How can we utilize social media to influence users’ opinions of our business?

One study comparing both Western and Chinese social media users focused on why users engaged with certain businesses online. The study focused on the relation between culture and social media dependency, company social media-related behaviors, and motives of consumers to follow social media companies. The study found similar results to that of prior research, with social media dependency being higher in China than Western Europe and in relation, Chinese users being more likely to interact with company social media accounts than Western users. (Zhang, 2025) What that means for many businesses is that, in order to be globally successful, the business must adjust its social media practices to be successful in other cultures around the world. Please see the below table for their findings:

That sounds rather intimidating but luckily, studies have shown that business-to-business and business-to-user relationships can improve marketability. In the article, How do organizations leverage social media to enhance marketing performance? Unveiling the power of social CRM capability and guanxi., they discussed a survey-based study focused on how businesses can utilize their interpersonal relationships to gain insight into how to improve their marketing performance. Specifically, the study focused on how social media “…affects marketing performance depending on the mediating role of social customer relationship management (CRM) capability and the moderating role of guanxi.” (Luo, 2024)

The main takeaway from the study was stated best by the article, “In this sense, social media serves as an enabling technology to enhance social CRM capability thereby improving marketing performance…Guanxi is a close and universal interpersonal relationship built on high-quality social interactions and mutual benefits. A high level of guanxi can optimize social media-enabled CRM processes by providing firms with access to unique marketing resources (e.g., knowledge, information, and policy support).” (Luo, 2024). This establishes that interpersonal relationships with other similar businesses and online users can be beneficial in marketing but must be evaluated for equal benefits to all parties involved.

Finding similar successful businesses and building rapport with both them and social media users allows for greater success in business. Building mutually beneficial relationships with other businesses can be difficult, so one needs to be cautious when choosing these businesses. It’s also important to acknowledge when those relationships are no longer mutually beneficial and sever ties with them as necessary. That said, the opportunity to build relationships should be leveraged wherever possible.