The role of social media and LinkedIn in B2B startups’ marketing communications: A netnographic analysis

Considering the growing importance of the digital traces of companies to interact with stakeholders, the aim of this study is to investigate the role of social media, and LinkedIn in particular, in the marketing communications strategies of B2B startups and entrepreneurs. To achieve this research aim, by adopting a purposeful sampling, we selected 3 initial B2B new ventures operating in the tech industry. According to this theoretical sampling technique, we chose these three startups as they share some common characteristics (i.e., the use of LinkedIn to present the brand and interact with various actors; and the usage of the founders’ personal pages for business purposes), but they are also different in terms of technological products/services offered, size and location. Consistently with previous B2B studies, we conducted a netnography following the procedure theorized by Kozinets, consisting of (1) an investigative phase, (2) an immersive phase and a (3) data integration phase.