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ABSTRACT
This study employed a content analysis of the creative strategies present in the social media content
shared by a sample of top brands. The results reveal which social media channels are being used,
which creative strategies/appeals are being used, and how these channels and strategies relate to
consumer engagement in branded social media. Past research has suggested that brands should
focus on maintaining a social presence across social channels with content that is fresh and frequent
and includes incentives for consumer participation (Ling et al., 2004). This study confirmed the
importance of frequent updates and incentives for participation. In addition, several creative
strategies were associated with customer engagement, specifically experiential, image, and
exclusivity messages. Despite the value of these creative approaches, most branded social content
can be categorized as functional. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Social media, which include online channels for sharing social networks as a brand persona, developing branded
and participating in a variety of activities, represent engagement opportunities for customer participation
an increasingly important way for brands to commu- within social networks, and publishing branded content
nicate with attractive audience segments (Murdough, (known as content marketing or social publishing) in
2009). Marketers are expected to increase social me- social channels (Tuten & Solomon, 2013). Brands may
dia advertising spending to $5 billion in 2014, up from utilize social media marketing as an integrated com-
$4.1 billion in 2013, according to eMarketer (2013). In ponent in a marketing communications campaign, as
a relatively short period of time, marketers have em- an ongoing corporate communications channel, and/or
braced social media marketing for a variety of market- as a series of microcampaigns specifically designed for
ing objectives including branding, research, customer digital exposure.
relationship management, service, and sales promo- For instance, the highly acclaimed Proctor and Gam-
tions. Of these, most marketers value social media most ble “Thank You Mom” campaign is an example of an in-
for branding (eMarketer, 2013). According to the 2013 tegrated approach (Berkowitz, 2012). Consumers were
Social Media Industry Report (Stelzner, 2013), 86% of asked to contribute stories (i.e., user-generated content)
marketers believe social media channels are important on the role of mothers in nurturing child athletes. These
components of their marketing initiatives. stories were sought out and then shared in social chan-
Branded social campaigns provide additional touch- nels, but ultimately also became the basis for a series
points to encourage ongoing interaction between the of commercials that aired in broadcast as well as online
consumer and the brand story throughout the day, (Berkowitz, 2012). Dell has been widely acclaimed as
which can deepen consumer–brand relationships, help a leader in the use of social media for ongoing corpo-
marketers uncover common themes in consumer feed- rate communications and customer relationship man-
back, and persuade consumers to engage with online agement (Quintos, 2013). Its social media presence is
content (Murdough, 2009). Thoughts, feelings, percep- characterized by continuity and a focus on business-
tions, images, and experiences from these touchpoints to-consumer dialogue. The timing and dialogue are im-
form a set of associations with the brand in consumer portant because consumers utilize social media to build
memory (Keller, 2009). Marketers have several options social capital and contribute to their psychological well-
within the social media landscape for branding includ- being, since social media provides a communication
ing placing paid display advertising, participating in route for meeting a social need. Lastly, companies such
Integrated content If they are leveraging a traditional media campaign, this will be one.
If it is unique content for the social media, this is zero.
Interactivity In terms of the overall campaign, judge its overall level of “interactivity”—the
extent to which consumers can participate and engage and be active with
the campaign?
1 = very little, 2 = somewhat, 3 = moderate, 4 = very, 5 = extremely interactive.
Sales Promotions
Discounts or price offs Do they offer deals or discounts in exchange for something (e.g., signing
up/participation)?
Contest Do they provide consumers with the ability to enter a contest or sweepstakes?
User-Generated Content
Invitation to submit content This can be comments, captions, videos, pictures. If yes, via video? Photos? Story?
Answers? Captions? Other?
Incentives to submit content If yes, is the sharing part of a contest? Do they get a reward or some kind of
recognition?
Ability to rank/vote on content Do other people get to help select the content choice or comment on content
from others generated by other users?
Ability to interact with or This refers to any aspect of the campaign—can they post on Facebook, give
comment on content feedback on forums, etc.?
site); photo sharing (e.g., Flickr, Shutterfly, Facebook, worksheet and examples of each specified categories.
own site); audio sharing (e.g., podcasts); social book- Each coder sat with one of the authors, who explained
marking service or sharing application (e.g., Google, the coding worksheet, went through the specified cate-
StumbleUpon); mobile apps (e.g., downloadable apps gories, and walked through the coding for a brand that
for iPhone/Droid); virtual world (e.g., Second Life); was not included in the final collection of 28 brands.
social games (multiplayer advergames); wiki (user- Then each coder coded one brand of the 28 brands on
generated content organized around a topic or defini- his own and the results were compared. Ambiguities
tion that is different from a question/answer forum be- were addressed via discussion.
cause users can update information); and discussion Both coders coded all of the content. Intercoder relia-
forums. bility was calculated based on percentage of agreement.
Intercoder reliability was 88.17%, with 98.2% reliabil-
Coder Training and Reliability ity for the ratings on the presence or absence of each
type of social media and 88% reliability for the coding of
Two coders were trained to analyze the content col- creative strategies. Coding discrepancies were resolved
lected from the 28 brands. Each coder received a coding by one of the authors.
