Study shows brands dedicated to postive social change use social media to primarily promote products

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LAWRENCE — Social media has greatly changed how all sorts of companies can interact with their audiences and customers. A new study suggests that even brands dedicated to positive social change tend to use social media as a way to promote the brand more so than activism or social causes.A University of Kansas professor co-authored a study analyzing the Facebook usage of a for-profit company most known for its support of social causes and a traditional for-profit company. They found that both used their pages primarily for product and brand promotion, but that the company dedicated to social entrepreneurship did use its page more to develop new connections than the traditional company, which focused more on capitalizing on existing ones.

Hyunjin Seo, associate professor of journalism at KU, co-authored the study with Ren-Whei Harn, a doctoral student at KU, and Salman Husain of Syria Relief and Development. They analyzed Facebook usage of TOMS, a company known for donating a pair of shoes or eyewear to people in need for every pair sold, and Sperry-Topsider, a traditional for-profit company that sells similar products to the same target demographic, Millennials, for one year. The study was published in the Athens Journal of Mass Media and Communications, and Seo presented it at the International Conference on Communication and Mass Media.

The study looked at use of social capital, or networks of people who work together often for the cause of social betterment. The goal was to see if two types of social capital — bridging and bonding — were different among a social entrepreneurship and traditional for-profit company.

“What we found on both TOMS and Sperry-Topsider Facebook communities was that a lot of their posts were dedicated to product and brand promotion,” Seo said. “However, there were greater amounts of social capital, in particular bridging, on the TOMS Facebook page.”

Seo, whose research specializes in ...

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