The Antecedents of Facebook Brand Page Engagement in Public Relations

Abstract

Social media has increased the integration of marketing and PR. Consequently, due to this transition, businesses increasingly value customer relations above transactional marketing through social media brand pages communication. However, according to recent research, a practical problem has been identified: despite the significance of social media in marketing and communication, there is a lack of understanding among PR practitioners about how to successfully and strategically communicate via social media. PR practitioners still use social media asymmetrically and as promotional or advertising tools rather than for forming relationships with the public, which creates a lack of engagement. Secondly, a recent empirical study showed that humanise interaction can create customer and brand engagement through social media brand pages. Hence, recent public relations and social media-related research did not focus on humanised interaction influencing people to engage on brands’ social media Facebook pages. Thirdly, consumer brand engagement on social media was researched for several years. Furthermore, recent research conceptualised consumer engagement and brand engagement and called it social media brand engagement. Hence, social media brand engagement does not conceptualise or analyse humanised interaction and two-way symmetrical communication in computer-mediated communication in public relations related literature. Moreover, it is unclear how humanise interaction to create customer engagement through social media brand pages. This study aims to fill the research gap by providing a clear picture of how humanising interaction (as an antecedent) creates brand engagement and how to maintain a two-way communication strategy (as an antecedent) to maintain effective communication and build relationships. To answer these questions, this study conceptualises and develops a research framework where conversational human voice from relational maintenance theory and two-way symmetrical communication from excellence theory are taken as the antecedents of social media brand engagement.