Purpose

This study examines the effects of employees' personal social media posts on external publics' online engagement and offline word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions about a company. Specifically, it investigates how employee post characteristics including valence and content and employer reputation jointly influence publics' online and offline behaviors.

Design/methodology/approach

A 2 (post valence: positive vs. negative) × 2 (post content: organization-related vs. job-related) × 2 (employer reputation: good vs. bad) between-subjects experiment was conducted. Participants were asked to view a stimulus social media post created by a fictitious company employee, reflecting one of the eight experimental conditions on a random basis. After viewing, they were requested to report their online engagement intentions (i.e., “like,” “share” and “comment”) with the post and offline WOM intentions about the company.

Findings

The experimental results showed that participants expressed more “like” intentions when they viewed a positive post than a negative post. Further, they were more likely to “comment” on a job-related post as opposed to an organization-related post. In addition, a significant interaction effect between post valence and employer reputation on publics' online engagement was found, which in turn influenced their offline WOM intentions about the company.

Originality/value

This study is among the first empirical attempts to examine the effectiveness of employees' personal social media posts on external publics' online and offline behaviors. The experimental findings highlight the importance of managing employee relations from a corporate reputation perspective.

中文翻译：

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公众对社交媒体上员工帖子的回应：消息价，消息内容和雇主声誉的影响

目的

这项研究调查了员工的个人社交媒体帖子对外部公众的在线参与和关于公司的离线口碑（WOM）意图的影响。具体而言，它调查了员工的职务特征（包括价位和内容以及雇主声誉）如何共同影响公众的在线和离线行为。

设计/方法/方法

在受试者之间进行了2次（岗位价：正面vs.负面）×2（岗位内容：与组织相关与工作相关）×2（雇主声誉：好与坏）的实验。要求参与者查看由虚拟公司员工创建的刺激性社交媒体帖子，该帖子随机反映了八个实验条件之一。查看后，他们被要求报告其在线参与意向（即“赞”，“分享”和“评论”）以及有关该公司的发布和离线WOM意向。

发现

实验结果表明，参与者在看正面文章而不是负面文章时表现出更多的“喜欢”意图。此外，与组织相关职位相比，他们更有可能“评论”与工作相关的职位。此外，还发现了后效价与雇主声誉之间对公众在线参与的显着互动影响，进而影响了他们对公司的离线WOM意图。

创意/价值

这项研究是检验员工的个人社交媒体帖子对外部公众的在线和离线行为的有效性的第一批经验尝试之一。实验结果凸显了从企业声誉角度管理员工关系的重要性。