SOCIAL MEDIA AUTOMATION EFFECTS ON BRAND REPUTATION “A study of social media automation effects on brand reputation in the digital age”

Social media automation is increasingly recognised as an effective and efficient means of growing a brands reputation. Generations of users, since the turn of the millennium, have adapted to the commercialisation of the internet through the creation of online markets. An implicit relationship has formed between the brands and their customers propagated through social media. Digital platforms employed and engaged prolifically have disrupted traditional twentieth century marketing processes. It remains constantly true in both academia and professional practice that recognition of the relationship between brand engagement and reach are important catalysts for generating brand reputation. The payback generating a cyclical relationship akin to a recursive program or routine of which a part requires the application of the whole, so that its explicit interpretation requires in general many successive executions. A recent evolution of social media is the development and proliferation of Socialbots. These artificial intelligence (AI) persona’s are agents generated to communicate ostensibly autonomously on social media. Tasked often as influencers Socialbots (also social bot or socbot) are activated to engage online with people. The hypothesis “that the use of social media bots expands brand engagement & reach, thus generating brand reputation benefits resulting in a recursive customer relationship” has been tested through the case study of a small architectural and visualisation practice. There have been interesting findings that align with the theoretical research focused on this specific topic.