Role of content strategy in social media brand communities: a case of higher education institutes in India

Purpose The aim of this study is to attempt to understand the role of content strategy followed by leading higher education institutes in India which have created brand community on social media web sites to initiate and enhance customer engagement. The impact of content strategy variables – content type, posting agility, posting day and content context on number of likes and number of comments, which were manifest variables for customer engagement was assessed here. Design/methodology/approach This study follows a positivistic paradigm and employs case study research design. The data were collected by netnography method from brand communities on social networking web sites. The data were collected on a longitudinal basis for one year. Ten brand communities were tracked for the period and the analysis is based on total 1,440 posts made by brands during this period. Findings The content type and content agility were found to have significant impact on number of likes and comments, which were treated as manifest variables for customer engagement. The two‐way interaction indicated that content type and content context had significant impact on number of likes and comments. Research limitations/implications It is one of the first attempts to characterize the relationship between a firm's content strategy of its BC on social networking sites and the customer engagement. This study identifies various manifest variables for both the content strategy of the firm and the customer engagement. Practical implications This study would facilitate practicing community managers and content managers to understand and develop content strategy which would lead to desired customer engagement on brand communities created on social media. Originality/value With the application of this study's results, an organization should be able to avoid misuse of its social media marketing efforts, and should be able to focus on its content strategy, which maximises customer engagement on its brand community.