Who Likes to Engage? An Investigation of the Influences of Facebook Fan Page Characteristics on the Engagement Rate.
Facebook fan page marketing has become extremely popular among many different kind of brands. However, debate continues about the effectiveness and best practices. In recent years, there has been an increasing focus on how to keep fans engaged. A commonly used metric to measure the interactions of fans with pages is the engagement rate (ER). So far research has only focused on how posting tactics influence the ER while little is known about which profiles of fans cause a higher ER. This study set out with the aim of assessing the influence of personality traits (Big5), Facebook activity, demographics, culture (Hofstede dimensions) and homogeneity of fans on the ER. Additionally the effects of the fan page category, the amount of fans and the friends among fans on the ER are also included in the analysis. A multiple regression was conducted using data from over 190.000 Facebook users and over 5000 fan pages. Additionally a second simple regression analysis was done to investigate the effects of the ER on the growth of fan pages. The results of this study indicate that older and higher educated fans cause higher engagement rates. The findings also indicate that fans from countries whose culture scores high on individualism, masculinity and indulgence bring higher engagement rates. Regarding homogeneity, this study shows that higher interaction occurs with homogenous fan bases in terms of culture and personality while this is not the case for demographics and levels of Facebook activity. Moreover it is shown that fan page categories with more emotional themes score higher on the ER while the amount of fans does not have a significant impact. Furthermore this study points out that a higher number of friends among fans causes higher engagement rates. Contrary to expectations, this study found that active Facebook users are not active fans and that extravert fans have a negative influence on the engagement rate. Finally, the second analysis shows that a higher engagement rate will attract more new fans. The combination of findings provide practical implications for fan page managers to achieve more interaction with fans and consequently also a higher reach and growth.
Bibliografie
Allen, K. (2012, May 3). Report: More Facebook fans equals lower engagement rates | Articles | Home. Retrieved May 5, 2013, from http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/Report_More_Facebook_fans_equals_l…
Bachrach, Y., Kosinski, M., Graepel, T., Kohli, P., & Stillwell, D. (2012). Personality and Patterns of Facebook Usage. Retrieved from http://www.davidstillwell.co.uk/articles/Personality_and_Patterns_of_Fa…
Barker, V. (2009). Older Adolescents’ Motivations for Social Network Site Use: The Influence of Gender, Group Identity, and Collective Self-Esteem. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 12(2), 209–213. doi:10.1089/cpb.2008.0228
Barnes, N. G., Lescault, A. M., & Andonian, J. (2012). Social Media Surge by the 2012 Fortune 500: Increase Use of Blogs, Facebook, Twitter and More. Retrieved April 9, 2013, from http://www.umassd.edu/cmr/socialmedia/2012fortune500/
Boyd, danah m., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210–230. doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00393.x
Chang, K. T. T., Chen, W., & Tan, B. C. Y. (2012). Advertising Effectiveness in Social Networking Sites: Social Ties, Expertise, and Product Type. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 59(4), 634 –643. doi:10.1109/TEM.2011.2177665
Corstjens, M., & Umblijs, A. (2012). The Power of Evil: The Damage of Negative Social Media Strongly Outweigh Positive Contributions. Journal of Advertising Research, 52(4), 433–449. doi:10.2501/JAR-52-4-433-449
Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Neo personality inventory–revised (neo-pi-r) and neo five-factor inventory (neo-ffi) professional manual. Presented at the Psychological Assessment Resources, Odessa, FL.
