Strategising for social media: a public accounting practice perspective
This study focused on social media use by accounting firms in Australia. We investigated the social media philosophies, operationalisation and strategic intentions of public practice accounting firms in Australia. A case study approach was undertaken. The research context for this study included two "Big Four" accounting firms and three small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) The websites and social media platforms for these firms were analysed, and interviews were undertaken with their employees. Our research found that the commonly used social media platforms were Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook and their use was indeed guided by specific philosophies. The benefits of social media use informed these philosophies but at the same time, their critical challenges had to be managed to ensure successful social media use. Even though the large accounting firms had extensive planning and use of social media, the smaller firms were also quite active in the social media space relative to the scale of their operations. The assessment of the strategic outcomes of social media use was problematic but our study found increasing use of both quantitative (number of followers, connections and likes, retweets, formal reporting on social media use) and qualitative indicators (anecdotal feedback, case studies, public interest, staff involvement)