How to Engage Consumers through Effective Social Media Use—Guidelines for Consumer Goods Companies from an Emerging Market

Abstract

This study aims to establish actionable guidelines and provide strategic insights as a means of increasing the social media effectiveness of consumer brands. Post-related factors in addition to the contextual and temporal factors influencing consumer engagement (i.e., reposting, commenting on or liking posts), as an indicator of social media effectiveness, are considered in detail in the research model. Moreover, the model considers differences between industries as well as social media platforms. A total of 1130 posts made by four brands, two each from the durable goods and fast-moving consumer goods sectors, were collected from Facebook and Twitter in Turkey. Through predictive analysis, four different machine learning algorithms were utilized to develop easy-to-apply plans of action and strategies. The findings highlight the significant impact of videos, images, post frequency and interactivity on engagement. Furthermore, social media platforms and the brands themselves were found to be instrumental in influencing engagement levels, indicating that more than one formula is needed for effective social media management. The range and depth of the post-related factors (e.g., image type, video length, kind of interactivity) considered go far beyond those found in the significant majority of similar studies. Moreover, the unique setting and the novel data analysis algorithms applied set this study apart from similar ones.

Measuring Customer Engagement in Social Media Marketing: A Higher-Order Model

“…From a managerial perspective, this research improves the comprehension of customer engagement based on its importance in developing meaningful relationships and fostering brand loyalty. In the current business environment, customer engagement can improve organizational performance, including sales growth, competitive advantage, customer attrition, and superior profitability [15][16][17]23,31]. Moreover, due to its importance in determining loyalty, managers should constantly measure and monitor CE in regular customer surveys using the scales validated in this study.…”

“…In this context of social media usage surge, customer engagement (CE) has been proposed as a concept that can help develop mutually beneficial relationships between consumers and brands. Customer engagement has been the focus of marketing campaigns developed by practitioners, and the research interest of many academic studies focused on theoretical perspectives [2,9,10,13] and practical insights, such as exploring engagement metrics of social networks in the Chilean wine industry [3] or developing actionable guidelines based on factors that influence CE [15].…”

Internet Celebrities’ Impact on Luxury Fashion Impulse Buying

“…Moreover, the more popular ICs are, the greater the influence they can exert on the online community by capturing more followers. The large number of followers having a positive opinion of the IC acts as a bandwagon cue, signaling the collective choice and belief of the crowd [69]. As is indicated by bandwagon heuristics, people believe that ICs become popular for specific reasons, either due to their high level of expertise or their abilities [70].…”

An Evaluation Study in Social Media Research: Key Aspects to Enhancing the Promotion of Efficient Organizations on Twitter

“…Their results illustrated the gaps between customer engagement conceptions, customer engagement dimensionality, and the metrics of social media performance beyond customer engagement, maintaining that performance metrics include the reach and number of followers, while suggesting the need to access consumers profiles, aggregate the metrics across social media networks, and track the customer journey online and offline. Aydin et al [23] explored the means of engaging customers through effective social media channels in Turkey. The researchers found that engagement is affected significantly when posts have videos, images, frequency, and interactivity.…”