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International Journal of Strategic Communication

ISSN: 1553-118X (Print) 1553-1198 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hstc20

Situated Ideals in Strategic Social Media: Applying Grounded Practical Theory in a Case of Successful Social Media Management

Brian G. Smith

To cite this article: Brian G. Smith (2015) Situated Ideals in Strategic Social Media: Applying Grounded Practical Theory in a Case of Successful Social Media Management, International Journal of Strategic Communication, 9:4, 272-292, DOI: 10.1080/1553118X.2015.1021958

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1553118X.2015.1021958

Published online: 13 Oct 2015.

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Situated Ideals in Strategic Social Media: Applying Grounded Practical Theory in a Case of Successful Social

Media Management

Brian G. Smith

Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA

For as many theories about why using social media works in communication management, there are few studies that analyze how it actually works, leaving communicators with few standards beyond gut-instinct and “what’s working for now” management. This study explores social media manage- ment empirically on an in-depth level, using grounded practical theory principles and in-depth interviews with strategic communication professionals to uncover the strategies, processes, and situated ideals that underpin successful strategic communication via social media. Findings demon- strate the importance of communicator expertise and communication integration in managing social media communication.

In just over a few years, social media has become one of the dominant topics in communication research. This dynamic media landscape that blurs professional and personal interests into an uncertain media environment poses a peculiar challenge to strategic communicators and strategic communication research. Namely, social media presents an unequaled opportunity for strategic communicators to pursue organizational objectives in a direct and targeted way, but the personal nature of the medium simultaneously limits communicators’ abilities to be promotional and strategic.

Recent studies have addressed this conundrum by suggesting that strategic communication should comprise a balance of pursuing organizational mission and encouraging public participa- tion through social media channels, with the imperative on symmetrical and dialogic commu- nication (Hallahan, Holtzhausen, van Ruler, Vercic, & Sriramesh, 2007; Macnamara & Zerfass, 2012). Yet, much of the research underlying these insights is normative, leaving actual practice (and what actually works) largely underexamined in research. The question of how strategic communicators and organizations should manage social media has been unanswered.

This absence of empirically established standards and processes in social media may have led to a proliferation of one-way communication strategies. Bruce and Shelley (2010) point out: “The prevailing organizational communication practice online is delivering information” (p. 31). Similarly, Bennett, Wells, and Freelon (2011) argue: “The potential of online engagement . . . is

Correspondence should be sent to Brian G. Smith, Purdue University, 2144 Beering Hall, 100 N. University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA. E-mail: bgsmithphd@purdue.edu

International Journal of Strategic Communication, 9: 272–292, 2015 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1553-118X print / 1553-1198 online DOI: 10.1080/1553118X.2015.1021958

barely being achieved because of rather rigid notions of who [the engaged] are and how to communicate with them” (p. 850).

The need is to establish standards of practice for strategic communication—an effort that begins with exploring the interaction between organizational processes and communicator decision making in managing social media. Some studies have suggested an integrated approach to managing social media, whereby strategy is a collaboration among practitioners across all communication functions (i.e., marketing, advertising, employee communication, public rela- tions, etc.) (Smith & Place, 2013). Yet, very few studies examine how integration works in a strategic communication initiative on social media.

This article presents an analysis of a successful case of social media management—the destination marketing organization Visit Savannah—to identify how communicators navigate the sea change of social media. In-depth interviews with the Visit Savannah communication team suggest that successful strategic communication in social media depends on a flexible and integrated organizational structure that taps communicator expertise in determining social media strategy. These findings fill a gap in the research on strategic communication in social media, which features an absence of perspectives on practitioner ideals and decision-making processes in social media. As such, this study, although based on a case in the southeastern United States, informs strategic communication in a global context by putting the onus on analyzing the way factors such as integrated communication and communicator expertise influence successful strategic communication in social media. Furthermore, in applying grounded practical theory to the specific context of social media strategy, this study also fulfills the need to expand grounded practical theory to strategic communication contexts.

STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION AND SOCIAL MEDIA

The rise of social media marks a transition from static, unidirectional information searching activities online to the bidirectional, interactivity afforded by social networking sites wherein users “take control over the majority of messages shared over the network” (Barnes, 2013, p. 16). As such, social media has been defined as the platforms, applications, and tools that take place via an interactive computer network interface (Weinberg & Pehlivan, 2011). The “tools” that make up social media include blogs and microblogs, wikis, social networking sites (SNS), peer-to-peer sharing sites, and communities, among others.

Social media affords users the capacity for peer-to-peer interaction and interpersonal relation- ship building. A central component of social media is its capacity to allow users to create, distribute, and respond to content in an immediate and personal way—sharing what is often referred to as “user-generated content” with other social media participants (Weinberg & Pehlivan, 2011). As such, social media sites grant users access to media channels, which scholars and practitioners have argued empowers publics and consumers with previously unseen influence on corporate communication strategy (Mulhern, 2009; Solis, 2011). This leads to an effectual timeshare between publics and organizations—although the latter seek to advance their strategic mission using social media’s enhanced capacity to reach strategic publics, the former seek to establish their own voice online through the democratizing environment of social media.

The following sections explore the tension between strategic social media management and the inherently personal and democratic use of social media by publics. In this study, strategy

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refers to the purposeful approach to pursuing and fulfilling organizational mission and objectives —consistent with scholarly uses of the term (Macnamara & Zerfass, 2012). The term “social media” is used to refer broadly to what is often referred to as Web 2.0, and includes the use of online social networks, digital social media tools, and social networking sites.

Communicating Strategically via Social Media

Strategic communication is an organization-centric concept whereby professionals advance and fulfill an organization’s mission (Hallahan et al., 2007). Hallahan et al. (2007) argued that strategic communication “focuses on how the organization presents and promotes itself through the intentional activities of its leaders, employees, and communication practitioners” (p. 7). Strategic communication is “purposeful influence” (Hallahan et al., 2007, p. 10) towards achieving organizational goals.

