Which Type of Brand Posts Functions Best on Facebook Brand Pages of Credit Cards? An Examination of Miles Credit Cards’ Facebook Brand Pages in Turkey

Gülçin İpek EmeksizAnadolu University, Turkey

Internet Usage in Turkey• With the advencements in technology, every day the number

of internet users is increasing gradually. According to the statistics of 2014, there are 3 billion internet users worldwide and Turkey has more than 35 million internet users (Internet Live Stats, 2015).

• A recent research, carried out by the Turkish Statistical Institute named Information and Communication Technology Usage in Households in Turkey, revealed that 60% of households in Turkey has access to the internet and 78% of these people have already joined into social networking sites (TUIK, 2014).

Social Media Usage in Turkey• The statistics indicate that Turkish people spend approximately 2

hours and 32 minutes on social media every day (Dijital Ajanslar, 2014).

• Thus, Turkish companies seeing that people spend a good amount of time on the internet, especially in social networking sites, realized that it is much easier, quicker and cheaper to reach a larger audience with social media tools compared to traditional media tools such as television and newspapers.

• Thus, they began to invest in various social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Linkedln, Instagram and blogs. By using these tools, they strenghten their communication with their existing and potential customers in an interactive environment.

What is a brand community?• For instance, on Facebook, companies build a brand

community which is an online special community that brings together the admirers of a brand.

• A brand community is defined as a specialized, non-geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relationships among admirers of a brand (Muniz and O’guinn, 2001, p. 412).

• Brand communities on Facebook which are also known as Facebook brand fan pages are the meeting points of many customers sharing the same interests and passion about brands.

Facebook Brand Fan Pages• Thanks to these brand fan pages, companies can learn about their

customer profile, get feedback from their customers concerning their products and services and understand their customers’ actual needs. Therefore, Facebook offers a great opportunity to companies for researching consumer behavior.

• From the perspective of consumers, having previous experiences with the brand, trusting in the brand and seeking for the opportunity to participate in contest and promotions of the brand are the main reasons why consumers become a brand follower on Facebook brand fan pages (Pereria et al. 2014, p.699).

• By participating into Facebook brand fan pages, consumers involve in real discussions with other consumers and find a chance to reach company representatives.

Credit Card Usage in Turkey• The number of credit card users in Turkey has reached to

massive numbers in the last few years and Turkey has nearly caught up with England, the leader country in Europe in terms of the number of credit cards users.

• The credit card statistics of 2014 indicated that the number of credit cards users reached to 54,3 million in Turkey while the number of credit card users in England reached to 56,4 million the same year (Bloomberg, 2014).

Research Question• Credit cards is a sector which is growing considerably fast.

Therefore Turkish banks need to have some strategies to draw the attention of their existing and potential customers in social media platforms such as Facebook. Thus, they need to know which type of brand post creates more customer engagement.

• This research aimed to find out which type of brand posts creates more customer engagement on Facebook brand fan pages of credit cards? This research aimed to answer this question by analyzing the Facebook brand fan pages of the banks that offers miles credit cards in Turkey.

Goals of the Research

•Moreover, this research tries to find out which types of multimedia that the brand posts contain, what time the brand posts are shared and how long the brand post texts are on Facebook pages of miles credit cards in Turkey. This way, an insight for how marketers of miles credit cards in Turkey manage their Facebook brand fan pages will be gained.

FACEBOOK

• Facebook the world’s leading social networking site reached to 890 million daily active users on average according to 2014 statistics (Facebook Newsroom, 2015) and Facebook Turkish Marketing Manager Fırat Dirik said that 94% of the online population in Turkey use Facebook actively (Kaytmaz, 2014).

• As people are highly active on Facebook in Turkey, it is a platform that excites Turkish marketers aiming to increase their companies’ performance in the market.

Facebook Marketing• By using Facebook brand fan pages as a marketing tool,

companies can engage in brand building activities 7 days and 24 hours. Facebook marketing is not limited to business hours and it is not interruptted by holidays.

• Companies can promote their new products and services, highlight their products’ different features, initiate viral marketing, reach larger audiences and increase brand awareness on Facebook.

