Enhancing brand engagement through social media video content: A quantitative analysis of tech brands on YouTube Shorts

Abstract

This study aims to understand the role of social media content on users’ engagement behavior. More specifically, the direct effects of brand prominence and content richness on users’ passive and active engagement behavior; and the moderator effect of video content on the link between each content type (Functional, Emotional, and Functional × Emotional) and users’ engagement are investigated. In addition, the effectiveness of different content types on affecting users’ engagement are compared. The dataset analyzed contained 424 videos from 15 brands in the tech industry from YouTube Shorts. The results reveal that the effectiveness of social media content on users’ engagement is moderated by content richness but not brand prominence; Emotional appeals show the highest performance among the three content types investigated on stimulating both active and passive engagement. The findings provide important new insights regarding social media engagement on an emerging platform important for academics and managers.