Consumer Engagement with Brand Posts on Social Media: Current State and Research Agenda

Social media has become an integral part of the marketing communication mix and has changed the way that brands and consumers engage with each other. To marketers, consumer engagement with brand posts on social media is crucial because it is essential for creating social contagion effects and positively impacts consumers’ perceptions of brand. However, social media marketers are struggling with approaching the creative brand contents in a way that maximizes consumer engagement. In academia, while some research suggests that marketers can strategically design brand contents that improve consumer engagement, it is not clear what contents work better, for which brand, and in what way. This paper presents a review of previous literature on consumer engagement with brand social media posts. Through the literature review, this paper summarizes the factors that are found to impact consumer engagement with brand social media posts. As such, this paper identifies several research streams which can be pursued.

[1]  Allard C. R. van Riel,et al.  “Don't pretend to be my friend!” When an informal brand communication style backfires on social media , 2017 .

[2]  J. Berbegal‐Mirabent,et al.  Factors influencing popularity of branded content in Facebook fan pages , 2014 .

[3]  Lauren I. Labrecque Fostering Consumer–Brand Relationships in Social Media Environments: The Role of Parasocial Interaction , 2014 .

[4]  Katja Hutter,et al.  The Impact of User Interactions in Social Media on Brand Awareness and Purchase Intention: The Case of MINI on Facebook , 2013 .

[5]  T. Ambler,et al.  How Advertising Works: What Do We Really Know? , 1999 .

[6]  T. Duncan,et al.  A Communication-Based Marketing Model for Managing Relationships , 1998 .

[7]  James M. Leonhardt,et al.  Second Person Pronouns Enhance Consumer Involvement and Brand Attitude , 2017 .

[8]  T. E. Barry,et al.  A Review and Critique of the Hierarchy of Effects in Advertising , 1990 .

[9]  Imran Khan,et al.  Does culture matter in effectiveness of social media marketing strategy? An investigation of brand fan pages , 2016, Aslib J. Inf. Manag..

[10]  Soey Sut Ieng Lei,et al.  Factors influencing customer engagement with branded content in the social network sites of integrated resorts , 2017 .

[11]  Katherine L. Milkman,et al.  What Makes Online Content Viral? , 2012 .

[12]  Katherine N. Lemon,et al.  Customer Engagement Behavior: Theoretical Foundations and Research Directions , 2010 .

[13]  R. Brodie,et al.  Consumer Brand Engagement in Social Media: Conceptualization, Scale Development and Validation , 2014 .

[14]  Steve Goodman,et al.  Social media engagement behaviour: a uses and gratifications perspective , 2016 .

[15]  Zillur Rahman,et al.  The transpiring journey of customer engagement research in marketing , 2016 .

[16]  D. Muntinga,et al.  Introducing COBRAs , 2011 .

[17]  Dokyun Lee,et al.  Advertising Content and Consumer Engagement on Social Media: Evidence from Facebook , 2017, Manag. Sci..

[18]  George R. Milne,et al.  Evaluating Facebook brand content popularity for service versus goods offerings , 2017 .

[19]  George R. Milne,et al.  Spreading the word through likes on Facebook: Evaluating the message strategy effectiveness of Fortune 500 companies , 2013 .

[20]  Mark Batey,et al.  A tale of two sites: Twitter vs. Facebook and the personality predictors of social media usage , 2012, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[21]  Dae-hee Kim,et al.  Analyzing media types and content orientations in Facebook for global brands , 2015 .

[22]  David A. Schweidel,et al.  Listening in on Social Media: A Joint Model of Sentiment and Venue Format Choice , 2014 .

[23]  Carsten D. Schultz,et al.  Proposing to your fans: Which brand post characteristics drive consumer engagement activities on social media brand pages? , 2017, Electron. Commer. Res. Appl..

[24]  Pin Luarn,et al.  Influence of Facebook brand-page posts on online engagement , 2015, Online Inf. Rev..

[25]  Rebeca San Jos Cabezudo,et al.  How brand post content contributes to user's Facebook brand-page engagement. The experiential route of active participation , 2017 .

[26]  Mary Beth Pinto,et al.  Fit for life: A content analysis of fitness tracker brands use of Facebook in social media marketing , 2016, Journal of Brand Management.

[27]  Kai-Ingo Voigt,et al.  Framing social media communication: Investigating the effects of brand post appeals on user interaction , 2017 .

[28]  Sonja Gensler,et al.  Effects of Traditional Advertising and Social Messages on Brand-Building Metrics and Customer Acquisition , 2017 .

[29]  Peeter W. J. Verlegh,et al.  The effect of directional posts in social network sites , 2017 .

[30]  Florian Michahelles,et al.  Online engagement factors on Facebook brand pages , 2013, Social Network Analysis and Mining.

[31]  P. K. Kannan,et al.  From Social to Sale: The Effects of Firm-Generated Content in Social Media on Customer Behavior , 2016 .

[32]  Constantinos K. Coursaris,et al.  Informing brand messaging strategies via social media analytics , 2016, Online Inf. Rev..

[33]  J. Russell,et al.  An approach to environmental psychology , 1974 .

[34]  Tracy L. Tuten,et al.  Creative Strategies in Social Media Marketing: An Exploratory Study of Branded Social Content and Consumer Engagement , 2015 .

[35]  Linchi Kwok,et al.  Spreading Social Media Messages on Facebook , 2013 .

[36]  Stefan Stieglitz,et al.  Emotions and Information Diffusion in Social Media—Sentiment of Microblogs and Sharing Behavior , 2013, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[37]  P. Leeflang,et al.  Popularity of Brand Posts on Brand Fan Pages: An Investigation of the Effects of Social Media Marketing , 2012 .

[38]  Naveen Donthu,et al.  What messages to post? Evaluating the popularity of social media communications in business versus consumer markets ☆ , 2017 .