TY - JOUR
T1 - Spreading Social Media Messages on Facebook
T2 - An Analysis of Restaurant Business-to-Consumer Communications
AU - Kwok, Linchi
AU - Yu, Bei
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the 2010 Caesars Hospitality Research Grant Program, Caesars Hospitality Research Center at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
PY - 2013/2
Y1 - 2013/2
N2 - As a method of determining what types of social media messages work best for hospitality firms, this study examined what types of messages gained the most clicks of "Like" and comments on Facebook. An analysis of the number of likes and comments regarding nine hundred and eighty-two Facebook messages from ten restaurant chains and two independent operators revealed clear patterns. The more popular keywords involved information about the restaurant (e.g., menu descriptions) and the less popular messages were those that contained marketing-related words (including "winner" and "check"). Dividing the messages into four media types, namely, status (text only), link (containing a URL), video (embedding a video), and photo (showing photos), revealed that photo and status receive more likes and comments than the other two categories. Social media messages can also be categorized into two message types: sales and marketing (about two-thirds of the messages in this study) and conversational messages. Based on number of likes and comments, conversational messages are endorsed by more Facebook users. Finally, cross-effects of media type and message type affect the number of comments a message received. Although these results do not expressly assess Facebook users' reactions, the guidelines developed here should help managers improve their use of Facebook, as well as provide groundwork for developing a defined typology of Facebook messages and an automatic text classifier with the machine learning techniques.
AB - As a method of determining what types of social media messages work best for hospitality firms, this study examined what types of messages gained the most clicks of "Like" and comments on Facebook. An analysis of the number of likes and comments regarding nine hundred and eighty-two Facebook messages from ten restaurant chains and two independent operators revealed clear patterns. The more popular keywords involved information about the restaurant (e.g., menu descriptions) and the less popular messages were those that contained marketing-related words (including "winner" and "check"). Dividing the messages into four media types, namely, status (text only), link (containing a URL), video (embedding a video), and photo (showing photos), revealed that photo and status receive more likes and comments than the other two categories. Social media messages can also be categorized into two message types: sales and marketing (about two-thirds of the messages in this study) and conversational messages. Based on number of likes and comments, conversational messages are endorsed by more Facebook users. Finally, cross-effects of media type and message type affect the number of comments a message received. Although these results do not expressly assess Facebook users' reactions, the guidelines developed here should help managers improve their use of Facebook, as well as provide groundwork for developing a defined typology of Facebook messages and an automatic text classifier with the machine learning techniques.
KW - Facebook
KW - communication
KW - marketing
KW - restaurant
KW - social media
KW - text classification
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U2 - 10.1177/1938965512458360
DO - 10.1177/1938965512458360
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84871377388
SN - 1938-9655
VL - 54
SP - 84
EP - 94
JO - Cornell Hospitality Quarterly
JF - Cornell Hospitality Quarterly
IS - 1
ER -