Social Media and Corporate Social Responsibility

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the communication of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) through the emerging social media vehicles. The authors divided the content of this chapter into six sections. The first section focuses on the marketing communication tools that are available for businesses from the traditional offline ones up to the online digital channel tools. The second section of the chapter defines CSR and its benefits as a brand leverage strategy. In a third section, the authors put together CSR and social media as a means of communicating socially responsible projects and activities to the targeted audience. The forth section of this chapter enlightens the readers about the 3 P’s of CSR and where companies might fail; failure and success stories are reflected accordingly. For the readers to understand the importance of social media communication when it comes to delivering CSR messages, the fifth section shows survey results and key statistical figures about the growing number of social media users in the Middle East. The last section of this chapter shows certain key CSR campaigns launched by companies in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) via their wide social media spectrum and corporate websites. The authors give their opinion about each campaign for readers to better understand the orchestrated impact of having an integrated marketing communication (IMC) on the level of brand engagement and positive mental associations.