Are social media useful for managing reputation online?: Comparing user interactions online with reputation indicators

Abstract

Reputation is a growing concern to all organizations, regardless of their size or industry. Recently, social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook have become effective and efficient channels for an organization to build relationships with various publics, which is fundamental for reputation management. Applying the dialogic communication theory and the halo effect, the present study seeks to explore whether there is a significant relationship between a company’s reputation and the level of interaction on the respective company’s Facebook page (measured by the number of page ‘likes’, number of wall comments and commented comments by both the companies and users). This study used a social network analysis tool called NodeXL to gather data on Facebook. Results from the present study provide practical implications regarding online reputation management for organizations.