Research project: Social media in business use
Posted by: akkinen on: November 18, 2009
I was going to participate Digital Innovation Workshop in Tampere last week but I was sick that day. My supervisor, professor Virpi Tuunainen presented our research project at the workshop (see the picture). Our research group consists of me, professor Virpi Tuunainen, and professor Matti Rossi – we come all from Helsinki School of Economics from the department of Information Systems Science.
We will explore the use of social media in Finnish and Swedish companies. Our plan is to evaluate the social media use in companies that already utilize Facebook business accounts (Facebook fan pages) or have Twitter microblogging accounts. We will explore the extent of use of these new services by companies and try to identify the most progressive ones for further research. We will explore Finnish and Swedish companies in order to ensure sufficient number of sample companies. Furthermore, these two neighboring Nordic countries are both considered pioneers in the global ICT markets. For instance, Jaiku and Spotify are social media startups that originated in Finland and Sweden, whereas Nokia and Ericsson are globally known mobile phone enterprises.
Read the abstract or see the slides.
7 Responses to "Research project: Social media in business use"
December 10, 2009 at 10:25 am
Do you exclude the social media tools that are used inside the firm, for example internal blogs and wikis? Or do you include only the services that can be used externally?
In my research, I concentrate on the organizations’ internal social media tools and have come across the fact that many social media enthusiast think that the only way to use social media is to utilize Facebook or Twitter. Which is not the case, of course.
Anyway, interesting to see what kind of results you get!
December 10, 2009 at 11:28 am
Satu,
thanks for your comment. You’re right – our focus is on those social media tools that companies use when communicating with consumers and customers.
It would be interesting to see also the results of your study, I think that our results could combine each other quite well 
Miia
January 12, 2010 at 12:47 pm
[...] I can’t wait for the results of Miia’s research project; meanwhile you can view HSE’s abstract and slides to give us a glimpse of things to come: “Social Media in Business Use – Extent of use i…. [...]
January 12, 2010 at 1:17 pm
Hi Miia,
Thanks for your extensive write-ups about social media that I use as references for a PlanMill blog topic. Here is a link: http://planmill.wordpress.com/
More power! Cheers, Sheila
January 15, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Hi Miia,
I recently came across your research diary. I came to realize that you are the one working with prof Tuunainen, who I met in that Tampere event a couple months back. I asked her about your research and I found her presentation and the research approach very interesting.
I am also working on social media for my m.sc thesis, so I am trying to follow that space as close as I can.
.
I will stay tuned hoping to find out more about your research findings,
regards,
Alexandros
(from Åbo Akademi)
December 10, 2009 at 8:26 am
Interesting issue and there’s a lot to search for. I believe that researchers, “social media experts” and businesses have lot to give to each other in this.
Keep us posted about how the research is going!
December 10, 2009 at 11:31 am
Hi Marko, thanks for your interest. We also find this area very interesting and meaningful, and are looking forward to reporting the results.
Miia