1. Summary of the article
Malhotra, et al (2013) aim to emphasise the importance of customer engagement in a Facebook brand community for marketing strategy.
They address the problem of how brand managers can create brand engagement on Facebook and take advantage of the interactions with customers commenting brand’s posts.
They reveal several ways to increase the number of likes on a brand’s post: use pictures, stay topical, promote the brand as customers expect promotional information when visiting a brand’s wall, share brand achievements so that fans feel they align with a successful brand, educate fans by providing information, make the brand human by conveying emotions, use humour and ask for likes.
Also, long messages, event-related posts, messages affiliating with social causes, posts promoting contests and special deals hinder liking.
The open dialogue occurring on brand page allows to gather information, understand customers’ perceptions and gain feedback by involving fans in an open innovation process. Negative comments should be addressed quickly for positive brand outcomes. 2. Critique the key findings of the article
The rapid growth of the internet has changed how consumers engage with brands, creating new touchpoints, especially after purchase, where they remain engaged to the brand, promote or criticise its products and can participate in designing new offerings. These new touchpoints necessitate to gain insight into consumer’s behaviour on social media, which Malhotra, et al (2013) are successful at. Traditionally, most expenditures go to advertising and retail promotions, but the strongest argument to buy is someone else’s advocacy (Edelman, 2010). Malhotra, et al findings (2013) are critical as they give understanding on how to create brand engagement on social media which helps to convert customers into brand advocates.
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