Country Branding and Social Media Technology : Practical Issues in Development of a Successful Country Brand

Abstract: Today we live in an extremely dynamic world. Some of us were born in countries with developed economy, well functioning civil society and established country brand. Some of us live in developing countries, which are trying to do their best on international arena. Unfortunately, very often the latter do not have a clear coordinated vision of moving forward. This makes it hard for international society to grasp the concept they assemble. One thing is clear – developing, and often developed, countries need to build their country brands in order to get the attention and interest from the outside world. At the same time, there is a very clear trend of the world’s population migration towards social media, which is capable of bringing additional benefits. There are two important Research questions in this master thesis. The first one is: "What are the Essential Conditions for Creation of Unified Country Branding Strategy?". The second research question is: "What are the Necessary Components for Country Branding Strategy Implementation Applying Omnifarious Social Media Technology Resources and Potential?". As the incentive of this master thesis is to understand, describe, structure and build certain practical guideline for country brand strategy in a social media environment, different research methods and data are used for this purpose. The main ones are the synthesis and analysis, aimed at the procession and extraction of valuable information, as well as its’ conversion into part of the universal country brand strategy approach. Observation technique was also used to proceed with the research, since the country branding is an on-going process, which needs constant follow-up to gather the facts. Intended target audience for this master thesis are national governments interested in country branding and struggling to find a starting point for it, country branding agencies, as well as all individuals, working or interested in the field of country branding.