Real-Time Marketing: The Effects of Joining Another Brand’s Social Media Conversation on Engagement
(A2024-119626)

AUTHORS

Onur Osmanoğlu, Bilkent University; Ayşegül Özsomer, Koç University

ABSTRACT

Social media have become a central channel enabling firms to interact with customers in novel ways. Yet, the popularity of social media among firms results in content clutter. Real-time marketing based on timely events that receive attention on social media appears to be a way to overcome such clutter. In this study, we focus on a specific form of real-time marketing, namely brand-to-brand communication on social media. Specifically, we empirically examine whether and how a brand’s linguistic style used in social media impacts engagement when it joins another brand’s social media conversation. We also examine the influence of timing of posting social media content on engagement when joining other brands’ social media conversations. We find that posting social media content linguistically similar to another brand is positively related to the number of quotes. Furthermore, joining a social media conversation of another brand earlier has a positive effect on retweets, likes, and replies.