Social media present a fundamental challenge for strategic communication—the personal nature of the medium stands in opposition to strategic communication’s modus operandi of promoting and pursuing the mission of the organization. Macnamara and Zerfass (2012) characterize this challenge as tension between the openness of social media and purposeful strategic communication management. Specifically, social media reduce traditional levels of control available to organizations as individuals now fulfill roles in media creation and media gatekeeping, influencing an organization’s image and reputation through the interpersonal and interactive capacity of social media (Men & Tsai, 2013). In short, the democratizing power of social media means that individuals now have unparalleled influence on an organization’s ability to fulfill with strategic objectives. Social media as a force for change in strategic communication presents two specific problems for communicators: (1) the influence of social media risk and uncertainty on strategic communication and (2) the influence of social media on communicator organization and interaction.

Problem 1: Strategic uncertainty

Strategic perspectives on social media in research prescribe a focus on linking organizations with publics and building relationships through social media (Habibi, Laroche, & Richard, 2014; Hallahan et al., 2007; Kent & Taylor, 2002; Smith, 2010). Additional perspectives suggest a broader need to replace promotional and propagandistic strategies to be adaptive to the needs and activities of social media users (King, 2009; Macnamara & Zerfass, 2012). King (2009) argues that this imperative on adaptation means that traditional notions of strategy as control should give way to the possibility that strategy may also emerge through recognition of “response, situated context, and discursive patterns” (p. 20). Torp (2011) argued for a balance between planning and participation, and therefore, communicating strategically involves both intention and openness, control and adaptation.

Despite the value of research preaching symmetry between organizational objectives and social media user needs, communicators are still left with few specifics on the benefits and consequences of social media activities (Habibi et al., 2014; Jeffrey, 2013). Research reports that there is “little evidence” about the value of social media activities (Men & Tsai, 2013), and communicators remain uncertain about the effectiveness of social media messaging and “how various elements of the social media experience relate to one another” (Weeks & Holbert, 2013,

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p. 213; Weinberg & Pehlivan, 2011). As consumers and stakeholders “turn away from traditional sources of advertising . . . [and] demand more control over their media consumption” (Mangold & Faulds, 2009, p. 360), communicators face the dilemma of relinquishing control over corporate brand and reputation (Macnamara & Zerfass, 2012; Smith, 2010). Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) described the dilemma in this way:

“Not many firms act comfortably in a world where consumers can speak so freely with each other, and businesses have increasingly less control over the information available about them in cyber- space . . . Historically, companies were able to control the information available about them through strategically placed press announcements and good public relations managers. Today, however, firms have been increasingly relegated to the sidelines as mere observers, having neither the knowledge nor the chance—or, sometimes, even the right—to alter publicly posted comments provided by their customers” (p. 59).

These high levels of uncertainty raise issues for strategic communication research and practice. Recent surveys show that communicators “struggle” to connect strategies and outcomes in social media, and only a minority of communicators link data collection and analysis with objectives, and report to management—all of which are imperatives for communication to be strategic (Jeffrey, 2013). In fact, some have reported that activities in social media are a result of practitioner interpretation, trial and error and gut instinct rather than strategic direction (KPMG, 2011; Macnamara & Zerfass, 2012). The uncertainty of social media benefits combined with a lack of strategic direction raises the need to analyze practitioner interpretation and the ways communicators consider and develop social media activities. Therefore, the following research question guides the current study:

RQ 1: How do communicators interpret opportunities and manage social media communication?

Problem 2: Communication structure

In his work to define public relations as a strategic management function, Grunig (2006) argued for the necessity of communication to serve as a “bridging activity in which organiza- tions build linkages with stakeholders in their environment to transform and constitute the organization in new ways” (p. 171). The problem, however, is that there is “no universal right or wrong way to apply social media to an organization’s business model” (Jeffrey, 2013, p. 2), leaving few standards on how to organize communications to meet the challenges and oppor- tunities of social media.

To date, there are few studies that examine the internal processes of managing social media. In their comprehensive study of communicators in Europe and Australasia, Macnamara and Zerfass (2012) found a general lack of policies, guidelines, and even training for social media use among employees, and that use of social media is “mostly experimental and ad hoc, rather than strategi- cally planned in organizations across a number of countries” (p. 303). Zerfass, Fink, and Linke (2011) argued for the need to examine social media governance, which comprises the frameworks that “regulate the actions of the members of an organization within the social web” (p. 1033), and which comprises the guidelines for communicating in social media, the tools for monitoring social media, and standards for measuring performance (Macnamara & Zerfass, 2012, p. 302).

Complicating the lack of guidelines for organizing communications is the ongoing debate about which communication function “owns” social media. As a platform for communication,

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social media blurs the boundaries between two competing functions—public relations and marketing. Social media has been referred to as the “hybrid element of the promotion mix” because the way the platform “enables companies to talk to their customers and . . . customers to talk to one another” (Mangold & Faulds, 2009, p. 358) merges traditional public relations imperatives on relationships and marketing imperatives on promotion. Hallahan et al. (2007) further argue that social media and other digital technologies are “converging communication channels. . .making it increasingly impossible to differentiate what is advertising versus publicity, sales promotion, or e-commerce” (p. 10).

Further complicating the issue is the increase in marketing activities on social media that have fallen under the public relations domain, including social responsibility and relationship cultivation (Hutton, 2010). Some scholars suggest a marketing takeover, effectively limiting public relations to “an inferior technical role” in marketing support and curbing public relations professionals’ plight for managerial responsibilities (as reported in Hallahan, 2007, p. 305).

