How do nonprofit organizations (NPOs) effectively engage with the public on social media? Examining the effects of interactivity and emotion on Twitter

Abstract

PurposeThis study seeks to understand the communication factors associated with effective social media for nonprofit organizations (NPOs). Specifically, the study investigated how interactive and emotional communication strategies influence public engagement in different ways, and how the effects differ by service-oriented and other types of NPOs.Design/methodology/approachUsing computer-assisted textual and emotional analyses, the authors examined the functional interactivity, contingency interactivity and emotion elements of 301,559 tweets from the 100 largest US nonprofits. Negative binomial regression was applied to test the relationships among these elements and public engagement on Twitter (i.e. likes and retweets).FindingsFindings revealed negative effects of functional interactivity on likes, negative effects of contingency interactivity on likes and retweets but a positive effect of functional interactivity on retweets. The findings also showed negative effects of emotion valence on likes and retweets but positive effects of emotion strength on likes and retweets. There were varying effects of interactivity and emotion on public engagement for service-oriented and other types of NPOs.Originality/valueThis study advances the nonprofit social media scholarship in several ways. First, this study suggests a clear yet largely ignored distinction in the effects of functional and contingency interactivity on public engagement. Second, this study is an early attempt to examine the role and impact of emotion elements in nonprofit social media success without downplaying the role of interactivity. Third, this study is one of the earliest attempts to include interaction effects for different types of NPOs. Last, this study contributes to the organizational social media use research by demonstrating the benefits of computer-assisted approaches in processing text data on social media. From a practical perspective, this study provides strategic guidelines for NPOs to design effective communication contents and improve their public engagement on social media.

Thai Commercial Banks on Twitter

“…The use of hashtags and user mentions was significantly negatively associated with the RT count in the study by Nanath and Joy (2021). However, functional interactivities, such as hashtags and mentions, significantly generated more public engagement on Twitter in the study by Zhang et al (2022). There was also a strong positive interaction effect when mixing hashtags, mentions, and links in the study by Sridevi et al (2020).…”

People want to see people? Personalization on Facebook as a tool for corporate communications

“…Social media allow every individual and every organization to have their own personalized communication channel (Metz et al, 2019). Furthermore, the interactive nature of social media fosters engagement through commenting, liking, or sharing posts (Cho et al, 2016;Zhang et al,2022).…”

“…Furthermore, the interactive nature of social media fosters engagement through commenting, liking, or sharing posts (Cho et al. , 2016; Zhang et al. , 2022).…”