Creamer, M. (2012, January 27). Study: Only 1% of Facebook “Fans” Engage With Brands | Digital - Advertising Age. Retrieved April 9, 2013, from http://adage.com/article/digital/study-1-facebook-fans-engage-brands/23…
Cvijikj, I. P., & Michahelles, F. (2011). A Case Study of the Effects of Moderator Posts within a Facebook Brand Page. In A. Datta, S. Shulman, B. Zheng, S.-D. Lin, A. Sun, & E.-P. Lim (Eds.), Social Informatics (pp. 161–170). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-24704-0_21
Darwell, B. (2012, January 10). “People Talking About This” defined. Retrieved March 28, 2013, from http://www.insidefacebook.com/2012/01/10/people-talking-about-this-defi…
De Vries, L., Gensler, S., & Leeflang, P. (2012). Popularity of Brand Posts on Brand Fan Pages: An Investigation of the Effects of Social Media Marketing. Journal of interactive marketing, 26(2), 83–91. doi:10.1016/j.intmar.2012.01.003
Dou, X. (2011). The influence of cultures on SNS usage: Comparing Mixi in Japan and Facebook in the US. Public Relations Journal, 5(4). Retrieved from http://www.prsa.org/Intelligence/PRJournal/Documents/2011Dou.pdf
Facebook, I. (2011, March 6). The Facebook Algorithm: Edgerank | Facebook. Retrieved May 5, 2013, from https://www.facebook.com/notes/edgerank-algorithm/the-facebook-algorith…
Facebook, I. (2012, September 14). One Billion Fact Sheet. Retrieved December 3, 2012, from http://newsroom.fb.com/Photos-and-B-Roll/4227/One-Billion-Fact-Sheet
Facebook, I. (n.d.-a). How to use Facebook for business marketing. Retrieved December 9, 2012, from https://www.facebook.com/business/overview
Facebook, I. (n.d.-b). What’s the difference between organic, paid and viral reach? | Facebook Help Center. Retrieved May 5, 2013, from https://www.facebook.com/help/285625061456389/
Fanpage Karma. (2013, February 13). Study on Facebook Engagement and Interaction Rates. Fanpage Karma Blog. Retrieved May 5, 2013, from http://blog.fanpagekarma.com/2013/02/13/facebook-engagement-interaction…
Füller, J., Matzler, K., & Hoppe, M. (2008). Brand Community Members as a Source of Innovation. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 25(6), 608–619. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5885.2008.00325.x
Gallagher, S. E., & Savage, T. (2013). Cross-cultural analysis in online community research: A literature review. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(3), 1028–1038. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2012.09.011
Geert Hofstede | Hofstede Dimension Data Matrix. (2010). Retrieved April 12, 2013, from http://www.geerthofstede.nl/dimension-data-matrix
Gujarati, D. N. (2003). Student solutions manual for use with Basic econometrics. Boston; London: McGraw-Hill.
Harper, B. (2013, March 11). Facebook Engagement: We’re Still Doing It Wrong - AllFacebook. Retrieved April 13, 2013, from http://allfacebook.com/ben-harper-facebook-engagement_b112676
Hoffman, D. L., & Fodor, M. (2010). Can You Measure the ROI of Your Social Media Marketing? MIT Sloan management review, 52(1), 41–.
Hofstede, G. (n.d.). Dimensions - Geert Hofstede. Retrieved April 29, 2013, from http://geert-hofstede.com/dimensions.html
Huang, J.-H., & Yang, Y.-C. (2010). The Relationship Between Personality Traits and Online Shopping Motivations. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 38(5), 673–679. doi:10.2224/sbp.2010.38.5.673
Joinson, A. N. (2008). Looking at, looking up or keeping up with people?: motives and use of facebook. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1027–1036). New York, NY, USA: ACM. doi:10.1145/1357054.1357213
Kim, Y., Sohn, D., & Choi, S. M. (2011). Cultural difference in motivations for using social network sites: A comparative study of American and Korean college students. Computers in Human Behavior, 27(1), 365–372. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2010.08.015
Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D., & Graepel, T. (2013). Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. doi:10.1073/pnas.1218772110
Kosinski, M., & Stillwell, D. J. (2013). myPersonality Research Wiki. myPersonality Project. Retrieved February 12, 2013, from http://mypersonality.org/wiki
Krasnova, H., Veltri, N. F., & Günther, O. (2012). Self-disclosure and Privacy Calculus on Social Networking Sites: The Role of Culture. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 4(3), 127–135. doi:10.1007/s12599-012-0216-6
Lake, A. (2011, October 11). Why Facebook fans are useless - iMediaConnection.com. Retrieved April 9, 2013, from http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/30235.asp
Leeming, D. E., & Danino, N. (2012). Breaking Barriers: A Case Study of Culture and Facebook Usage. Intercultural Promenades: Journal of Modern Languages and International Studies, 1(1). Retrieved from http://pops.uclan.ac.uk/index.php/icprom/article/view/40
Lin, K.-Y., & Lu, H.-P. (2011). Why people use social networking sites: An empirical study integrating network externalities and motivation theory. Computers in Human Behavior, 27(3), 1152–1161. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2010.12.009
Lipsman, A., Mudd, G., Rich, M., & Bruich, S. (2012). The Power of “Like”: How Brands Reach (and Influence) Fans through Social-Media Marketing. Journal of Advertising Research, 52(1), 40. doi:10.2501/JAR-52-1-040-052
Mannix, E., & Neale, M. A. (2005). What differences make a difference? The promise and reality of diverse teams in organizations. Psychological science in the public interest, 6(2), 31–55.
