Effectiveness of corporate social media activities in increasing relational outcomes

•We assess three social media activities of 28 companies on nested hierarchical levels.•We apply relationship marketing theory to develop novel social media success measures.•Using a social media management tool improves attitudinal loyalty and word of mouth.•Operating a broadcasting account type will increase the average word of mouth valence.•A conversational communicative approach improves the word of mouth volume and valence.

This study applies social media analytics to investigate the impact of different corporate social media activities on user word of mouth and attitudinal loyalty. We conduct a multilevel analysis of approximately 5 million tweets regarding the main Twitter accounts of 28 large global companies. We empirically identify different social media activities in terms of social media management strategies (using social media management tools or the web-frontend client), account types (broadcasting or receiving information), and communicative approaches (conversational or disseminative). We find positive effects of social media management tools, broadcasting accounts, and conversational communication on public perception.