Facebook Communication• Moreover, companies can efficiently communicate with their

existing and potential customers on Facebook without getting the help of big media companies. Therefore, they do not need to share a big budget for traditional advertisements.

• Facebook helps companies to reduce their cost of communication as it helps them to connect with more people in a shorter period of time compared to face to face meetings, phone calls and e-mails (Luke, 2009, p.18)

Customer Engagement• Customer engagement is a customer’s behavioral

manifestations that have a brand or firm focus, resulting from motivational drivers (van Doorn et al., 2010, p. 254).

• Customer engagement is about satisfying needs and it is related with gaining different types of benefits such as practical, social, entertainment and economic (Gummerus et al., 2012, p. 860).

• For instance, while social benefits of joining into brand communities are showing something about one’s preferences and socializing with other consumers, the economic benefits are participating in contests and learning about promotions.

Customer Engagement• When customers like, comment or share the brand posts on

Facebook brand fan pages, they show that they are engaged with the brand. The higher the number of likes, comments, and shares a brand post gets, the higher is the customer engagement.

• Moreover, when consumers like the posts of brands, then the posts will appear on consumers’ Facebook news feed which will allow their friends to see the posts, as well. As brand posts will reach to many people this way, brand awareness will automatically increase.

Design of the Research• The design of this research is a case study.

• According to Yin, a case study is an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon in depth and within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident (Yin, 2009, p. 18).

• In this research, the contemporary phenomenon is the Facebook brand fan pages of miles credit cards in Turkey. However, it is not possible to generalize the results in case studies.

Brand Posts• Brand posts are significant instruments which enable brands to

promote their new products, services, discounts and campaigns with the help of images, videos, texts and links on Facebook.

• A research analysing 70 global brands’ Facebook fan pages found out that companies post brand posts on average 24 times within a month, which implies that their consumers receive a message in their news feeds every few days (Parsons, 2011, p.14).

• The content of brand posts are seperated into four by Hong (2011) as information, entertainment, promotional and social. In this research, hypotheses are formed in order to test which type of brand posts creates more customer engagement.

Hypotheses• Information postings aim to provide some kind of information to the

user. It is used when a company shares official announcements or releases news about the company. Thus, they are considered as a formal way of communication with the customers.

• H1: Informative postings are more popular than non-informative postings.

• On the other hand, entertainment postings make sure that customers have a good time. These include games, quizzes, and fun videos about products and services. Thus, they are considered as an informal way of communication with the customers.

• H2: Entertaining postings are more popular than non-entertaining postings.

Hypotheses• Promotional postings present a contest, promotion, a discount

coupon or a campaign code about the products and services to draw the attention of consumers and they direct consumers to get involved in these activities. Thus, they are directly related with the sales efforts of companies.

• H3: Promotional postings are more popular than non-promotional postings.

• Social postings encourage consumer participation by asking a question. With social postings, companies aim to receive a feedback from consumers. Examples to this category include asking consumers for their opinion on a product or asking them how did their day passed. Social postings aim to establish a long term relationship with customers.

• H4: Social postings are more popular than non-social postings.

Sample of the Research• The sample of this research comprised of Facebook pages of

miles credit cards in Turkey. In the last few years, miles credit cards which have given people an opportunity to earn free miles from flights and shopping rank among the favorite services of banks and have managed to draw attention of many consumers.

• These cards allow people to have free airport transportation, free lounge services and free flights to several destinations both inside and outside of Turkey. In addition, they allow people to enjoy discounts in numerous brands and restaurants. Thus, the demand to these cards increases day by day. The number of these card owners in Turkey have already passed 2 million and have been continuing to increase with several campaigns (Airport Haber, 2012).

Sample of the Research• The sample of this research consisted of four credit cards

which were Miles and Smiles owned by Garanti Bank, Maximiles owned by İş Bankası, Wings Card owned by Akbank and Adios Card owned by Yapıkredi Bank.

• Miles & More offered by Denizbank wasn’t included into this research because it doesn’t have a Turkish Facebook page. Miles & More is originally owned by Lufthansa and Lufthansa has a collaboration in Turkey with Denizbank. Also Pegasus Card offered by HSBC in Turkey wasn’t included into this research because it doesn’t have a Facebook page either.

