A model for investigating the impact of owned social media content on commercial performance and its application in large and mid-sized online communities

ABSTRACT

Social media communities are commonly used as marketing tools to reach millions of users. Through two studies, we investigate how owned social media content is associated with commercial performance and moderated by community size. We find that commercial performance is positively associated with posts showcasing the superior value of a product or brand and with posts that have an intention to sell. In addition, in large online communities, posts intended to create social interactions among marketers and users are not associated with commercial performance. However, in mid-sized communities, posts with the same intentions increase commercial performance. We theorise that the presence of internet trolls and a lower sense of group loyalty may explain the absence of these associations in large online communities. Finally, we identify four dimensions of content that were fairly consistent across studies. We customise these content dimensions according to each of the industries studied for marketers’ use.

KEYWORDS:

• Owned social media content
• online community size
• commercial performance
• sales
• content analysis

Acknowledgments

The studies were conducted in partnership with an anonymous gaming company and supported with funding given to Marcelo Vinhal Nepomuceno by the ESCP Europe Research Funding.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the ESCP Europe Research Grant.