Research Symposium

BIO

Hi! My name is Paige Costanzo and I am currently a freshman here at Florida State University. I am majoring in Finance and Minoring in Economics with the goal of entering an investment banking firm on Wall Street upon graduation. The project I am presenting here today researched “To what extent does social media whether sourced internally from the firm/employer accounts or externally from stakeholders have an impact on a firm's overall business performance?” I had originally chosen this project as it pertains to my current desired occupation of investment banking. My goal is to utilize the information I have gathered through this project and the connections I have made, to further set myself up for success in 2 years when I must begin applying for jobs and starting my career.

Evaluating the effects of social media on firm performance

Abstract

To what extent does social media whether sourced internally from the firm/employer accounts or externally from stakeholders have an impact on a firm's overall business performance? Social media, having only emerged in the last decade, has yet to be thoroughly studied specifically looking at its effects on the business community. A total of roughly 30 studies have been collected and coded within an Excel document to craft a Literature review. We use data from a variety of FT 50 business journals to categorize the different strategies firms employ as well as uncover new variables such as outside tweet sources commonly called “social activists”. Results show that the more tweets a company put out, the more information it shared, and the larger the social media presence it maintained, the higher its overall firm performance would be. The various tweets documented within the studies were categorized as either positive/negative or informative/humorous. Twitter and Facebook were found to be the most prominent platforms and positive tweets were seen to have the most impact. The search criteria documented will help future researchers replicate our methods and build the conversation further.

Keywords: Social media, Firm Performance, Stock market