Despite uncertain boundaries between communication functions, social media may be a natural area for public relations dominance because of its focus on relationship cultivation and the variety of stakeholder interests represented through the medium (Hutton, 2010). Additionally, Smith and Place (2013) found that public relations practitioners earn management authority through social media because it grants them expert power. Still, functional ownership of social media remains unresolved, leading to further uncertainty and potential conflict between public relations and marketing in social media management. This uncertainty leads to the need to explore communication structures in strategic social media management. Therefore, the follow- ing research question was chosen for the current study:

RQ 2: How do communicators organize and interact with each other to manage social media communication?

Grounded Practical Theory

This study’s focus on communicator meaning and interpretation makes grounded practical theory (GPT) an appropriate context to study strategic communication and social media. The purpose of GPT is to gain insight into practitioner communication problems, their methods for dealing with those problems, and the “situated ideals” or “normative principles they employ” when navigating scenarios and debating solutions (Craig & Tracy, 1995, p. 250). Despite its relevance, GPT has not been applied to marketing and communication management.

Grounded practical theory, developed by Craig and Tracy (1995), investigates practitioner decision-making within the context of the intersection of personal interpretation and normative standards. The explanatory power of GPT is its use of dialogue to understand the overlap between standards, situational interpretation, and the available means, a concept referred to as praxis (Craig & Tracy, 1995, p. 249). Through GPT, researchers approach communication as “practical art”—the combination of productivity, knowledge, and technical skill (p. 251). In this way, practice is a product of personal interpretation in the context of a problem. Communication research, then, is the “rational reconstruction of practice” through interview and discussion for the purpose of constructing a “tentative, revisable, but still rationally warranted normative model that is relevant to a broad range of practical situations” (p. 252).

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The goal of GPT is to construct idealized practice through specific contexts or cases. This “theoretical reconstruction” provides a “reasoned basis for ‘good practice’. . . [and] . . . a ration- ally warranted normative model that is relevant to a broad range of practical situations” (p. 252). This model is forged through a dialogic reconstruction of techniques or communicative strate- gies (the technical level), the dilemmas techniques are employed to solve (the problem level), the norms behind the issue resolution techniques (the philosophical level) (p. 253). In this way, the purpose of theoretical reconstruction of practice through the three levels of GPT is to identify practitioner rationale for “using one technique rather than another in a problematic situation” (p. 254).

A further rationale for using GPT in analyzing the overlap of public relations and marketing in digital social media is its stated focus on “communication problems [that] arise because communicators pursue multiple, competing goals or purposes” leading to conflicts that require “reflective reasoning” (Craig & Tracy, 1995, p. 254). These competing goals include marketing’s emphasis on pursuing exchanges around a product, service, or idea (Aaker, 2008) and public relations practitioners’ emphasis on the pursuit of goodwill between the organization and its publics (Leitch & Motion, 2010).

METHOD

This study employs GPT to uncover “the problems actors face as they seek to communicate appropriately” (Craig & Tracy, 1995, p. 255) in social media. Consistent with GPT, this study also explores the ways practitioners negotiate specific communication techniques against situ- ated ideals by investigating the “talk between people about . . . competent management of problems” (p. 263) in social media. Beginning at the problem level of GPT, this study proceeds both “downward toward specific communicative techniques as well as upward toward philoso- phical normative principles adumbrated by the situated ideals of practitioners” (p. 264).

Qualitative methods are appropriate in applying grounded practical theory because of their emphasis on depth over breadth and meaning in social structures (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003). Consistent with other GPT studies (Craig & Sanusi, 2000; Koenig, Maguen, Daley, Cohen & Seal, 2012), the methodological procedure in this study reflected GPT’s emphasis on discourse and behavior in order to identify useful guidelines for practice. This study considers a successful case of social media management—Visit Savannah, the tourism bureau for Savannah, Georgia. In using a successful case of social media management, this study fulfills Yin’s (2003) claim that studies of successful case examples, although not generalizable, may inform practice through the identification of theoretical principles.

Participants and Data Collection

This case study comprised in-depth interviews with six members of the marketing and public relations team at Visit Savannah. Although all eight members of the team were invited for an interview, two members declined, indicating that their colleagues’ responses would be consistent to their own. Of the eight potential interviewees, each practitioner who worked in social media was interviewed. Team members who participated in this study gave permission for their names to be used, and included (in alphabetical order): Erica Backus (Director of Public Relations),

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Amy Brock (Social Media Manager), Zeek Coleman (Internet Marketing Manager), Jen Huling (Graphic Designer), Mayra Smith (Interactive Marketing Coordinator and Project Manager), and Megan White (Advertising Coordinator).

Interviews were conducted over the phone and lasted 45 minutes each (with the exception of one that lasted 30 minutes). Discussions were loosely structured based on an interview guide encouraged discussion of social media coordination and management and corresponding role responsibilities. Open-ended interviews allowed respondent experiences to be the primary subject of study (Rubin & Rubin, 2005). Sample questions included: “What are the challenges of communicating via social media?” “How do you work with others on your team?” and “How do you measure the success of your social media efforts?” Data collection followed the constant comparative method of Glaser and Strauss’ (1967) grounded theory approach, which Craig and Tracy (1995) confirmed is relevant to GPT studies. Following each discussion, subsequent interviews sought to build on and clarify the themes of previous interviews. Data collection was considered complete because discussions began to be redundant, consistent with qualitative research standards on data saturation, which consider sample size and repetition less important (McCracken, 1993, p. 71).

Following data collection and transcription, the principle investigator analyzed data using a grounded theory style whereby codes were developed directly from the data. Analysis included categorization of data into the three pillars of GPT: problems, techniques, and philosophies. Validity in data collection and analysis was sought using Kvale’s (1995) framework, including the development of a flexible interview guide (craftsmanship validity), establishment of claims through discourse (communicative validity), and the practical value of findings (pragmatic validity).

