Managing an organisation’s social media presence: An empirical stages of growth model

The adoption of social media by organisations has proven to be very beneficial; however, few studies have examined how to manage an organisation’s social media adoption and usage. Mismanagement of social media could have significant and unintended consequences for the organisation and its stakeholders. This paper addresses the lack of research in organisational social media management by empirically validating a previously developed conceptual social media stages-of-growth model. Hence, the research objectives are to (1) test empirically that the conceptual stages-of-growth model suits the evolution of social media adoption in organisations, and based on the lessons learned to (2) provide recommendations to revise the empirical model. Furthermore, we propose a three-tier typology for classifying organisations based on the potential of their adopted social media. We argue that the empirical model will foster a better understanding of how social media can be adopted and managed within organisations.