Social Media a Hot Topic!

Simon Hudson’s journal article on the use of social media by music festivals (written with his son Rupert in 2013) was the most downloaded paper published in the International Journal of Events and Festival Management in 2015. The paper called ‘Engaging with consumers using social media: a case study of music festivals’ has been downloaded nearly 9,000 times since 2013. The Hudsons used a case study methodology with a multi-method approach to analyze the use of social media at three major music festivals. In general, they found that the music festivals profiled were proactive in their use of social media, engaging with consumers throughout the consumer decision journey. In particular, social media is making the “evaluate” and “advocate” stages of the decision journey more relevant for festival marketers. The paper can be found at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/IJEFM-06-2013-0012