Influence of post types on Facebook engagement: the moderating roles of brand category and brand internationalisation

Abstract

Strategies for brand community engagement have been lagging behind the social media growth. This paper thus attempts to understand the effects of content types on brand community engagement (likes, comments, and shares) in the understudied yet important country of Thailand using a comprehensive framework. This study collected 1,574 posts from 183 Facebook pages in nine brand categories. Content analysis was conducted to extract the content type of each post. The main study explored post-type effects together with the moderating influences of the brand category (FMCGs vs. non-FMCGs) and brand internationalisation (global vs. local brands). The research also explored real cases of Facebook posts in nine brand categories and compared the influence of posts on fan engagement. The findings showed that different content types were utilised among brand categories and brand groups, but above all entertaining posts received the highest fan engagement. Both FMCG and global brands significantly moderated several relationships between post types and fan engagement. There were a small number of posts in some brand categories due to the nature of each industry. Recommendations are made regarding an effective content strategy to enhance Facebook page engagement for marketers and social media managers.