94 Copyright © 2017, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Chapter 5 DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-0576-1.ch005 ABSTRACT With the rapid explosion of Internet, social media has emerged as a new communication venue for city branding initiative. The aim of this chapter is to provide a deeper understanding of today’s communica- tion environment, and in particular, to focus the greater interactivity, engagement and responsiveness of resources in relation to city branding. Thus, this chapter irstly outlines the participatory city brand- ing, which can be considered as an appropriate approach for involving wide range of stakeholders in promoting cities as brands. Secondly, the role of social media and its inluential users are scrutinized to better present their importance for city branding. Following this, the examined Instagram campaign to promote the city of Izmir intends to allow greater insight into how to utilize online platforms in order to communicate a city both to its citizens and to global arena. And inally, the chapter leads to practical implications regarding how to beneit from social media for efective participatory city branding. INTRODUCTION The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words. (Elliott Erwitt 1 ) The transformation of the communication environment occasioned by the advance of technology has affected brands and the branding processes. In the traditional sense, a brand is defined as “a shared de- sirable and exclusive idea embodied in products, services, places and/or experiences” (Kapferer, 2008, p. 13). In order to survive in today’s highly competitive market environment, branding is considered to be one of the most essential strategies of any organization. Therefore, branding should be seen as a strategic management process that needs to be well-thought, well-designed and maintained to ensure Using Social Media for Participatory City Branding: The Case of @cityoizmir, an Instagram Project Ebru Uzunoglu Izmir University of Economics, Turkey