Swiss Insights News - #08 Online Social Networking for Success
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Swiss
Insights
News
Online Social Networking
#08 for SuccessSwiss Insights News #08 2
3 Swiss Insights News #08
Online Social Networking for
Success: Go Premium or Go Home?
A forthcoming publication by a research team from Goethe
University Frankfurt, WHU, and HEC Paris provides the first
experimental/empirical evidence that going premium in work-
related social networks is indeed worthwhile.
In today’s business world, managers need to targeted personal messages to non-contacts uti-
actively shape their personal brand online. An lizing an exclusive advanced search filter. In con-
Prof. Dr. Andreas U. Lanz excellent example is Elon Musk who, with his so- trast, the latter operate via saliency, i.e., incoming
Assistant Professor of Marketing, cial influence capabilities, can create opportuni- attention that the premium user receives from
HEC Paris
ties peer CEOs can only dream about. He is very better positioning in search results and a presti-
available, unlike his peers – and followers get to gious premium badge.
see him make and revamp decisions in real-time.
In a way, he has more in common with influen- Surprisingly, work-related social networks
cers than with top executives calling the shots. are silent about their efficacy. For example,
LinkedIn promotes their premium memberships
However, make no mistake: This isn’t random. with claims such as “expand your network,” while
It’s strategy. So what can managers learn from also promising to “turn profile views into new
Elon Musk? The key word here is social capital. opportunities.” Hence, LinkedIn is unclear about
Creating business opportunities is about having the mechanism and what the contribution of the
a strong network, namely interpersonal relati- platform’s premium features may be.
onships that one can activate to achieve a goal.
These relationships – the social capital – require To shed light on this question, we analyzed ex-
constant nurturing. perimental as well as empirical data from the
largest European work-related social network.
This is where work-related social networks such More specifically, we conducted a randomized
as LinkedIn can help: They promise to facilitate field experiment and recruited 215 freelancers in
the accumulation and maintenance of one’s so- this network. Out of these recruited participants,
cial capital to create business opportunities. Ty- more than 70 received a randomly assigned,
pically, they operate under a freemium business free, 12-month premium membership voucher.
model and offer access to the platform free of Additionally, to gain convergent validity, we con-
charge but require a fee-based premium member- ducted a second study utilizing individual-level
ship to unlock advanced networking features. But panel data covering 52,392 freelancers, which
is it worthwhile to go premium in order to faster also allowed us to investigate the dynamics that
accumulate social capital? This focal question is active versus passive features play in social capi-
still unresolved. tal accumulation. Our findings are twofold:
In work-related social networks, there are two • First, we find that premium users do not au-
types of premium features: Active and passive tomatically change their networking intensity
features. The former operates via activity, i.e., just because they have access to premiumSwiss Insights News #08 4
features. But such a behavior change is cru- Research Team:
cial: Premium features can only prove their Michael Weiler (Goethe University Frankfurt),
full value if premium users are also motivated Simon Stolz (WHU – Otto Beisheim School of
to utilize them as part of strategic networking Management), Andreas Lanz (HEC Paris), Christian
behavior. Schlereth (WHU – Otto Beisheim School of
• Second, we find that passive features (e.g., Management), and Oliver Hinz (Goethe University
the prestigious premium badge), which ma- Frankfurt)
kes premium users more salient, is positively
linked to social capital accumulation. Yet, Contact:
their impact is substantially lower compared Prof. Dr. Andreas U. Lanz, HEC Paris,
to active features (e.g., personal messages to lanz@hec.fr
non-contacts).
Hence, our research suggests that managers
indeed should go premium in work-related so-
cial networks (e.g., LinkedIn), because we find
it’s worthwhile to possess an efficacious net-
working weapon. However, to unlock its effica-
cy, managers also need the intent to actually
“shoot” it. In other words, managers, after go-
ing premium, must then also capitalize on all
the advanced active networking features to fi-
nally faster accumulate social capital.
For the forthcoming publication in the Manage-
ment Information Systems Quarterly, see here:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.
cfm?abstract_id=38431075 Swiss Insights News #08
Swiss Insights News #08 6
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