By José-Carlos García-Rosell

The main goal of Business & Society’s (BAS) social media presence is to support the dissemination of business and society research among scholars, students, and practitioners. By promoting the visibility of BAS publications and sharing any information that might be useful to our community, we want to inspire researchers, facilitate knowledge creation, and increase the social impact of the journal. We do so by engaging with the community via Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. In 2021, we made 562 tweets, 78 Facebook posts, and 42 LinkedIn posts. At the moment of writing this post, the journal surpassed three milestones: We have more than 5000 followers in Twitter, 542 fans in Facebook, and 450 followers in LinkedIn.

Although Twitter continues to be our most popular social media platform, LinkedIn and Facebook have also been playing an important role in increasing the exposure of research published in the journal. For instance, the engagement rate (a metric that tell us how many are connecting and interacting with the content) has been around 2.5% for BAS tweets and 6% for BAS LinkedIn posts, both surpassing the thresholds of good engagement rates of 0.5% for Twitter and 2% for LinkedIn. The number of impressions, a metric which indicates the number of times people saw the content posted in a social media channel, was 785000 for BAS Twitter. These two metrics of engagement and impressions go hand in hand and are highly useful in giving us an idea on the impact of our social media efforts.

New trends in academic social media

Although tweets will continue to be the most popular form of research dissemination in social media, we are likely to witness new developments in 2022. In particular, there are two social media trends that will influence how research is disseminated in the near future: short-form video format and hosting audio livestreams. With social media editors becoming a well-established editorial board position in academic journals, there will be more opportunities for exploring these and other new ideas, which will help journals enter new social media spaces with the intent of disseminating academic research and increasing social impact. For example, social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat are already being used by some journals and members of the academic community.

The impact of social media

For some time, there has been an interest in exploring the connection between social media and citation numbers. A study published in 2017 showed that journals with their own Twitter handle get more citations than journals without one. Putting citation numbers aside, these results indicate that social media contributes not only to research exposure in academia, but also, as another study indicates, to giving more opportunities to early career researchers and underrepresented scholars to actively disseminate their research, rather than waiting for someone to pull their work from a journal database. While this relationship is something worth researching further, it would also be interesting to look into the relationship between social media and the societal impact of research.

Three elements to ignite social media in academia

Independent of the social media platform used, there are three critical elements that need to be considered when using social media in academic journals: content creation, integration, and engagement.

Content creation: For social media research communication to work, we need content that is interesting, thought-provoking, and valued by our followers. Nowadays, social media accounts of journals (including BAS) share announcements about new issues, articles, call for papers, and all kind of journal-related events. But we at BAS often ask what other forms of content can be created and for whom. For example, the blog articles and the new BAS commentaries have contributed to generating additional social media content that is available in plain language and, thus accessible to both scholars and practitioners. All of this wonderful content helps us reach a high number of tweets and other social media posts in 2021. Content is to social media as wood is to a fire place.

Integration: If content is the wood, then integration is the heat, that is, the second element needed to create a fire. By integration, we mean collaborative working between the social media editor and the other members of the editorial board, joint planning and development, and shared information. From this perspective, the more social media is diffused and embedded in the journal, the more successful its implementation. In BAS, this integration can be seen in the continuous communication and exchange of ideas between the social media editor, the blog editor, and the co-editors. And at this point, big thanks to Sarah Stephen, Hari Bapuji, Frank de Bakker, and Colin Higgins for the heat they produce.

Community engagement: Oxygen is the third element required to build a fire and the oxygen of social media is community engagement. The more our BAS community engage with our social media channels, the greater the effect. During 2021, we have seen our community sharing BAS-related content, resharing our posts among their network, tagging the journal, writing blog articles and commentaries, reaching out to the social media editor and blog editor with ideas or just making us aware of events/news/issues that may be related to BAS. We are very thankful for our awesome community and their supportive engagement and look forward to greater oxygen dose in 2022.

If you are interested in more tips on how to engage with and support BAS social media, check our blog article on disseminating research and boosting social impact. And please feel free to message us with any ideas, suggestions or comments you might have. We are always happy to hear from our community and help wherever we can!