Community Building as an Effective User Engagement Strategy: A Case Study in Academic Libraries

摘要

In this study we tested whether appeals to community belongingness are effective at motivating likes, comments, and shares on Facebook. Although we found that community-oriented language has a significant impact on engagement measures, our case is stronger for likes, because our model explains less than 10% of variance for comments and shares. Although this community-oriented language plays a role, we find that it is joined by a variety of other factors that play a comparable or larger role, such as multimedia, the time of day, and the long-term variety of material discussed. Academic libraries presented an apt case study because effective social media utilization can enhance a number of important academic library functions. Social media provide a platform for "social care"; for example, for reaching dissatisfied patrons and resolving their problems (Rogers, 2009). Finding a way to engage users in social media is beneficial because users can suggest improvements to collections or services, and sharing among users is key for promoting library events (Mon, 2015). Effective social media use can enhance fundraising, advocacy, recruitment, public reputation, and outreach to new audiences (Mon, 2015). More generally, Facebook matters to organizations because research has been finding stronger links between Face-book activity and offline behavior. Accumulated likes on Facebook have a positive effect on offline purchasing behavior (Mochon, Johnson, Schwartz, & Ariely, 2017). Organizations are looking for what constitutes a successful message (Kabadayi & Price, 2014), and not-for-profits are trying to emulate successful examples from commercial organizations (Klassen et al., 2018). This work advances our understanding of what kinds of content motivates engagement in social media, which will continue to be a growing concern for all organizations.