Content marketing on social network sites. A study on brand-related social media behavior and its motives

On brand profiles in social network sites (SNSs) brands post content for their content marketing strategy. This brand profile is an owned medium that creates an avenue for consumers to interact with the brand and the brand content, with the aim to garner earned media, such as likes, shares, and reactions. This study examines how social network site users interact with brand posts and what their motivations are to do so. Adopting the U&G approach, we examined for three levels of brand-related social media behavior (consuming, contributing and creating) what SNS-users motivations are. The results of two studies demonstrate that fun and pleasure is the most important motivation to follow a brand and interact with the content.