Matzler, K., Pichler, E., Füller, J., & Mooradian, T. A. (2011). Personality, person–brand fit, and brand community: An investigation of individuals, brands, and brand communities. Journal of Marketing Management, 27(9-10), 874–890. doi:10.1080/0267257X.2010.543634
Maurer, C., & Wiegmann, R. (2011). Effectiveness of Advertising on Social Network Sites: A Case Study on Facebook. In P. R. Law, P. M. Fuchs, & P. F. Ricci (Eds.), Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2011 (pp. 485–498). Springer Vienna. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-7091-0503-0_39
McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. (1999). A five-factor theory of personality. In Handbook of personality: Theory and research (pp. 139–153). Retrieved from https://syllabus.byu.edu/uploads/FoAbwzFVg-oc.pdf
Momentus Media. (n.d.). Engagement & Interaction: A scientific approach to Facebook marketing. (p. 19). Retrieved from http://www.fichier-pdf.fr/2012/10/12/mmwhitepaper1/mmwhitepaper1.pdf
Nelson-Field, K., Riebe, E., & Sharp, B. (2012). What’s Not to “Like?” Can a Facebook Fan Base Give a Brand the Advertising Reach it Needs? Journal of Advertising Research, 52(2), 262. doi:10.2501/JAR-52-2-262-269
Parent, M., Plangger, K., & Bal, A. (2011). The new WTP: Willingness to participate. Business Horizons, 54(3), 219–229. doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2011.01.003
Pfeil, U., Arjan, R., & Zaphiris, P. (2009). Age differences in online social networking – A study of user profiles and the social capital divide among teenagers and older users in MySpace. Computers in Human Behavior, 25(3), 643–654. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2008.08.015
Polich, A., Atkinson, L., Litton, L., & Kemp, P. (2012). Understanding paid and earned reach on Facebook. Retrieved from https://www.facebook-studio.com/fbassets/resource/73/UnderstandingPaida…
Qiu, L., Lin, H., & Leung, A. K. -y. (2012). Cultural Differences and Switching of In-Group Sharing Behavior Between an American (Facebook) and a Chinese (Renren) Social Networking Site. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 44(1), 106–121. doi:10.1177/0022022111434597
Quercia, D., Lambiotte, R., Stillwell, D., Kosinski, M., & Crowcroft, J. (2012). The personality of popular facebook users. In Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (pp. 955–964). Retrieved from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2145346
Rosen, D., Stefanone, M. A., & Lackaff, D. (2010). Online and offline social networks: investigating culturally-specific behavior and satisfaction. In System Sciences (HICSS), 2010 43rd Hawaii International Conference on (pp. 1–10). Retrieved from http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=5428443
salesforce.com, inc. (2012). Strategies for Effective Wall Posts: A Timeline Analysis. Retrieved from http://www.salesforce.com/marketing-cloud/
Sashittal, H. C., Sriramachandramurthy, R., & Hodis, M. (2012). Targeting college students on Facebook? How to stop wasting your money. Business Horizons, 55(5), 495–507. doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2012.05.006
Simon, G. (2003). MULTIPLE REGRESSION BASICS. Retrieved May 3, 2013, from http://people.stern.nyu.edu/wgreene/Statistics/MultipleRegressionBasics…
Sociable Labs. (2012). Social Impact Study: How Consumers See It (p. 34).
Socialbakers, I. (2011, September 20). What countries ranked TOP in Engagement Rate? Socialbakers.com. Retrieved May 14, 2013, from http://www.socialbakers.com/blog/253-what-countries-ranked-top-in-engag…
Socialbakers, I. (2012, April 30). Finally here! The Biggest Global Social Media Report on Facebook Industries. Socialbakers.com. Retrieved April 29, 2013, from http://www.socialbakers.com/blog/527-finally-here-the-biggest-global-so…
Stephen, A. T., & Galak, J. (2012). The Effects of Traditional and Social Earned Media on Sales: A Study of a Microlending Marketplace. Journal of Marketing Research, (0), 1–16.
Taylor, D. G., Lewin, J. E., & Strutton, D. (2011). Friends, Fans, and Followers: Do Ads Work on Social Networks? How Gender and Age Shape Receptivity. Journal of Advertising Research, 51(1), 258–275. doi:10.2501/JAR-51-1-258-275
Vasalou, A., Joinson, A. N., & Courvoisier, D. (2010). Cultural differences, experience with social networks and the nature of “true commitment” in Facebook. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 68(10), 719–728. doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2010.06.002
Wallace, P. (1999). The Psychology of the Internet. New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press.
Wisemetrics. (2012, July 2). Why The Current Facebook Engagement Rate Calculation Is Inaccurate. Wisemetrics. Retrieved May 5, 2013, from http://blog.wisemetrics.com/2012/07/why-your-analytics-engagement-rate-…
Zhao, C., & Jiang, G. (2011). Cultural differences on visual self-presentation through social networking site profile images. In Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 1129–1132). Retrieved from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1979110
