Moving Social Marketing Beyond Personal Change to Social Change : Strategically Using Twitter to Mobilize Supporters into Vocal Advocates

Social marketing scholarship has regularly focused on how organizations can effectively influence changes in awareness and behaviors among its targeted audience. Communication scholarship, however, has repeatedly shown that the most influential form of communication happens between members of the same peer group. As such, it is imperative that organizations learn how to engage audiences and facilitate the discussion about organizational messages between individuals. Social media provide platforms for such conversations as organizational messaging can be shared and discussed by individuals with others in their networks. This research examines what type of messaging on Twitter is most effective for helping move social marketing beyond focusing on personal changes to find out what messages help turn members of the public into vocal advocates for these organizations’ social changes. Through a content analysis of 3,415 Twitter updates from 50 nonprofit organizations, this study identifies specific types of messages that are more likely to get stakeholders retweeting, archiving, and discussing the organizations’ messaging. Through these stakeholder behaviors, social marketing has stronger influence as it transitions from organizational to interpersonal messaging