Research pick: That’s entertainment - "Influence of post types on Facebook engagement: the moderating roles of brand category and brand internationalisation"

How companies make the most of their presence on social media has lagged behind growth in the very technology they use, according to work published in the International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising. Mathupayas Thongmak of Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand, has looked at Facebook post engagement across nine brand categories, including food, fashion, electronics, and telecommunications services, in Thailand. Fundamentally, despite various brands employing different strategies, the most successful were essentially those that entertained visitors to the brand page.

While Facebook was not the first online social networking site, it is the most widely used worldwide with almost 3 billion active monthly users by the third quarter of 2022. That’s approximately 3/8ths of the world’s population. Such numbers represent a large commercial market that a brand might access through the network. Thongmak points out that globalisation has increased the level of competition between international brands and local brands, but consumers have different opinions on each and so a different response to social media activity from those brands. There has been little research so far to investigate the disparities.

There are four questions that Thongmak’s study hoped to answer with respect to consumers in Thailand. First, what post types do brands in each category and global/local brands post on their Facebook pages? Secondly, how do post types affect fan engagement (likes, comments, shares) in Facebook brand pages? Thirdly, how do fan engagement metrics influence each other? Finally, how do brand categories and brand internationalisation affect the link between post types and fan engagement? Thongmak collected and analysed 1,574 posts from 183 Facebook pages in nine brand categories. She found that different content types were used in brand categories and brand groups.

Thongmak concludes that entertaining posts garner the most engagement from consumers and that brands need to use that to generate greater positive word-of-mouth recommendations for their products and services on social media.

Thongmak, M. (2022) ‘Influence of post types on Facebook engagement: the moderating roles of brand category and brand internationalisation’, Int. J. Internet Marketing and Advertising, Vol. 17, Nos. 3/4, pp.231–270.