Analyzing media types and content orientations in Facebook for global brands

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -This study aims to examine current practices of social media marketing among major global brands across five product categories (namely, convenience, shopping, specialty, industrial and service). Assessing the frequency, media type and content orientations of corporate Facebook pages, this study aims to isolate the qualitative factors of a brand's social media message that are most likely to facilitate a consumer response. Design/methodology/approach -A content analysis of 1,086 social media posts was conducted from the corporate Facebook pages of 92 global brands during a one-month (snapshot) time horizon in July 2013. The data collected from each individual post include its media type (i.e. text, photo or video), its content orientation (i.e. task, interaction and self-oriented) and the number and type of consumer response it generated (i.e. likes, comments and shares). Findings -Research findings reveal that global brands actively utilize social media, posting on average three messages per week and generally use photos (as a media type) and interaction-focused content (as a content orientation) to secure consumer responses. However, differences in consumer responses exist along various product categories, message media type and message content orientation. Practical implications -Findings imply that marketers should not only carefully consider the media type they use to message consumers on social media but should also try to consider the individual consumer's motive for interaction. Originality/value -This article suggests a new way to study social media content by applying pre-existing communication frameworks from salesmanship literature as a way to define message content orientation.

“Engage and attract me, then I’ll share you”: an analysis of the impact of post category on viral marketing in a social networking site

“…For example, they could not be special beer brands or be exclusively regional; and (ii) the brands had to participate regularly in social networking, with a certain frequency of posts. The main objective in choosing eight different brands was to control the effect of the brand on the dependent variable, a similar procedure used by Kim et al (2015), which controlled product category. The number of posts (2583), covering the period between December 2012 -February 2013, is significantly greater in number than those analyzed in previous studies on Facebook (De Vries et al, 2012;Kim et al, 2015;Sabate et al, 2014;Swani et al, 2013).…”

“…The most striking characteristic of the studies which analyze sharing as the dependent variable is that they usually do not attach it to viral marketing. They usually refer to it as consumer engagement (Cvijikj & Michahelles, 2013) or response (Kim et al, 2015) because the association of sharing with two other actions in the social network: comment and liking.…”

“…Of the studies which categorize posts on Facebook, the grand majority focuses on likes and comments as dependent variables (De Vries et al, 2012;Sabate et al, 2014;Swani et al, 2013). The ones which defined sharing as dependent variable (Kim et al, 2015) did not concentrate on analyzing it as a form of viral marketing. Content which is popular and relevant for users is positively associated with brand loyalty in virtual social networks (Erdoğmuş & Çiçek, 2012), since studies indicate that such content can foster engagement with customers and produce managerial results, such as sales (Smith et al, 2012).…”

“…Much of this content is published in social media because viral marketing uses a pre-existing social network to spread marketing information via word-of-mouth (WOM) among users of that social network (Yang, Yao, Ma, & Chen, 2010). As a result, research conducted with the help of data from virtual social networks is becoming increasingly common (Cvijikj & Michahelles, 2013;De Vries, Gensler, & Leeflang, 2012;Groeger & Buttle, 2014;Kim, Spiller, & Hettche, 2015;Ransbotham, Kane, & Lurie, 2012;Sabate, Berbegal-Mirabent, Cañabate, & Lebherz, 2014;Schulze, Schöler, & Skiera, 2014;Smith, Fischer, & Yongjian, 2012;Swani, Milne, & Brown, 2013), although authors stress that organizations have not yet been able to measure the effectiveness of strategies based on these environments (Hoffman & Novak, 2012;Kumar, Bhaskaran, Mirchandani, & Shah, 2013).…”

Social Media Marketing; a Juxtaposition of Various Effects on Businesses in Zambia

“…Rohm et al (2013) identified five primary motives that drive consumers to interact with brands through social media. They include "entertainment", "brand engagement", "access to customer services and content", "product information" and "promotions" as quoted by [10].…”