CASE ORGANIZATION: VISIT SAVANNAH

Visit Savannah is the destination marketing organization for the Savannah-area tourism industry. The organization, a division of the Savannah Area Chamber of Commerce, pro- motes member organizations to tourists, convention planners, and business travelers. At the time of this research, the organization’s marketing and communication efforts were managed by a team of eight individuals, fulfilling roles in public relations, interactive marketing, advertising, social media, and graphic design. The organization has been recognized for its successful social media efforts, receiving a Silver ADDY award from the Savannah Advertising Federation for its digital advertising and social media (Savannah Morning News, 2013) and an Excellence in Tourism award from the Georgia Tourism Board for its digital media efforts (Mach, 2010).

FINDINGS: VISIT SAVANNAH’S SOCIAL MEDIA CHALLENGES AND STRATEGIES

This study’s two primary research topics—practitioner interpretation (RQ1) and communication structure (RQ2)—revealed a number of problems that communicators face when developing and adapting communication strategy. Specifically, discussions revealed three primary problems

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Visit Savannah team members face when promoting the city on social media: (1) determining social media value, (2) managing the uncertainty of social media interactivity, and (3) meeting the strain on organizational resources. Following grounded practical theory, this section outlines both the problems and techniques for resolving problems of communicating via social media.

Problem 1: Valuating Social Media

Communicators often questioned the certainty of social media value. Discussions varied from issues of media tracking to sustaining measurable social media returns. Zeek echoed others’ concerns about social media value:

“There’s so much data, if anyone tells you that they have it all down pat, without being Google or someone with a lot of time or resources, then I don’t know. I can’t imagine that one person has a good handle on these things.”

Zeek also doubted whether a company’s thousands of fans are “really engaging with their brand.” Erica also expressed concern about social network metrics:

“I’m still trying to figure out how to deal with travel bloggers. It’s hard when you’re dealing with someone who has 1,000 followers, and one’s your mom and 10 are your best friends and friends from college. What value will there really be in spending money and resources on them coming into savannah when they produce a story? That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

The problem with social media metrics is how to connect online impressions with the ultimate objective: converting online impressions to Savannah visits (or what communicators referred to as “putting heads in beds”). Zeek said, “Part of the strategy is trying to convert people, but that’s hard to pinpoint because we don’t have a conversion metric we can craft things around.”

Techniques: Behavioral tracking and niche interests

Practitioners said analysis was a new, yet essential component of their communication activities. Zeek said before he was hired, social media management was “gut instinct and common sense,” but now the organization has begun to focus on data-centric activities to determine social media value. Erica said Visit Savannah’s online efforts were “evaluated by the number of placements, the number of impressions, and accumulated ad value.” Overall, Visit Savannah team members put priority on behavioral tracking and tapping niche interests.

Behavioral tracking

Communicators tracked behavior by measuring digital media click-throughs, web traffic, and activity at their interactive information kiosks around the city. Amy admitted:

“The biggest thrill I get is when I monitor searches for Savannah. I monitor foursquare check-ins at our airport, and it’s fun to see someone arrive at our airport and send them a tweet welcoming them home. That just blows people away.”

Tracking activities included creating “behavioral targets around the actions of the people that come to the website,” Zeek said. Part of this effort comprised placing advertisements on travel

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websites selling Savannah over a competitive destination an online user searched for. In this way, the company sought to avoid “wasting impressions on people that wouldn’t be interested,” Zeek said. Erica said the goal was engagement:

“When you’ve got people commenting on your Facebook photos or liking something you’ve posted, when you see your numbers going up . . . you’ve been successful in engaging audiences.”

Niche interests

One of the difficulties of promoting Savannah was finding new ways to portray the city without overshadowing its historical Southern mystique. Megan explained:

“We’re a historic town. One of our challenges is keeping it fresh and finding different ways to advertise to people to make it quirky and fun, without getting away from our bread and butter. We don’t want to move away from who we are.”

To meet this challenge, communicators highlighted the “nichier or clickier things in Savannah,” as Erica termed them, including activities for art connoisseurs, food tourists, golf travelers, and African American travelers. Erica explained, “We push those unusual, unexpected, and quirky things people may not know about Savannah.” Megan said the purpose of niche efforts was to reach new visitors. Zeek said niche targeting improved social media measurement efforts:

“If I have an ad on AJC.com, it’s a much broader market. It’s harder for me to pin who these people are. If I do one on Food and Wine, one of these niche sites, I can really learn a lot about those people and their level of interest in Savannah.”

The company also mixed the niche with the traditional mass approach to targeting. Mayra and Jen worked together to send mass messages with broad appeal (i.e., St. Patrick’s Day in March) to an over 90,000 email database of contacts from their website and the city’s kiosks. Zeek said the purpose of these efforts was to “have an impression and have mindshare” and to “look at the trends, compare data, and get a good idea of how many people have been impacted.”

Problem 2: User-generated Content Uncertainty

Respondents expressed concern about communicating directly with social media users and granting them influence over Savannah’s brand. Amy described this challenge as a balance between presenting a consistent voice and managing several disparate discussion topics—“No two conversations are the same,” she said. She went on to say, “It’s like having multiple personalities. There’s a lot going on and you really have to stand behind being the voice.”

The other side of social media uncertainty was the influence and involvement of online users with the Savannah brand. Though communicators welcomed users’ influence over the brand, they were also cautious. Jen avoided this conundrum by using only photographs taken by the organization’s photographers in her graphic design efforts. Amy was careful not to “endorse or pass something . . . gross or bad”:

“It’s really trying to engage and learn what the visitor is about. We actually put a great deal of thought [into who to follow back on social media]. We’re not just following every person back. We profile people to a certain extent.”

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Technique: Trial and error strategies

Consistent with studies that showed communicators rely on gut instinct and trial and error in social media (Jeffrey, 2013; KPMG, 2011; Macnamara & Zerfass, 2012), Visit Savannah team members described their efforts as experimental. Megan said, “We’re still kind of playing with [social networking sites] . . . We’re just figuring out what works.” Amy concurred: “We just dove in and tried things, and have found a formula for what seems to be working.” This formula included a mix of both personal voice and promotion of user- generated content.

