Brand benefits

Consumer behaviour and the corporate response to a changing marketing landscape have been driven by the advent of social media over the last 15 years or so. There are pros and cons, but companies that manage their social media outlets and engage with customers in a positive way can reap the rewards and manage their brands for an improved bottom line.

Just how much of a boost to corporate success good brand management in social media and online social networks can be is still up for debate given the relatively small amount of research that has been undertaken in this area. Work published in the International Journal of Electronic Business, investigates the relationship between different content categories and user engagement as well as the impact on user trust of a brand and their ultimate intention to buy the brand.

Vincent Göttel, Bernd Wirtz, and Paul Langer of the German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer analysed 247 Facebook brand communities. As one would perhaps expect, they found that entertaining, vivid, informative, and credible content had a positive effect on user engagement. This positive effect is ultimately reflected in trust in a brand and purchase intention.

The team writes that "This study represents one of the first confirmatory empirical research papers about success factors of social media brand community management in terms of content categories provided by community managers which positively influence user engagement." They thus suggest it could serve as the basis for future related conceptual and empirical research.