Effective Use of Social Media in Public Relations in Nigerian Businesses: A Case Study of The Nigerian Banking Sector

Ufuoma, Precious Ughakpoten (2020) Effective Use of Social Media in Public Relations in Nigerian Businesses: A Case Study of The Nigerian Banking Sector. Masters thesis, Griffith College.

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Abstract

Social media has fast become a digital transformative tool for businesses. The introduction of social media into the business space through the internet is a notable innovation that has received wide recognition as a platform that changed how people and business interact with each other. Though its importance cannot be overemphasized, public relations (PR) practitioners must continue to evolve and stay up-to-date and meet up with the constantly changing trends as well as the audience demands. This research set out to determine the effective use of social media in the Nigerian banking industry by examining how Nigerian banks and PR professionals/agencies use their social media profiles, user engagements on these social media profiles, how the effectiveness of social media PR campaigns are measured and the roles social media has played in the PR of Nigerian banks. The research questions addressed in this study are What role does social media play in public relations in the banking sector? ;How can the effective use of social media improve the achievement of a positive and sustainable relationship between banks and its public? and What are the factors that determine social media platforms employed by public relations practitioners in banks?The study utilized a mixed methods approach combining both qualitative and quantitative research methods, to collect this data, a social media audit report on the Facebook, Instagram and twitter accounts on top 5 performing Nigeria banks was carried out followed by questionnaire distribution to 70 PR professionals in the Nigerian banking industry and Interviewing 4 prominent PR practitioners in the banking Industry.The results of this study indicated that social media is effectively used to publicize, inform and educates the public on the services and products being offered by the banks, facilitates corporate communication through two-way communication that is instrumental in countering wrong publicity and threat to goodwill, attending to public complaints and promotion of events that helps in creating and building important relationships with customers. The study also revealed that the factors that influence the use of certain social media mediums like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook over others are customer feedback, complaints, engagement, and inquiry on the platforms.Further research is needed into different industries to carry out comparative analysis and establish a trend with the way different industries use social media for PR as well as expanding this research into different forms of banking such as commercial banking, investment banking, retail banking, credit unions etc. as they all have different target audiences and it expected that PR strategies used would vary for these different forms of banking.

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