Personal voice

Visit Savannah’s social media presence was notably personal, as they find success by humanizing their brand, similar to other successful social media initiatives noted in research (Keller, 2009; Men & Tsai, 2013; Zhang, Tao, & Kim, 2014). Amy, the voice of Savannah on SNS, sought to maintain what Keller (2009) refers to as conversational human voice by posting personal content and by using her own personal account. She explained,

“We take the approach with our Twitter account that it is me, Amy Brock, managing it, and it’s my voice. A lot of it is my personal opinion, also keeping our membership in mind and representing them. Sometimes I say really funny things. It’s not your typical PC tourist bureau answers. . .It’s me giving a bit of my personality.”

Zeek said their online success was a result Amy’s personal approach.

“I think the voice of our brand is strong . . . [Amy] is well traveled in Savannah. She’s genuine and she’s our target market. She sounds like they sound. It’s everything we hope to be. She’s very sharp on picking things up and posting them.”

Amy’s “Savannah voice” was such a mix of personal and professional that she said it was challenging to tell the two apart. “I don’t know which is which anymore, the Savannah voice or my voice,” she admitted. To maintain the personal and professional balance, Amy incorporated corporate messaging in “a natural way. . .[by] dropping stuff to do when you’re chit-chatting” while being careful not to be so “corporate” that she might lose followers. Zeek said this approach worked because “when this huge entity speaks to you and has a normal voice [like Amy’s], it’s not a salesman, you feel tied in.”

Interaction and user-generated content

Rather than participate in the prevailing practice of just delivering information online (Bruce & Shelley, 2010, p. 6), Visit Savannah communicators put priority on using information to interact with publics. Erica explained: “We are the information source for Savannah . . . People know that if you contact Visit Savannah, you will get a polite response and that helps cement the idea of the South and Savannah in people’s minds.”

Consistent with research results that show the value of using dialogic loops, and giving and asking for feedback (Kent & Taylor, 2002; Zhang et al., 2014), communicators employ various feedback mechanisms, including, according to Mayra, touch-screen kiosks throughout the city

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and interactions on Twitter and Facebook. Amy considered herself “100% involved” in com- menting on pictures, giving advice, and personally connecting with a variety of Savannah visitors. Zeek considered himself “a concierge” because of his involvement in giving advice about Savannah online. Erica summarized:

“To me, social media you have to be all the way in. You’ve got to keep people coming back. It takes more of a human approach. The good thing about our department is we have these fun loving personalities, so you feel like you’re talking to a real human and not just an automated response when you’re interacting with us on Facebook and Twitter.”

The bureau’s communicators also tapped social media users as a resource for spreading messages by mixing their own promotional needs with the needs of their social media publics. In this way, communicators fulfill imperatives to adapt strategy to “the audience’s needs, concerns, and interests—not merely those of organizational communicators or managers” (Hallahan et al., 2007). As such, Visit Savannah tap local pride in Savannah by encouraging locals and tourists to post commentary and photos depicting their own personal experiences in the city. Amy called Savannah locals her biggest resource because “they’re supportive, they love the city, and they’re . . . very proud.” She added that the Savannah Twitter community was “big on self-promotion” and—consistent with other research suggesting social media is driven by self-interest (Smith, 2010)—team members provide content for Savannah fans to promote themselves. Zeek discussed the importance of engaging the engaged: “That’s the goal—having them as an advocate who will seed our content on someone else’s page.”

Similar to research that preaches the importance of using social media as a bridging activity and a platform for strategic relationships (Grunig, 2006), Visit Savannah team members viewed their social media activities as relationship activities. Zeek said:

“They so freely share, it’s a relationship. It’s more like how you and I might comment on a friend’s post. It’s because we want that friend to see it, and we want everyone else to see we have an association with them, and it works well.”

Erica referred to the relationship as a partnership in helping them “spread the word about Savannah.” She added, “Ninety-nine percent of advertising comes from word of mouth . . . if you go back and say, ‘Hey, you should really follow the Visit Savannah Facebook’, then we’ve done our jobs.” Zeek said this partnership is evident in the way that their Facebook fans answer queries for them on their Facebook page.

Savannah’s relationship with online fans was a product of the sense of community in Savannah. Zeek said, “When we speak, we don’t use I’s and me’s, it’s we. It’s a community and we’re part of it, and I think that’s why they’re so engaged.” This is consistent with other research that has shown the positive impact of global brands using first and second person when communicating online (Zhang et al., 2014). Communicators at the bureau shared the affinity fans expressed about the city through their discussions of Savannah as a great place to promote. Mayra said, “It’s easy to sell Savannah. When you see the pictures of Savannah and you get here, you realize the pictures don’t lie.” Jen said, “I get to look at beautiful pictures of Savannah all day promoting something I really believe. I really love this city.” Zeek summarized the shared affinity for Savannah: “We believe in our brand. It’s a good brand and we speak about it like that.”

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Tapping into this affinity for the city, communicators recruited family, friends, and other Savannah lovers to create content and distribute it. Amy said she browsed social networks for content about Savannah to repost or respond to. Zeek explained:

“Our fan base is very interactive. They produce a lot of content for us. They’ll send us tips on events going on and all sorts of things. We use that to our advantage because it not only gives them credit and makes them feel good, but it produces a lot of good content for us that is genuine and user-generated, which is hot right now. So we definitely repurpose it. . .Eventually, you have the whole city of Savannah itself helping out in some way or another through various marketing teams in the city.”

Interacting and repurposing user-generated content was more spontaneous than planned. Zeek talked about the tendency to “tweak messaging” on the fly. “Things are changing so fast that we don’t really have it planned, per se. We have good principles that allow us to be flexible and adjust as things come at us.”

