Rethinking measurements of social media use by charities: a mixed methods approach
Rethinking measurements of social media use by charities: a mixed methods approach
Increasingly, the utilisation of social media services are helping charities continue to operate, as they provide unique opportunities of low-cost, easily targeted and viral marketing that have never been seen before to this scale. However, without knowing exactly how and why they are being used, analysis of their performance that could be used to indicate areas of improvement will continue to be insufficient. An innovative mixed methods approach was followed in order to address the issue, and this paper presents the results of a study that sought to determine the reasons why charities use social media, and the strategies they employ in an attempt to succeed. Three main contributions are presented – firstly, by combining the qualitative and quantitative data it was discovered that social media are currently intended to be used primarily as relationship building tools, with little focus on fundraising; secondly, an overview of how successful charities perceive social media to be is shown and methods of measurement are mapped to a previously designed framework; and thirdly, future requirements for revising the measurement framework are discussed, demonstrating the importance of this work for grounding future developments.
Social media, charities, marketing, web science
Phethean, Christopher
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Tiropanis, Thanassis
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Harris, Lisa
cf587c06-2cf7-49e6-aef8-c9452cbff529
2 May 2013
Phethean, Christopher
270f7f09-f94e-4d74-bfbf-2f2700d1572f
Tiropanis, Thanassis
d06654bd-5513-407b-9acd-6f9b9c5009d8
Harris, Lisa
cf587c06-2cf7-49e6-aef8-c9452cbff529
Phethean, Christopher, Tiropanis, Thanassis and Harris, Lisa
(2013)
Rethinking measurements of social media use by charities: a mixed methods approach.
Web Science 2013, , Paris, France.
02 - 04 May 2013.
Record type:
Conference or Workshop Item
(Paper)
Abstract
Increasingly, the utilisation of social media services are helping charities continue to operate, as they provide unique opportunities of low-cost, easily targeted and viral marketing that have never been seen before to this scale. However, without knowing exactly how and why they are being used, analysis of their performance that could be used to indicate areas of improvement will continue to be insufficient. An innovative mixed methods approach was followed in order to address the issue, and this paper presents the results of a study that sought to determine the reasons why charities use social media, and the strategies they employ in an attempt to succeed. Three main contributions are presented – firstly, by combining the qualitative and quantitative data it was discovered that social media are currently intended to be used primarily as relationship building tools, with little focus on fundraising; secondly, an overview of how successful charities perceive social media to be is shown and methods of measurement are mapped to a previously designed framework; and thirdly, future requirements for revising the measurement framework are discussed, demonstrating the importance of this work for grounding future developments.
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WebSci13_Paper_FinalCopy-Revised2-1(preprint).pdf
- Author's Original
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Published date: 2 May 2013
Venue - Dates:
Web Science 2013, , Paris, France, 2013-05-02 - 2013-05-04
Keywords:
Social media, charities, marketing, web science
Organisations:
Web & Internet Science
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 353286
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/353286
PURE UUID: 5122caa3-31fc-44d0-832e-b6befca60859
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Date deposited: 11 Jun 2013 13:11
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:31
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Contributors
Author:
Thanassis Tiropanis
Author:
Lisa Harris
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