Data Collection and Method • The time frame for this analysis was limited to a month that

was between March 1 - 31, 2015. The data was gathered on April 6, 2015. The data was analyzed with the method of content analysis through SPSS, a statistics program.

The Frequency of Brand Post Types

• The research revealed that the postings which were used the most on Facebook pages of miles credit cards in Turkey are social postings.

• Out of the 94 postings that were analyzed 45 of them (% 47,9) were social postings.

• However, promotional postings almost caught up with the social postings, as well.

• Out of the 94 postings that were analyzed 44 of them (% 46,8) were promotional postings.

The Frequency of Brand Post Types• Thus, this research indicates that marketers of miles credit cards use

Facebook for two main purposes. One of them is to strengthen their relationships with their customers by using social postings and the other is to promote their products and campaigns by using promotional postings.

• On the other hand, the marketers of miles credit cards seldom used entertaining and information postings. Out of the 94 postings that were analyzed only 4 of them (% 4,3) were entertaining postings and only 1 of them (%1,1) was information postings.

• These findings indicate that marketers of miles credit cards do not use Facebook as a channel to disseminate corporate news. Moreover, they do not involve in an informal communication with their customers by using entertaining postings.

Customer engagement is the highest in social postings. One social posting managed to receive the highest number of likes, highest number of comments, and the highest number of shares.

This social posting received a number of likes between 250-300, a number of comments above 50 and a number of shares between 15-20.

Other Findings • Thus, this chart answers to the research question of this study: Social

postings function best and social postings are the most popular on Facebook pages of miles credit cards in Turkey as they create the highest customer engagement.

• Marketers of miles credit cards mostly share postings on weekdays. While 71 postings were shared on weekdays, 23 postings were shared on weekends.

• Investigating which multimedia instruments that brand post types contain, it is seen that they mostly include an image, a text and a link together.

• Out of the 94 postings shared, 47 of them contained an image, a text and a link together. Thus, marketers of miles credit cards who frequently use an image, a text and a link together try to capture all senses of their customers. This way, they aim to draw their customers’ attention more to the postings.

Other Findings• Marketers of miles credit cards in Turkey prefer to share their

postings mostly in the mornings. Out of the 94 postings shared 61 of them were shared in the morning. Probably, marketers of miles credit cards think that the best time to share the postings is in the morning as their customers can see the postings all day long this way.

• Marketers of miles credit cards mostly prepare postings that are 1 to 15 words long. Out of the 94 postings 67 of them were 1 to 15 words long. Reaching customers with short but striking messages is a tactic that is used by marketers of miles credit cards.

Results• Marketers of miles credit cards in Turkey use Facebook brand fan

pages chiefly to socialize with their customers and to promote their products and services.

• By using social postings they ask questions to their customers about their opinions on particular issues and they try to recieve feedback from their customers.

• Mostly, they ask questions concerning popular touristic destinations such as to which countries these destinations belong or whether their customers have been to these countries before.

• By using social postings they remind the presence of popular touristic destinations to their customers, learn about their customers’ interests to these destinations via feedbacks and implicitly motivate them to plan holidays by using miles credit cards.

Results• By using promotional postings, marketers of miles credit cards

promote their new products and services. They let their customers know about their new campaigns such as special discounts or advantages installments offered with the miles credit cards.

• Marketers of miles credit cards do not use Facebook brand fan pages as a channel to disseminate corporate news. They prefer using corporate websites for that purpose.

• They do not use entertaining postings to amuse their customers, as well. They try to keep the communication between the banks and their customers more serious.

Results• On average, a brand post receives a number of likes between

1 to 50 likes, a number of comments between 1 to 25 comments and a number of shares between 1 to 5 shares on Facebook brand fan pages of miles credit cards in Turkey.

• Within the four different brand post types, social postings recieved the highest engagement rate on Facebook brand fan pages of miles credit cards in Turkey. A social posting got a number of likes between 200 to 250, a number of comments above 50 and a number of shares between 15 to 20.

• As they create the highest customer engagement, social postings function best and social postings are the most popular on Facebook pages of miles credit cards in Turkey.

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