Message Strategies and Media Formats of Florists’ Facebook Posts and Their Effects on Users’ Engagement Behaviors

Abstract

Social media marketing has been widely adopted by florists with the use of the Facebook brand page. However, many florists fail to achieve their expected success in that realm because of not being fully conversant in posting on social media. To address this deficiency, this study aims to 1) develop a taxonomy of florists’ Facebook posts to clarify florists’ message strategies on Facebook brand page and 2) investigate the effect of posted messages and media formats on the marketing performance of florists’ Facebook brand pages by evaluating users’ engagement based on the number of likes, comments, and shares from users for each post. Using data derived from 1646 empirical Facebook posts initiated by florists, it was found that florists’ Facebook posts could be classified into four broad message types covering 12 categories. The statistical results for analysis of variance (ANOVA) and post hoc tests revealed that the posted message and media format had significant effects in terms of causing users to like, comment on, or share florists’ posts. Compared with other message categories, posts in the message categories of product information, gratitude to customers, and holiday greetings had more favorable effects in terms of causing users to like, comment on, or share florists’ posts. As for the effect of media format, it was the posts in the photo media format that attracted more likes, comments, and shares from users compared with those in other media formats. Florists who operate brand pages on Facebook can be guided by our research when making decisions regarding the post characteristics in message orientations and media formats for attracting favorable responses from users.