Fortune 1000 communication strategies on Facebook and Twitter

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the communication strategies corporations adopt for Facebook and/or Twitter, and the consistency of communication strategies used on both Facebook and Twitter. Design/methodology/approach – A content analysis of 2011 Fortune 1000 corporate Facebook and Twitter sites was undertaken. Specially, communication strategies on 63 Fortune 1000 Facebook sites and 65 Fortune 1000 Twitter sites in January 2012 were examined. Findings – This study found that a majority of the examined Fortune 1000 companies emphasized a corporate ability communication strategy over a corporate social responsibility communication strategy on their Facebook and Twitter sites. Additionally, none of these companies used a true hybrid strategy on their social media sites (SMSs). Results also demonstrated that these companies were following the one message principle of integrated communication. Research limitations/implications – This study is limited to its samples size and the coding time frame. Practical implications – Results of this study can help public relations and corporate communication professionals leverage multiple SMSs to build strong associations, improve engagement, and strengthen relationships with target stakeholders. Originality/value – Through examining corporate communication strategies on SMSs, this study contributes to current social media research along with corporate communication/public relations scholarship. It replicated and extended prior work by examining how existing corporate communication strategies on traditional web sites were incorporated into two new mainstream media – Facebook and Twitter.