محبوبیت پست های نام تجاری (برند) بر فن پیج های نام تجاری : بررسی اثرات بازاریابی رسانه های اجتماعی

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.

In 2011, more than 50% of social media users follow brands on social media (Van Belleghem, Eenhuizen, and Veris 2011) and companies are increasingly investing in social media, indicated by worldwide marketing spending on social networking sites of about $4.3 billion (Williamson 2011). Managers invest in social media to foster relationships and interact with customers (SAS HBR 2010). One way to realize this aim is to create brand communities in the form of brand fan pages on social networking sites where customers can interact with a company by liking or commenting on brand posts (McAlexander et al., 2002 and Muñiz and O'Guinn, 2001). Consumers who become fans of these brand fan pages tend to be loyal and committed to the company, and are more open to receiving information about the brand (Bagozzi and Dholakia 2006). Moreover, brand fans tend to visit the store more, generate more positive word-of-mouth, and are more emotionally attached to the brand than non-brand fans (Dholakia and Durham 2010). While preliminary research has been conducted on the success of marketing activities on social media, little is known about factors that influence brand post popularity, that is, the number of likes and comments on brand posts at brand fan pages (Ryan and Zabin, 2010 and Shankar and Batra, 2009). Management-oriented studies about brand post popularity are mainly descriptive; they provide no theoretical foundation and do not formally test which activities actually improve brand post popularity. For example, these studies suggest that companies should experiment with different brand post characteristics, such as videos, images, text, or questions (Brookes, 2010 and Keath et al., 2011). Current insights are thus limited, which has increased the call for research in the area of social media, as indicated by the subject of this special issue and the 2010–2012 Marketing Science Institute research priorities (www.msi.org). The aim of this research is to empirically investigate what factors drive brand post popularity. We develop a conceptual model that is based upon findings from the banner and advertising literature, as well as the word-of-mouth communication literature. We consider brand post characteristics (e.g., vividness, interactivity), content of the brand post (e.g., information, entertainment), position of the brand post, and the valence of comments on the brand post written by brand fans. We gathered data from different brand fan pages on a social networking site to test our hypotheses. The findings indicate that enhancing either the number of likes or the number of comments requires different instruments. With this research we provide insights to the social media literature, which are interesting for academics as well as for practitioners. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to empirically investigate which factors influence the popularity of brand posts at a social networking site. Our research provides valuable and directly applicable implications for companies’ social media marketing activities. The flow of this paper is as follows: first, we describe brand fan pages and brand post popularity, and then develop the conceptual framework and hypotheses. That initial section is followed by a description of the study design. The empirical results are then described and discussed. We conclude with implications for managers, and propose some limitations that provide opportunities for further research.

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. Our research shows that not all determinants which are beneficial for enhancing the number of likes do also have an effect on enhancing the number of comments, and vice versa. Enhancing the Number of Likes When managers aim to enhance the number of likes, they can place a highly vivid or a medium interactive brand post characteristics such as a video or a contest. Posting a question (highly interactive) has a negative effect on the number of likes. A question demands an answer, which cannot be given by liking the brand post. Also entertainment has a negative effect on the number of likes. This might be explained by the fact that entertaining brand posts contain content that is unrelated to the brand, while brand fans are interested in the brand. Furthermore, the longer a brand post remains at the top of the brand fan page increases the probability that brand fans are exposed to it, which indeed has a positive effect on the number of likes. Additionally, compared to neutral comments, the share of positive comments from brand fans are positively related to the number of likes for the brand post in question. Our results further indicate that brand fans are influenced by each other: the share of positive comments to a brand post enhances the attractiveness of the brand post. It seems to raise general interest in a brand post which may in turn lead to an increasing number of likes. Enhancing the Number of Comments Managers who specifically want to enhance the number of comments should post a highly interactive brand post characteristic at the brand post, such as a question. This result is intuitive because answering a question is only possible by placing a comment. The other vivid and interactive brand post characteristics, as well as the content of the brand post do not have an effect on the number of comments. Placing the low level interactive brand post characteristic, a website link, even has a negative effect on the number of comments. An explanation might be that brand fans who click on the link do not comment on the brand post anymore because they navigate away from the brand fan page. It is beneficial for the number of comments to keep the brand post longer at the top of the brand fan page. Finally, compared to neutral comments, both shares of positive and negative comments are positively related to the number of comments. Probably positive and negative comments enhance a general interest in the brand post, which leads to more commenting. Namely, previous research shows that people differentiate their opinions and the variance in posted comments seems to generate subsequent comments (e.g., Moe and Trusov, 2011 and Schlosser, 2005). For managers this is an important finding because it indicates that negative comments are not necessarily bad. Brand fans may feel to be part of the community because they engage in a vivid discussion with both positive and negative arguments. Limitations and Further Research This research is subject to some limitations which may provide fruitful avenues for future research. We have chosen to use eleven brands from six product categories. Moreover, we have included a limited number of brand posts per brand. The amount of data is sufficient to empirically investigate the factors that drive brand post popularity. However, brands did not often post a quiz or event at a brand post and therefore we excluded these two explanatory variables from the analyses. Future studies may want to use a more comprehensive dataset. Additionally, we have gathered data from the brand fan pages of one social networking site. It would be interesting to replicate this research for other social networking sites, to see whether the results still hold. Specifically, investigating social networking sites from other countries sheds light on possible cultural differences that influence which activities on brand fan pages are and are not successful. We have investigated the determinants of brand post popularity. An interesting topic for further research is to examine the determinants of brand popularity. Brand popularity reflects the number of brand fans, which gives an indication of the brand's recognition on social media. Industry market research shows that consumers become brand fans because they have had a positive experience with the product (Van Belleghem, Eenhuizen, and Veris 2011). It would be interesting to know how companies can influence consumers to become brand fans. Social contagion (i.e., brand fans influencing each other) might play a role when brand fans choose to like or comment on a brand post. We show that the shares of positive and negative comments, compared to neutral comments, are positively related to brand post popularity. Other research has shown that WoM communication of social networking sites’ users significantly influences new sign-ups (Trusov, Bucklin, and Pauwels 2009). Similarly, social contagion might play a role in brand fans’ decisions to ‘adopt’ (i.e., like or comment on) a brand post. For example, Aral and Walker (2011) show that the automated notifications in a social network influence the adoption of an application. The notifications that appear when a brand fan likes or comments on a brand post might influence the brand fan's friends to become a brand fan or like and/or comment on a brand post. An investigation into how the popularity of brands and brand posts is affected by social contagion could prove interesting and valuable. We did not include dynamic aspects in our study. The timing of the likes and comments to the brand post might be investigated. For example, when do people react: mostly in the few hours after the brand post is created or also after a few days? This kind of information can be used to compute how many days between two brand posts effectively increases brand post popularity. Moreover, the ‘adoption’ curve of likes and comments can be modeled if one knows how long it takes before a certain number of people like or comment on a brand post. In conclusion, this research responds to the call for research into social media, and more specifically, how social media can be used to manage customer relationships, marketing communications, and branding. Future research may enrich our initial findings about the factors that determine the popularity of brand posts as discussed in this paper.