Strategic Corporate Communication in the Digital Age

Mark Anthony Camilleri, Mark Anthony Camilleri

• Editorial: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Año: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781800712669
• Categoría: Business
• Categoría: Business Strategy

Strategic Corporate Communication in the Digital Age explores how contemporary communication approaches are crossing boundaries as innovative media formats and digital transformations offer new challenges and opportunities to academia and practitioners. New technologies have empowered various organisations and their stakeholders. The digital and social media are central to the process of building trust, reputation and support, as online users can use them to scrutinise and influence corporate decisions and actions.
This authoritative book features a broad spectrum of theoretical and empirical chapters on topics relating to organisations' interactive engagement with stakeholders during COVID-19. It sheds light on dialogic communications through different digital media, the utilisation of mobile learning technologies for corporate training and development, corporate disclosures of CSR practices, communications of small and medium sized businesses, and provides a taxonomy of online marketing methods, among other topics. This title is a premier reference source and a valuable teaching resource for courses in marketing, communications, strategy and organisational behaviour.

Chapter 1

Strategic Dialogic Communication Through Digital Media During COVID-19 Crisis

Mark Anthony Camilleri

Abstract

Institutions and organizations are increasingly using the digital media to communicate with stakeholders on a day-to-day basis and during crisis situations. Therefore, this chapter presents a bibliographic analysis on digital corporate communication technologies. The grounded theory’s inductive approach was used to capture and interpret the findings from Scopus-indexed publications. The articles were scrutinized in their entirety, including their research questions, methodologies and interpretation of the findings. Afterwards, this contribution identifies the opportunities and challenges that emerged during an unprecedented coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. In conclusion, it implies that there is scope for institutions and organizations to incorporate digital and social media in their crises’ communications and risk management plans. This will enable them to be in a better position to engage in credible and transparent dialogic communications with different stakeholders.

Keywords: Corporate communication; digital media; digital communication; social media; crises; COVID-19

1.1 Introduction

Corporate communication practitioners can avail themselves of a wide range of digital media, to convey commercial information and/or to interact with stakeholders and the general public. They can use them to create electronic content to inform and educate online users about their products or services (Cornelissen, 2008; García García, Carrillo-Durán, & Tato Jimenez, 2017; Köhler & Zerfass, 2019; Krishna & Vibber, 2017). Alternatively, they may utilize the digital platforms to communicate about their organizations’ activities, including corporate social responsibility practices and/or to engage with online users, in real time (Camilleri, 2018a, 2020). Institutions and organizations may usually promote their activities and/or offerings through websites or other digital media including blogs, vlogs, video clips and social media, among others (Fraustino & Connolly-Ahern, 2015; Killian & McManus, 2015; Ruehl & Ingenhoff, 2015). Their websites can have responsive designs and different formats of verbal, vocal and visual content to appeal to their targeted audiences. Their corporate communications content can be displayed in web pages; blog posts, social media posts, eBooks, online articles, review sites, product FAQs, videos and micro-videos; pictures, infographics and animated GIFs, among other media. Marketers are also expected to create appropriate content and to ensure that their online sites are presented in an attractive and user-friendly format and structure. They can optimize it for mobile screens, as this medium has surpassed desktop traffic. Moreover, their online domains have to be responsive in terms of load time, content length, voice search, image and video processing.

Institutions and organizations can develop corporate websites or blogs that may be accessed through organic queries via search engines like Google and Bing, among others (Romenti, Valentini, Murtarelli, & Meggiorin, 2016). These search engines will usually identify quality content in their search results. Hence, corporate communication practitioners and digital marketers ought to create fresh, engaging content with a growing number of quality links to enhance the quality of their websites. They have to make sure that their landing (home) page features a great design to improve the online users’ experience (Camilleri, 2019a). Moreover, they may utilize social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn, among others, to disseminate their content to their subscribers and to engage in interactive conversations with them (Camilleri & Isaias, 2020; Champoux, Durgee, & McGlynn, 2012; García-Orosa, 2019). Corporate communication practitioners can also work with online influencers who are capable of attracting large audiences. This latest development reaffirms the link between high-quality, corporate communication and the digital media (Camilleri, 2017a). Organizations including corporations as well as small businesses ought to be familiar with the digital and mobile technologies (Melewar & Navalekar, 2002). They can use them on a day-to day basis to forge relationships with different stakeholders including employees, customers, suppliers, investors, media, regulatory authorities and the community at large (Bachmann, 2019; Costa-Sánchez & Míguez-González, 2018; Loureiro & Gomes, 2016) or during crisis situations (Champoux et al., 2012; Krishna & Vibber, 2017).

