Social Media as Tool of SMART City Marketing: The Role of Social Media Users Regarding the Management of City Identity

Abstract

Competition and cooperation process of the European cities and regions is considered as one of the most important scopes of the scientific discourse among spatial planners, sociologists, geographers, economists, etc. Recent development has shown that hard factors are becoming less and less important and the cities are learning to search for soft factors and they are strategically managing their marketing activities, fostering social participation and involvement of the public. As the cities borrow the knowledge from the commercial business practice in terms of marketing, it is important to investigate the new trends triggered by the widespread use of the Internet and most important by the phenomenon of Web 2.0 and social media. The aim of this chapter is to review the potential of social media regarding city marketing and public participation. Gathered information is confronted with the case study of two Facebook pages administered by the municipality of Bratislava, Slovakia, and by the mayor of Bratislava. Comparison of the activity on social media by these two profiles draws interesting conclusions of the usage of social media in the modern city development.