Content and Style of Firm-Generated Posts on Social Media: A Study of User Engagement on Hedonic and Utilitarian Product Pages on Facebook

Abstract

Social media platforms are increasingly crucial in corporate engagement, but there is limited research delineating how page characteristics influence firm behavior on these platforms. This paper examines the relationship between firm-generated content and user engagement on product pages and whether a page’s characteristics and content motivations moderate this relationship. Analyzing a sample of 29,267 posts on 85 Facebook product pages of 49 Fortune 1000 firms, we studied the relationship between the content (i.e., informational vs. emotional) and style (i.e., formal vs. informal) of a given post and the level of user engagement. The key finding is that in the content dimension, “incongruous” posts, i.e., content not traditionally expected for a product page of a given type, generate more favorable engagement. Also, informal style posts achieve more favorable engagement irrespective of the product page characteristics. The secondary discovery is attributable to Facebook’s function as a social media network where acquaintances engage with one another. The platform’s unwritten protocol of communication largely emphasizes informality, which is likely the driver of this observation. These findings contribute to the burgeoning social media strategy literature illustrating how product page characteristics moderate effective social media content strategies.