The Power of Facebook and Instagram Fans: An Exploration of Fan Comments and Their Effect on Social Media Content Strategy

Organizations continue to invest in marketing strategies through various social media platforms in order to enhance engagement. Building engagement is said to help companies to gain more profit and contribute to their social responsibility (Du et al. 2010). Users follow companies for access to coupons, deals and events. Users like, retweet and share posts, and can recommend the company to family or friends via WOM. Understanding the drivers, process and importance of social media engagement behavior is highly relevant for social media managers. Their inferences are critical for the establishment of effective customer relationship, which directly affect the company’s revenue. In this study, we examine the effect of user’s comments, and the sentiment of these comments, on firms’ social media content strategies. Previous research has demonstrated that engagement can be stimulated by firm strategies, however we consider a more dynamic relationship through the exploration of how firm strategy can be driven by social media engagement, and more specifically user comments. In doing so, this model contributes to a deeper understanding of the dyadic relationship between firm social media strategy and social media engagement.