TURNING SOCIAL MEDIA USERS INTO BRAND FOLLOWERS: WHAT WORKS?

Abstract

With the rise of new age media, social media marketing has become one of the most powerful tools in all marketers’ arsenal, and brands’ social media pages have become a way for companies to expand their awareness and customer base. In this paper, factors that attract a social media user to “follow” and engage with brands have been studied, namely, the content and tone used by brands on their social media, online brand communities for the brand, and the brand’s online activism have been identified as some of the important factors. For determination of results, factor analysis through principle axis factoring and varimax rotation has been done on SPSS v23.0. The results indicate that users care about whether brands take a stand on social, economic and political causes, and brand activism is therefore the most important factors for Gen-Z and Millennials in their decision to turn into brand followers. At the same time, users also want to feel like they belong to the brand’s ecosystem and that the brands look at them as important stakeholders, which is achieved through brand communities.

This study will help marketers plan their social media marketing activities more effectively so as to give users what they want, and in turn increase their online reach.