Problem 3: Strain on Organizational Resources

The speed and content of the Internet is often much more than a team of eight people can manage. Even with a dedicated social media manager, one of the bureau’s primary challenges was keeping up with the needs of the real-time update and instant gratification social media environment. Discussions suggested that managing social media made traditional communica- tion structure—including schedules and boundaries—irrelevant. Erica, who said she had “one of those jobs you can never turn off” said the pressure of social media “the more stuff you put out there, the more people are going to be engaged . . . and the more it looks like Savannah is really in the game.” Megan indicated that time was a pressure on decision-making in social media, and that sometimes they had to just “roll with it” rather than take too much time debating ideas. Mayra said social media could “take up your whole day” and Zeek said with only eight team members, “it’s hard to really get locked into one thing.”

Other commentary reflecting the time constraints involved in digital media included a remark from Amy, who said, “You’ve got to have a break; you’ve got to unplug.” Zeek similarly discussed the need to communicate outside of normal business hours: “We’re not only working when we’re at work, we also work at home. Our social media goes through the night.”

Techniques: Self-reliance, reliance on others, integration

Communicators reported high levels of self-reliance and reliance on fellow team members. These factors led to a fluid level of integration among practitioners.

Self-reliance

Communicators take responsibility for their own respective domains, taking upon themselves the responsibility to manage their own area of expertise. Jen said, “I basically am the graphic design department . . . I do everything that needs to be done. I put it all together. I’m pretty much on my own.” Others shared similar responses, a phenomenon that Zeek attributed to the

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importance of each role. “Each person plays a really important part, but they’re pretty much the only person for their role. Everyone has to be a super hero at a bunch of different things.”

Communicators reported a sharp learning curve and the importance of self-initiative. For many, this experience was a “trial by fire” in which practitioners had to excel from day one and learn on the job. In describing her experience, Jen said, “I just got thrown into it.” Amy admitted that managing social media has been “a huge learning curve” for her. Zeek summarized, “You get thrown into it, having to float or sink” and explained that his first few months were “learn by trial by fire” as his manager told him, “You need to learn.” In this context, self-initiative was key. Erica said her early success at the firm was “coming with initiative, enthusiasm, and energy that helped the firm take a chance on me.” Megan referred to the value on learning when she said, “With how our team is, if you express interest in learning more about digital, you just sit down with Zeek and he’ll walk you through things.”

Amy’s position as social media manager was also a product of initiative. She had originally worked for the company as an Internet manager, but left the company to be a stay-at-home mom. While at home with her baby, she often contacted the company about innovative uses of social media and, in response, Visit Savannah hired her to monitor social media from her home. She said since then, “I’ve immersed myself in the community and tried to learn everything I possibly can. I’m not local, but I can sure talk like one.”

Team member reliance

Despite indications that each communicator operated within his or her own domain, discus- sions also revealed communicators placed high levels of reliance on fellow team members. Mayra summarized the team culture at Visit Savannah:

“We have an interactive company . . . The way we work is we bounce ideas off each other. There’s no ‘This is my baby’. We have good creative minds in this office and drive to get it done.”

Communicators attributed the bureau’s successful social media activities to teamwork. Fellow team members commonly supplied Amy with social media content, making it appear as if she were in more than one place at the same time. Mayra explained:

“People are always asking Amy: ‘You’re at all these places at the same time’ and she just winks at them. We’ve got eight of us here, and one of us is at one event, another at a restaurant, and another with kids. We’re all taking pictures and sending it to her.”

Amy added that when she had to “unplug” she trusted Zeek and Mayra “to take the reins” because they were “well-versed” in supplying content for social network updates.

Communicators also attributed their social media success to the structure of the organization as a team of experts, consistent with research that has argued for the value of tapping practitioner expertise and considering every employee as a knowledgeable communicator (Zerfass & Franke, 2013). Mayra said she relied on each of her colleagues to be an expert. “If we need something, it’s always there,” she said. “We don’t have to go outside of this office to get something.” Erica and Megan both used the terms “in-house agency” to describe the gamut of communication expertise available on the team. “We do a lot of everything here,” Erica said. “We all take turns, we all participate, we all pitch in.” Jen reported on this team mentality at Visit Savannah: “If I

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come into a bind, I have no problem going into one of my teammates and saying, ‘Can you help me? I’m stuck.’ And we figure it out.” Amy said teamwork is in the programming of the team:

“We have a really great team . . . Everyone has become programmed to text me pictures, whether they’re eating or whatever they’re out doing. I rely heavily on our whole office. It looks like I might be in 10 places at once, but I’m really not.”

Relationships and integration

The team reported favorable interpersonal relationships. When asked why there were few conflicts on the team, Megan said, “We don’t have time to fight. We’re all very good friends. You know how you are with your friends, you just work it out.” Amy added, “We’re a tight knit group” and Mayra said, “We’re really close. We don’t fight. We don’t bicker. We’re like family. If we get into a fight, by the end of the day, it’s over. We’re that close.”

Relationship cultivation was proactive at the firm. Jen explained, “My desk is further from everyone else, so I’m a little isolated, but we try to get together. There’s a lot of socializing inside and outside of the office.” She further explained that the team environment works because, “people just feel comfortable around each other.” She said, “We spend so much time in one room joking around, helping each other to do good work. Everyone is just open with each other.”

One of the byproducts of the open interaction between team members was the integration of communication across traditional functional boundaries, leaving the distinction between adver- tising, public relations, and marketing nearly nonexistent. Erica, in her media placement efforts, explained that when reviewing editorial calendars, she has often approached the advertising coordinator to buy an advertisement to “work together to try to influence Savannah’s place- ment.” Integration occurred through the weekly brainstorming and coordination meetings, as well as interpersonal interactions, and was based on shared goals. Megan said their coordination efforts were successful because they “all have a common goal.” She further explained, “We have to keep in mind, everybody has a lot of ideas and people want to speak up. We learn to work as a team and let every person have their own voice.” Zeek explained:

“We all handle various parts of [the marketing effort]. In the midst of everything, we’re always thinking about: ‘You’re running a print campaign, then I need an online campaign. We also need a social campaign and a PR push or something’. We’re always trying to tie those things in. That’s the goal of what we do is getting it more integrated so it’s all one giant well-oiled machine.”

