A longitudinal study of B2B customer engagement in LinkedIn: The role of brand personality

In business-to-business (B2B) settings, social media provide a novel context for investigating customer engagement. While B2B firms are increasingly investing in social media, there is limited understanding about the type of content to be published and how customers may react to their posts. The authors address these research gaps by developing a conceptual framework that relates posts’ brand personality dimensions (sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness) to customer engagement. Using data from a small-sized Chilean-Swiss consultancy firm accounting for 114 weeks of LinkedIn activity, the authors specify a VAR model with exogenous variables (VARX). Focusing on the cumulative elasticities, the study uncovers the engagement mechanisms of customers. The results show that an increase in impressions (exposure) leads to an increase in likes, clicks, and shares (perceptions), an increase in clicks leads to an increase in new followers (actions), and an increase in new followers leads to an increase in impressions. Furthermore, the results indicate that an increase in posts’ excitement leads to an increase in impressions and likes, an increase in posts’ competence leads to an increase in clicks, and an increase in posts’ ruggedness leads to an increase in new followers.