Reputation management on social media: A research on universities

Corporate reputation is defined as an ultimate purpose for corporates from any sector and industry. Having a reputation brings multiple advantages for corporates. The most important advantage is being a preferable and eligible in front of society and consumers. Especially in sectors like education and universities, corporate reputation becomes more valuable and important selection criteria for these corporates than any other sectors and industries. In this sense, universities should use both traditional and social media in order to establish a positive corporate reputation and aim to control it under the guidance of corporate reputations' components. Especially considering that universities' target audience is youth generation, it looks a valid strategy in today's competitive world that selecting and focusing on social media in order to establish and control corporate reputation rather than traditional media. In this context, the purpose of a thesis is defining the functions of social media and clarify it's role in order to process of corporate reputation management. Also aims to explain that in education and university sector which has an intensive competition, which components of corporate reputation mostly be in use by universities in their corporate reputation management on social media and finally aims to clarify a corporate reputation management guide for universities. In this sense, the first and second parts of the thesis are formed with citations made from the scientific literature about this subject matter. In the first part, as a term corporate reputation, its management process and the importance of reputation in universities are defined and clarified. In the second part, subjects like the formation process of social media, values that add to corporates and corporate reputation management process on it is tried to define and clarified. Finally in the third part, findings that gained from depth interviews made by social media employees or departments of nine universities(4 state, 5 private) which are located in İzmir and conclusions about how these universities use social media in their corporate reputation management process take place and tried to clarify.