How the most liked brands on Facebook interact with their customers

Abstract

This paper investigates how the 15 most liked brands on Facebook communicate with customers on this social networking site (SNS). The content shared as well as the engagement received in different posts are analysed through the lenses of social presence theory and a framework for categorizing social media posts. This study follows an explorative approach, where a total of 1256 Facebook posts during a six months’ time frame were collected from the 15 investigated brands, and thereafter analysed to obtain answers to the research questions of the study: what type of content do these companies share and which approaches to keep and promote engagement can be determined from their Facebook posts? The results show that video is the most common type of posts shared by the companies and sales promotion is the most shared category of post. Accordingly, the engagement achieved by posts were also investigated in the study. The findings suggest a higher level of engagement of Facebook users in photos and in the categories of emotional, cause-related and current event posts. The results provide basic insights into what strategies brands could consider when sharing content on Facebook and which types of posts to share, as well as how to keep and promote user engagement. Future research is needed in the topic as the subject is relevant for today’s businesses.