Another element of their integrated effort was creating a consistent Savannah brand. Jen said, “If people see a poster on the street and a banner ad online, we want to make sure that they’re consistent.” Communicators commonly built consistency around Savannah’s beauty, or what Zeek referred to as, “Our eye candy.” Erica said their brand success is tied to integration efforts:

“We’ve been successful because we’ve created a good brand . . . Once your brand is created, that brings PR and marketing and advertising into the same boat. If you’re able to express your brand well, which I think our organization does, then you hit a homerun for a successful tourism campaign.”

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DISCUSSION: UNCOVERING THE IDEALS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT

This study fulfills Craig and Tracy (1995) original call for Grounded Practical Theory be applied to contexts that include organizational teams assembled to solve particular problems—in this case, a communication team assembled to manage the challenges of communicating in the dynamic and uncertain social media environment. In exploring the ways Visit Savannah communication team members managed social media, this study also meets the call for scholars to “break the dominant approach to strategic communication” by focusing on “a participatory approach” (Macnamara & Zerfass, 2012, p. 14). The purpose of the ensuing analysis is to advance strategic communication scholarship and practice by analyzing “the nature of communicative problems, techniques, and philosophical ideas that should guide praxis” (Craig & Tracy, p. 268).

The Problem Level

Visit Savannah’s challenges are twofold. First is the risk of communicating in a medium with uncertain boundaries where messaging is uncontrolled and value unstandardized. The layers of uncertainty include communicators’ concerns with the tangible value of social media, how to establish a unified voice in the dynamic social network environment, and the impact of user- generated content on the Savannah brand. The second category of challenges is the strain on organization structure and resources when managing social media, including time and personnel constraints.

These issues come with two caveats. First, despite the uniqueness of the organization, neither of these issues—uncertainty and structural constraints—are case-specific. In fact, organizations of varying sizes report similar concerns. The second caveat may be more case specific: Uncertainty and structural constraints may be challenges, but they are not considered threats. Practitioners were generally nonchalant about the seriousness of the two challenges. The question to consider, then, is why? The answer becomes clearer by following grounded practical theory both “downward” to communication techniques and “upward” to philosophical principles (Craig & Tracy, 1995, p. 264).

The Technique Level

Moving “downward” to the technique level, one might argue that the assurances of successful techniques yield the casual confidence with which practitioners consider social media chal- lenges. However, the inherent problem in attributing practitioner confidence to techniques is that practitioners openly doubted their own tactics, often describing their approach as “trial and error” and making claims that they are still experimenting with what works. Zeek, who may be one of the most involved in the digital media effort suggested as much when he said, “I can’t imagine that one person has a good handle on these things.”

It may be because of this uncertainty of tactics that practitioners employ another technique in their communication efforts, best described as reliance behaviors. Communicators brainstorm and seek advice before proceeding in major initiatives, or when confronted by difficult pro- blems. Reliance behaviors include the formal (staff meeting brainstorm sessions) and the informal (impromptu office discussions). These reliance activities may account for practitioner confidence despite social media uncertainty.

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Reliance behaviors may relate to another technique communicators engage in: learning and expertise initiatives. Communicators refer to each other based on their particular areas of expertise (i.e., Zeek is the Internet marketing expert; Amy, the social media expert), and in doing so, reaffirm their proficiency. The pursuit of expertise seems to be based on a competitive drive to excel in social media and other digital communication activities. Perhaps because of this value on learning and expertise, the organization has been successful in its sink or swim orientation to practitioners in communication projects.

Taken together, reliance behaviors and learning activities lead to an umbrella technique that appears to organize the bureau’s activities in social media: integration. Most often referred to as integrated marketing communication, or IMC, integration represents the strategic coordination of communication functions for increased impact (Duncan, 2002; Kerr, Schultz, Patti, & Kim, 2008). At Visit Savannah, this coordination appears to be an open-ended collaboration between practitioners in which members cross traditional communication boundaries (i.e., public relations and marketing) to work together. In this integrated effort, problem solving and campaign development are collective activities, developed through brainstorming and interactivity.

Philosophical Principles

Dialogue with communicators suggests two practitioner philosophies: (1) priority on commu- nicator expertise and (2) accomplishing strategic objectives through collectivism and integration. Taken together, primacy on the individual, while relying on the collective orientation of integration, may seem an odd pairing. However, this dichotomy of philosophies may work together because Visit Savannah’s integrative structure relies on the collective strength of individual contributions, otherwise referred to as the synergy in research on communication integration (Moriarty, 1996). Up until this point, that “synergy” has been reserved for describing the value of coordinating communication messages for a single corporate voice (Kerr et al., 2008; Navarro-Bailón, 2012). In the current study, integrative synergy is also apparent in the way practitioners organize, a subject that has received little attention in strategic communication research on integrated communication or social media. Overall, communicator expertise and communication integration are two concepts in need of further development in strategic com- munication research.

Communicator Expertise

Reliance on communicator knowledge and expertise is a primary ideal in the strategic manage- ment of social media communication at Visit Savannah. Encapsulated in this ideal are the notions of self-initiated learning and excellence in individual communication efforts, including creativity and competitive drive. Communicator expertise is a primary topic in strategic com- munication research, particularly in public relations where the concept of communicator roles was central to the excellence study (Grunig, Grunig, & Dozier, 2002). Communicator expertise is particularly relevant for social media communication. Research by Smith and Place (2013) showed that expertise in social media influenced communicator power and management roles. The current study further confirms the role of expertise and power.

