PurposeWith the growing trend of omni-channel marketing, brands are increasingly looking to offer a seamless experience to their online fan base by connecting with them across multiple social media platforms. This paper explores the relationship between brand posts' characteristics and popularity for start-ups across four different social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.Design/methodology/approachA total of 1,200 social media posts from 10 start-ups were subjected to content analysis. Regression analysis was employed with brand posts' popularity (likes, comments and shares/retweets) as the dependent variable.FindingsThe results reveal several nuances in brand post popularity for start-ups across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Antecedents of the popularity measures of likes, comments and shares/retweets also fared differently.Originality/valueThe paper reports one of the earliest empirical studies to better understand how the qualities of brand posts are related to their appeal across multiple social media platforms. It advances the literature on social media marketing and offers insights to social media managers of brands, particularly start-ups, on how to offer smoother customer journeys across numerous digital touchpoints.

Social media has now become an indispensable marketing tool. Much research has been done to understand what makes brands' social media posts popular by attracting Likes, Comments and/or Shares. The objective of this paper is to carry out a systematic literature review on brand post popularity on social media. Through a literature search on Scopus-the largest database of peer-reviewed literature, 19 relevant articles were identified. Facebook has been the most widely studied platform while only a handful of works have focused on Instagram and Twitter. Platforms such as LinkedIn and TikTok have not been studied. Scholarly attention has mostly been trained on well-known and popular brands. A list of 22 antecedents of brand post popularity could be identified, some of which have often yielded contradictory findings. Several directions for future research are proposed. Consistencies in the literature are also summarized for the benefit of practitioners such as social media marketers.