Social Media - Integrate it and perform better?

Abstract: Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to assess the relationship between companies’ social media integration and companies’ subjective social media performance. Hypotheses: In this thesis eight hypotheses are formulated. All eight of them focus on if there is a relationship between integration of social media and subjective social media performance. Seven of the hypotheses are focusing on possible specific goals with social media and one is about if there is a more general relationship. Methodology: In this thesis a deductive method as well as a positivistic and an objectivistic approach are used. Based on theory, questions for our research were formulated and tested through interviews, looked over by academic professionals and finally tested in a pilot study. The main study was conducted as an online survey where answers from 511 companies were collected, resulting in a response rate of 38.02%. Conclusion: On all hypotheses a positive correlation between integration of social media and subjective social media performance can be found. However it is in general not very common for companies to feel satisfied with how they perform in social media. It is as well not very common for companies to fully integrate all departments in their social media activities. It was also concluded that companies which are not yet active in social media services could have Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube as starting points, when thinking about what social media services to start their social media activities in. Suggestions for further research: We suggested that social media integration and social media performance should be tested objectively in further research, for example by doing experimental design and case studies. It could also further be tested by doing the research internationally, on companies in other industries as well as on smaller and other types of companies.