Social networks are becoming an additional marketing channel that could be integrated with the traditional ones as a part of the marketing mix. However, traditional advertising techniques are not applicable for the social media platforms, resulting in companies experimenting with many different approaches, thus shaping a successful social media strategies based on their own experiences. To gain a more general understanding, our study analyses the effects of moderator post characteristics, such as post type, category and posting day, on the user interaction in terms of number of comments and likes, as well as interaction duration. We present the results obtained from 14 Facebook brand pages. Our results show that there is a significant effect of the post type and category on number of likes and comments as well as on interaction duration. Based on these results, we could show clear evidence of moderator posts increasing fan activity. We discuss the implications of our findings for social media marketing.

No abstract

Retailers and brands are just starting to utilize online social media to support their businesses. Simultaneously, public displays are becoming ubiquitous in public places, raising the question about how these two technologies could be used together to attract new and existing customers as well as strengthen the relationship toward a focal brand. Accordingly, in a field experiment we displayed brand-and product-related comments from the social network Facebook as pervasive advertising in small-space retail stores, known as kiosks. From interviews conducted with real customers during the experiment and the corresponding analysis of sales data we could conclude three findings. Showing social media comments resulted in (1) customers perceiving brands as more innovative and attractive, (2) a measurable, positive effect on sales on both the brand and the product in question and (3) customers wanting to see the comments of others, but not their own, creating a give-andtake paradox for using public displays to show social media comments.

Social networks are becoming an additional marketing channel that could be integrated with the traditional ones as a part of the marketing mix. Although numerous examples of using social network platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, for marketing purposes exist, and despite the various efforts from the companies and the general popularity of the medium, measuring the effectiveness is elusive.An approach towards overcoming these challenges is examination of the existing examples of activities by companies and the customer's responses to them in a form of measurements and use of analysis tools. The results of such examination could increase the general understanding of this new marketing channel and identify specific methods to be applied in order to derive strategic guidelines for marketing practitioners.To contribute in this direction, the following five studies are presented within this thesis, which address questions identified as relevant for social media marketing:User Generated Content Analysis of the user-generated content offers the possibility to understand the customers and explain how a certain product or a brand is perceived. This study analyses the content shared by users on Facebook brand pages in terms of topics, categories and shared sentiment. Obtained results indicate that 'Product', 'Sales' and 'Brand' are the three most discussed topics, while 'Requests and Suggestions', 'Expressing Affect' and 'Sharing' are the most common intentions for participation. In addition, positive sentiment is expressed far more often than negative. Monitoring TrendsUser-generated content on social media platforms offers the possibility to gain insights into the topics that attract the attention of a large fraction of users. This study provides a twofold contribution towards trend monitoring over Facebook public posts. A system for trend detection is proposed and evaluated. Moreover, three categories of trending topics were recognized: 'disruptive events', 'popular topics' and 'daily routines', and analyzed in terms of distribution and information diffusion in order to increase the understanding of emerging trends on Facebook. The results of the method evaluation showed that the proposed method performs well only on the most XX Abstract dominant topic groups. In addition, Facebook was shown to be valuable source of news where information travels and spreads fast.

No abstract