish personal experiences and state their perceived degree of satisfaction with products and services on the Internet. Social media platforms therefore have become a space where enterprises or NGOs and other stakeholders meet. This paper presents a theoretical analysis of the potentials of social media for stakeholder relationship management. The analysis depicts that social media may enable organizations to open multilateral communication channels in order to strengthen the relations to their stakeholders. Furthermore, an empirical study was conducted to investigate the usage of different social media platforms by the 30 largest listed German companies(DAX 30) and 30 international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Results show that a majority of large corporations are using a wide range of social media platforms in order to establish a dialogue with their stakeholders. Moreover, we found that enterprises in contrast to NGOs strongly differentiate their social media activities to address specific target groups.