In the past few years, a topic that has caught much attention by academia is the rather

new concept of ‘social media’. Today, it is expected by business-to-business

organizations to involve social media in their marketing activities. However, the

existing literature surrounding the concept has mainly focused on the business-toconsumer

context, and there is a lack of research on the concept in a business-tobusiness

context. This bachelor thesis aims to contribute to the theoretical landscape of

social media in a business-to-business context as well as to study marketing managers’

work with social media in large international business-to-business organizations. The

purpose of this thesis is to understand the reasons for large international business-tobusiness

organizations to engage in social media for marketing purposes. In order to

fulfill the purpose, two research questions were formulated as (i) What do marketing

managers at large international business-to-business organizations experience that social

media is effective for? and (ii) How do marketing managers at large international

business-to-business organizations measure the effectiveness of social media? A

qualitative method was chosen for the thesis, where seven semi-structured interviews

were conducted with marketing managers from three large international business-tobusiness

companies. The marketing managers contributed with their experiences which

resulted in that the thesis concluded that social media is effective for; firstly, as a

communications channel with customers, secondly, to create awareness as well as third

and lastly, to support existing relationships as well as build new relationships. Further,

the thesis also found that the interviewed marketing managers use the metrics; reach,

likes, comments, cost per lead and impressions when measuring the social media

effectiveness. However, uncertainties were expressed regarding the reliability of these

metrics.