Social media management strategies for organizational impression management and their effect on public perception

•Social media management strategies are modeled to influence the public perception.•Distinguish a tool- and a web-based strategy based on company-generated messages.•The public perception is measured based on 15.5 million user-generated messages.•A mixed method approach is used to qualitatively explore the quantitative results.•A tool-based social media management improves word of mouth and attitudinal loyalty.

With the growing importance of social media, companies increasingly rely on social media management tools to analyze social media activities and to professionalize their social media engagement. In this study, we evaluate how social media management tools, as part of an overarching social media strategy, help companies to positively influence the public perception among social media users. A mixed methods approach is applied, where we quantitatively analyze 15 million user-generated Twitter messages containing information about 45 large global companies highly active on Twitter, as well as almost 160 thousand corresponding messages sent from these companies via their corporate Twitter accounts. Additionally, we conducted interviews with six social media experts to gain complementary insights. By these means, we are able to identify significant differences between different social media management strategies and measure the corresponding effects on the public perception.