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Industrial Marketing Management

Special Issue on
Social Media, Content Marketing and Engagement Strategies in B2B Markets

CALL FOR PAPERS

Deadline for Submission: January 31, 2017

The importance of social media is well established, and though the adoption of social media for B2B organizations has been considerably slower compared to their B2C counterparts, their benefits for industrial markets begin to emerge both in the popular and the academic literature. This is further reflected in a recent Special Issue of Industrial Marketing Management focussing on social media in B2B. Hitherto, B2B research has provided insights inter alia into the usage of social media (Lacoste, 2015; Leek, Canning and Houghton, 2016; Michaelidou, Siamagka and Christodoulides, 2011), the measurement of social media marketing (Michaelidou et al., 2011) and the determinants of social media adoption (Lacka and Chong, 2016; Siamagka, Christodoulides and Michaelidou, 2016). This call for papers builds on the recent Special Issue by inviting researchers to go beyond an interactional approach to social media in B2B to examine deeper levels of engagement with social media content amongst different stakeholders. Whilst progress has been made in the literature in terms of understanding social media usage in B2B, limited research points out to the variation of social media (content) engagement strategies among B2B organizations (Brennan and Croft, 2012). Contrary to B2C, where a considerable body-of-research has already been dedicated to customer engagement (Ashley and Tuten, 2015; Hollebeek, Glyn and Brodie, 2014), both the meaning of engagement in B2B and its likely influence for members of the decision making unit remain under-researched.

In summary, despite the burgeoning literature and increasing acceptance of social media in B2B, topics surrounding social media, engagement strategies and content marketing necessitate more attention by industrial marketing researchers. We welcome conceptual, methodological and empirical contributions undertaken in the context of B2B with a focus on, but not limited to, the following topics:

• The conceptualization and dimensionality of engagement with social media content in B2B contexts
• Measures of engagement for different types of content on different social media platforms
• Characteristics of engaging content for different B2B stakeholders on social media
• Antecedents and outcomes of engagement with B2B brand-related content on social media
• Social media engagement strategies for B2B organizations
• Dis-engagement or negative engagement with social media content within B2B contexts
• Content strategies for B2B organizations
• The role of user-generated content for B2B brands
• ‘Best practice’ in B2B social media and content marketing

Manuscript Preparation and Submission

Manuscripts should comply with the scope, standards, format and editorial policy of the Industrial Marketing Management. Manuscripts must be submitted through the IMM editorial site as instructed on the site using the classification SI: B2B Social Media Strategies. All papers will be reviewed through the standard double-blind peer review process of IMM. In preparation of their manuscripts, authors are asked to follow the Author Guidelines closely. A guide for authors, sample articles and other relevant information for submitting papers are available at:

The deadline for submissions is January 31st 2017.

Guest Editors:

Prof George Christodoulides, Birkbeck, University of London g.christodoulides@bbk.ac.uk

Dr Nina Michaelidou, Loughborough University, N.Michaelidou@lboro.ac.uk

Dr Nikoletta-Theofania Siamagka, Kings College London, nikoletta.siamagka@kcl.ac.uk

References:

Ashley, C., & Tuten, T. (2015). “Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory study of branded social content and consumer engagement”. Psychology & Marketing, 32(1), 15-27 [Available at doi:].

Brennan, R., and Croft, R. (2012). "The use of social media in B2B marketing and branding: An exploratory study." Journal of Customer Behavior 11(2), 101-115 [Available at doi:].

Hollebeek, L. D., Glynn, M. S., & Brodie, R. J. (2014). “Consumer brand engagement in social media: Conceptualization, scale development and validation”. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 28(2), 149-165 [Available at doi:].

Lacka, E. and Chong, A. (2016). “Usability perspective on social media sites’ adoption in the B2B context”. Industrial Marketing Management. [Available at doi: ]

Lacoste, S. (2015). “Perspectives on social media ant its use by key account managers”. Industrial Marketing Management. [Available at doi: ]

Leek, S., Canning, L. and Houghton, D. (2016). “Revisiting the Task Media Fit Model in the era of Web 2.0: Twitter use and interaction in the healthcare sector”. Industrial Marketing Management [Available at doi:]

Michaelidou, N., Siamagka, N.T. and Christodoulides, G. (2011). “Usage, Barriers and Measurement of Social Media Marketing: An Exploratory Investigation of Small and Medium B2B Brands”. Industrial Marketing Management. 40(7), 1153-1159. [Available at doi:]

Siamagka, N.T, Christodoulides, G., Michaelidou, N., and Valvi, A. (2015). “Determinants of Social Media Adoption by B2B Organizations”. Industrial Marketing Management, 5, 89–99. [Available at: doi:]

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