Top Brands’ Social Media Channel Usage resonance, exclusivity appeals, social causes, anima-
tion, and spokespeople or spokescharacters. They were
In the second stage of the analysis, the first aspect also asked to observe whether and how user-generated
each coder reviewed was the presence or absence of content and sales promotions were used.
social media channel use. Coders identified whether While 18 of 28 of the brands developed unique con-
each brand had at least one blog, microblog, external tent for their social media channels, the remaining 10
social network, microsite, video sharing, photo sharing, brands leveraged their existing campaigns on the so-
audio sharing, social bookmarking, mobile apps, vir- cial media channels. Most of the brands (27/28) were
tual worlds, social games, wikis, and discussion forums. given interactivity ratings that were greater than one,
Table 2 ranks each of these channels from most fre- with an average interactivity rating of 3.34 (SD = 0.76)
quently used to least frequently used, and shows the across the 28 brands. The frequency of each type of re-
numbers and percentage of the 28 brands that utilized maining message strategy is listed in Table 3, sorted by
each channel. frequency of use across the 28 brands. The most com-
As shown in Table 2, the most commonly used chan- monly used appeals were functional appeals (25/28) and
nels were social networks (27/28), microblogs (27/28), resonance (19/28), while the least commonly used ap-
and microsites, followed by blogs (26/28) and video shar- peals were comparative (7/28) and spokespeople (7/28).
ing (26/28). The favored social network was Facebook Only one brand used a spokescharacter.
(27/28). The least frequently used channels were vir- For user generated content, 26/28 brands invited
tual worlds (4/28), social games (5/28), and wikis (8/28). users to share content, and 14 of the brands gave con-
It should be noted that in some cases, virtual worlds sumers and incentive for sharing. In the sales promo-
and wikis may be utilized for internal communications tion category, contests were used by twice as many
and would not be observed in external branding efforts. brands (14) as discounts (7). Finally, 10 of 28 brands
The coders were also asked to observe the number of gave consumers the opportunity to vote or provide feed-
Twitter followers, tweets, and Facebook fans, where ap- back about the content of others.
plicable. The number of followers, tweets, and fans was
averaged across the 28 brands (where brands without
accounts received an input of zero). On average, the 28 Creative Strategies and Social Media
brands had 207,070 followers, 4872 tweets in the past Engagement
week, and 1.802+ million Facebook fans.
In addition to providing information about the fre-
quency of channel and creative strategy usage, the
Top Brands’ Social Creative Strategies study explored how the channel and creative strategy
usage related to social media engagement. Therefore,
Next, coders were asked to categorize the creative the correlations between the coded metrics and the met-
strategies used for each brand. Coders were asked to rics for social popularity (number of Twitter followers
identify whether the campaign was integrated with of- and Facebook fans), social influence (in this case, using
fline efforts, to rate the interactivity, and to observe Klout score from www.klout.com as the measure), and
whether or not the social media channels included func- the Engagement Score (from Engagementdb) were an-
tional appeals, emotional appeals, experiential appeals, alyzed. The significant correlations are shown in bold
a unique selling proposition, comparative appeals, in Table 4.
Brands that issued the most tweets in the one week that have been recognized for their social media efforts?
period also had the highest number of people follow- Second, which types of message appeals are they using
ing them, the highest number of followers, and the in their social media efforts? Third, how do the tools,
highest Klout scores on Twitter. Further, brands that strategies, and appeals each company is using relate to
used the most social media channels had more followers customer engagement with social media?
and higher engagement scores. The higher engagement The brands featured in this study focused on some
score is not surprising since engagement scores factored social media channels more so than others. Microblogs
in the number of social media channels used. However, (e.g., Twitter), social networks (e.g., Facebook), and so-
the pattern indicates there may be a relationship be- cialized microsites (e.g., Doritos Crash the Superbowl)
tween the frequency and modality of outreach efforts were the most utilized tools followed closely by video
and consumer willingness to engage as a microblog fol- sharing (e.g., YouTube posts) and discussion forums.
lower. Other forms such as social bookmarks, photosharing,
The use of user-image appeals and exclusivity ap- mobile applications, and social games were less used.
peals had significant correlations with the number of Given that these are brands recognized for engage-
Facebook fans, while resonance, animation, experien- ment, what does this tell us about social media market-
tial appeals, and connections with social causes had ing channels? When developing marketing communica-
significant correlations with a brand’s Klout score. Al- tions plans, brands go where the consumers are—both
though experiential appeals also had a significant pos- in terms of message strategy and media planning. In
itive relationship with the brand’s engagement score, the case of social media, brands may gravitate toward
the relationship between emotional appeals and the microblogs, social networks, microsites, and video shar-
brand’s engagement score was negative. This may sug- ing sites because consumer reach is higher for those
gest some of the brands with high engagement scores do channels than for others. This is a logical rationale
not use emotional appeals. In terms of user-generated for the finding. However, it also suggests that clutter,
content, brands that offered an incentive for partici- and psychological interference, may already be present
pation had more consumers following them on Twitter among social media channels just as it is in other mar-
and fans, as well as higher Klout scores and Engage- keting communications media (Rumbo, 2002). Another
ment Scores. possible explanation is the ease of use of the channel
and/or ability to repurpose existing brand assets in the
channel. For instance, microblogs require attention but
DISCUSSION the autoposting of short bursts of text is a relatively
easy way for brands to be involved in social media. So-
This study sought to address three key questions. First, cial networks, likewise, are likely to have a high per-
which social media tools are being used by top brands ceived ease of use. However, the development of games,