Popularity of Brand Posts on Brand Fan Pages: An Investigation of the Effects of Social Media Marketing

Abstract

Social media outlets constitute excellent vehicles for fostering relationships with customers. One specific way to do this is to create brand fan pages on social networking sites. Companies can place brand posts (containing videos, messages, quizzes, information, and other material) on these brand fan pages. Customers can become fans of these brand fan pages, and subsequently indicate that they like the brand post or comment on it. This liking and commenting on brand posts reflects brand post popularity. In this article, we determine possible drivers for brand post popularity. We analyze 355 brand posts from 11 international brands spread across six product categories. Results show that positioning the brand post on top of the brand fan page enhances brand post popularity. But the findings also indicate that different drivers influence the number of likes and the number of comments. Namely, vivid and interactive brand post characteristics enhance the number of likes. Moreover, the share of positive comments on a brand post is positively related to the number of likes. The number of comments can be enhanced by the interactive brand post characteristic, a question. The shares of both positive and negative comments are positively related to the number of comments. Managers of brands that operate brand fan pages can be guided by our research with regards to deciding which characteristics or content to place at brand posts.

Motivation for Individuals’ Involvement With Fan Pages

“…This study differs from previous empirical studies conducted by De Vries et al (2012) and Abdillah et al (2012), because this study integrates two perspectives, social computing (theory of social influence) and social media marketing (brand popularity). This integration is expected to enrich the theoretical study of online marketing through the development of behavioral models for individuals' involvement with fan pages.…”

“…This study considers the characteristics of fan pages (for example, interactivity), their content (eg, information), and the valence comments that are replicated and adapted from research by De Vries et al (2012). The third variables are used because they are the key variables that drive the individual's involvement with fan pages from the perspective of the online brands' popularity concept.…”

“…The third variables are used because they are the key variables that drive the individual's involvement with fan pages from the perspective of the online brands' popularity concept. However, the limitations of these variables (De Vries et al, 2012), in explaining the behavior of an individual's involvement with fan pages raises the opportunity to re-examine them. In addition, this study also considers the aspect of the user's motivation, namely if the internalization and identification can be replicated, as adapted from research by Abdillah et al (2012).…”

Online Marketing for Media: The Case of Greek News Websites

“…The second thematic category examined the inclusion of multimedia content, such as pictures, videos and inline frames. The third thematic category was entitled "share to social media" and investigated whether the websites of the sample provide tools for interaction through different social media, along with the number of times an article has been shared (Antonopoulos et al, 2015;Choudhury & Sundaram, 2011;Mislove et al, 2007;Vries, Gensler, & Leeflang, 2012). The last thematic category examined the comments section (Markellou, Rigou, & Sirmakessis, 2009) in the articles.…”

Temporal Analysis of Social Media Response to Live Events: The Milano Fashion Week

“…The findings of [14] show that different drivers influence the number of likes and the number of comments to fashion posts. Namely, vivid and interactive brand post characteristics enhance the number of likes.…”