The current study also illustrates the communicative consulting model developed by Zerfass and Franke (2013), whereby communication practitioners fulfill roles as consultants to advise

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organization units on proper communication and train employees to be communicators. In this model, expertise is critical for a communicator’s influence in directing communication activities. The Zerfass and Franke (2013) model outlines two primary areas of communicative consulting: expert consulting, or advising on how to communicate, and process consulting, or enabling communication. Similar to research findings outlined by Zerfass and Franke (2013), the current study shows that communicators fill roles in both expert and process consulting within Visit Savannah. However, the current study shows a higher practitioner priority on process consulting than does the Zerfass and Franke (2013) study—as a small team, communicators relied on each other to fulfill communication roles. Zerfass and Franke (2013) similarly pointed toward organization size and structure as a contributing factor to the type of internal communicative consulting employed at an organization. Future research should consider the influence of organization structure on the use of communicator expertise.

Communication Integration and Structural Flexibility

Communication at Visit Savannah is integrated—each communication function coordinates and collaborates on communication strategy and implementation. In the literature, the strategic coordination of communication functions is commonly referred to as integrated marketing communication or IMC (Duncan, 2002; Kerr et al., 2008) although integration is a recognized component of strategic communication (Holtzhausen, 2008; Smith, 2013). Hallahan et al. (2007) argue that integration calls for the coordination of “otherwise fragmented activities . . . in a strategic way that focuses on the audience’s needs, concerns, and interests—not merely those of organizational communicators or managers” (p. 7). Findings from the current study are consis- tent with this ideal, as communicators collaborate around publics’ needs and interests. At the same time, this study’s findings do more than confirm use of strategic integration for social media management—findings demonstrate role flexibility in integration, a concept that seems antithetical to the basic notion of IMC.

Original concepts of IMC position it as a rigid, command-and-control approach to working through the clutter of today’s media environment where roles are tightly structured and managed (as reported by Christensen, Firat, & Torp, 2008). However, some have suggested that such a structure may inhibit communication effectiveness and have called for more open-ended approaches that consider integration more than just a standard plug-and-play process whereby practitioners fill fixed roles and communications are coordinated in a controlled and precise way (Christensen et al., 2008). The type of integration activities we see in this case are akin to what scholars like Christiansen et al. (2008) have described. Although every member has his or her own area of expertise, roles are fluid and responsibilities depend on how each member may contribute. The nature of this structure is both dynamic and synergistic, and reflects the uncertainty and fluidity inherent in the social media. Rather than a vertical top-down structure wherein executives hand down directives to be implemented with consistency, integration works at Visit Savannah through a horizontal structure in which communicators consider each member a vital and equal contributor.

This flexibility of roles and open organizational structure is contrary to the fixed boundaries between the traditionally separate public relations and marketing functions. As stated earlier, worldview differences and decision-making struggles, among other factors, are often the divid- ing line between the two functions. With this consideration in mind, it is peculiar that such

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territorial disputes are absent from this case. This may be attributed to the size of the commu- nication department (an eight-person team) and the fact that each function is filled by one person. The lack of disputes may also be a factor of the reported friendships between commu- nicators. However, this article contends that the fluidity of integration activities may be explained by analyzing the situated ideals identified in this analysis.

Structural flexibility and collective orientation may seem natural in a concept that emphasizes coordination to the extent that IMC does. Yet, factors such as role flexibility and relational trust are underdeveloped and rarely considered in IMC research and practice. This case analysis demonstrates that collectivism and role flexibility leads to internal synergy, which in turn produces the communication effectiveness sought through the IMC construct. As such, synergy through flexibility and collectivism are imperatives for research investigation and practice.

CONCLUSION: STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION AND SOCIAL MEDIA

The purpose of this study has been to identify standards for strategic communication in social media through an analysis of communicator ideals and interpretation. Although this study outlines a travel and tourism organization in the southeastern United States, the findings have implications for strategic communication on a global scale. As has already been noted, this study suggests that strategic social media communication may be implemented best in an integrated environment, minimizing resource constraints through practitioner collaboration—a lesson with relevance to organizations with a regional, national, international, or even global presence. Furthermore, results show the effectiveness of an organizational imperative on learning and expertise in the ever-changing social media environment (including best practice, measurement standards, and social media trends), which applies to both organizations with a local presence, as well as those with global operations. Boundaries between roles should give way to a fluid collective of practitioners wherein brainstorming and collaboration may occur without hierarch- ical constraints on interaction. For organizations with globally distributed offices, extra effort may need to be applied to facilitate fluid interaction between practitioners.

Additionally, this study confirms strategic communication imperatives that have been noted in other studies when communicating via social media, including humanizing a brand, seeking feedback through interaction, and relationship cultivation (Keller, 2009; Kent & Taylor, 2002; Men & Tsai, 2013; Zhang et al., 2014), Results also suggest the need to facilitate consumer and stakeholder advocacy as a strategic imperative, a topic that has been underinvestigated in strategic communication research. Although scholars commonly preach the value of participa- tion from social media publics (Macnamara & Zerfass, 2012), studies normally stop short of exploring the theoretical and practical implications of doing so.

This study suggests that strategy may be adaptive and emerge through promotional collaboration with social media publics, a process that Keller (2009) has termed customer- based brand equity. According to Keller, advocacy occurs when an organization’s products resonate with a consumer and lead to “an intense, active loyalty relationship,” wherein consumers become brand advocates based on how “in sync” and connected they are with the brand (p. 143). The current study shows that communication strategy may be flexible and adaptive as an organization cedes control to the way publics want to promote the organization or its products and services. Therefore, strategy “emerges” (King, 2009) through

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organization-public interaction as communicators balance organizational planning and public participation (Torp, 2011). Future research should evaluate the ways organizations seek public advocacy through social media to establish public participation as an imperative for strategic communication.

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