In this light, this chapter appraises previous theoretical underpinnings that were focused on strategic dialogic corporate communications in the digital age. Afterwards, it synthesizes the findings from relevant academic literature and discusses about the latest opportunities and challenges facing organizations, following the outbreak of coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. In conclusion, this timely contribution puts forward key implications to practitioners and identifies future research avenues.

1.2 Corporate Communication Through Digital Media

The disruptive technologies are supporting institutions as well as organizations in their corporate communications. They allow them to improve their interactive engagement with stakeholders, while enhancing their legitimacy in society (Mohd-Sulaiman & Hingun, 2020; see Hoffmann & Aeschlimann, 2017; Sunar, Kusnayat, & Aziz, 2018). The latest digital communications are synchronous and dynamic as they enable online users to exchange information in real time (Romenti et al., 2016; Turner, Wilkie, & Rosen, 2004). They have facilitated the corporate communication practitioners’ content marketing and increased their two-way interactions with different audiences (Abratt & Cullinan, 2017; Holliman & Rowley, 2014; Järvinen & Taiminen, 2016; Rowley, 2008).

1.2.1 Social Media

Social media platforms enable symmetric, dialogic communications in an online environment where there is limited gatekeeping (Camilleri & Costa, 2018; Overton-de Klerk & Verwey, 2013). Individuals and organizations can use them to establish their authority and trust among stakeholders by consistently creating high-quality content that is relevant to them. They are encouraged to create engaging content to communicate with targeted audiences. Their online content can turn “viral” as online users may be intrigued to re-post it again through the social media. Such electronic word-of-mouth publicity and user-generated content are usually perceived as highly trustworthy sources for prospective customers (Chu & Kim, 2011; Manfredi-Sánchez, 2019; Ye, Law, Gu, & Chen, 2011). Thus, corporate communication practitioners are increasingly subscribing to different social media networks, including Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn, among others, to increase the reach of their content (Beltrá, Medina, & Correia, 2020; Champoux et al., 2012; Costa-Sánchez & Míguez-González, 2018).

Currently, Facebook has 2.45 billion users. Other popular social media networks include Instagram (1 billion users), Reddit (430 million users), Snapchat (360 million users), Twitter (330 million users), Pinterest (322 million users) and LinkedIn (310 million users) (SEJ, 2020). These networks have become very popular communication outlets as they promote online content and allow synchronous interactions, in real time. In addition, some of them, including Facebook, provide messenger systems, including Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp. They also offer live video functions to enhance virtual communications.

Twitter is a platform that is based on topical content. Generally, its users are encouraged to use keywords and hashtags on certain topics, in particular locations. Twitter posts have a 280-character limit. Therefore, its subscribers have to articulate short, focused messages (Siano et al., 2018). Its subscribers are expected to dedicate time to look after their account as they need to respond to their followers to avoid negative criticism (Camilleri, 2018b). Like Facebook, Twitter enables direct, two-way communications among subscribers (Caerols-Mateo, Viñarás-Abad, & Gonzálvez-Valles, 2017). Hence, it can be used to engage in interactive conversations with other users.

LinkedIn is another effective tool, particularly for personal branding. This social network helps its users to identify and engage with influencers who share similar interests. Companies and individuals can also use this site to create online articles like a blog. Pinterest and Instagram enable their users to share images and ideas with others in their networks. They are focused on the dissemination of visual content. Instagram and Snapchat can feature videos and user-generated content. They may include influencer marketing material (Hajarian, Camilleri, Diaz, & Aedo, 2020; Rios Marques, Casais, & Camilleri, 2020). Moreover, practitioners are increasingly uploading short, fun videos which oft...