Network Overlap and Content Sharing on Social Media Platforms

Abstract

Improving content sharing on social media platforms helps firms enhance the efficacy of their marketing campaigns. The authors study the impact of network overlap—the overlap in network connections between two users—on content sharing in directed social media platforms. The authors propose a hazards model that flexibly captures the impact of three measures of network overlap (i.e., common followees, common followers, and common mutual followers) on content sharing. Using data on content sharing from two directed social media platforms (Twitter and Digg), the authors establish that a receiver is more likely to share content from a sender with whom they share more common followees, common followers, or common mutual followers even after accounting for other measures. In addition, common followers have a higher effect than common mutual followers on the sharing propensity of the receiver. Finally, the effect of common followers and common mutual followers is positive when the content is novel but decreases, and may even become negative, when many others have already shared it. Collectively, these results have a bearing for marketers to more effectively target users for spreading content on social media platforms.

Production of Online Word‐of‐Mouth: Peer Effects and the Moderation of User Characteristics

“…, Peng et al. , Zhang and Zhu ). Being a departure from the literature, we draw on theories that predict an individual’s contributions to online public goods in social settings and utilize a “natural experiment” on a major third‐party platform to identify the effects of audience and peer group size.…”

Content marketing strategy and its impact on customers under the global market conditions

“…[14] Global content marketing is currently attracting so much attention because its importance in modern internet marketing is increasingly widespread, as is also confirmed by google, who is trying to fight and publish quality content. [15] The differences in the use of global content marketing today compared to the past are mainly due to technologies and their capabilities. [16] Almost everyone can publish interesting content over the Internet, and businesses are trying to become media themselves, because traditional forms of marketing are harder to quantify and lose strength in the digital era.…”

Displaying Things in Common to Encourage Friendship Formation

“…However, little is known about how IT can help facilitate and shape friendship formation. Understanding IT-enabled tie formation is crucial as friendship ties serve as the infrastructure underlying influence processes and have a significant impact on information diffusion (Shi et al 2014, Peng et al 2018). Our study is among the first to address this gap and suggests that SN sites may creatively leverage IT-facilitated information intervention to overcome challenges in friendship formation, especially among weak ties 3 .…”