What Makes Customers More Engaged on Social Media? An Investigation of Customers’ Responses to Brand-Generated Content on Twitter

Abstract

This study employs thematic content analysis to explore how the content source (brand vs. brands in collaboration with celebrities), content type (informative, social, and entertaining), and content format (videos, links, photos, and text) shape customer engagement on Twitter. It also aims to unpack the user-generated content (UGC) patterns and users’ attitudinal and behavioral reactions in response to brand-generated content (BGC). Using 5086 tweets generated by a brand and 4676 brand-related tweets generated by users, the findings demonstrate a significant increase in user engagement with the content generated by brands in collaboration with a celebrity compared to the content generated solely by the brand regardless of the content type. The findings also reveal that social and entertaining content attracts more user engagement than informative content. Users tend to engage more with tweets containing images than tweets containing videos or links. The findings further illustrate that most users’ brand-related content is in the ‘mention’ style, and most users’ comments include negative behavior-related content. Our findings provide marketing managers with actionable insights into monitoring and managing brand-related social media content.