Who Likes to Engage? An Investigation of the Influences of Facebook Fan Page Characteristics on the Engagement Rate.

Facebook fan page marketing has become extremely popular among many different kind of brands. However, debate continues about the effectiveness and best practices. In recent years, there has been an increasing focus on how to keep fans engaged. A commonly used metric to measure the interactions of fans with pages is the engagement rate (ER). So far research has only focused on how posting tactics influence the ER while little is known about which profiles of fans cause a higher ER. This study set out with the aim of assessing the influence of personality traits (Big5), Facebook activity, demographics, culture (Hofstede dimensions) and homogeneity of fans on the ER. Additionally the effects of the fan page category, the amount of fans and the friends among fans on the ER are also included in the analysis. A multiple regression was conducted using data from over 190.000 Facebook users and over 5000 fan pages. Additionally a second simple regression analysis was done to investigate the effects of the ER on the growth of fan pages. The results of this study indicate that older and higher educated fans cause higher engagement rates. The findings also indicate that fans from countries whose culture scores high on individualism, masculinity and indulgence bring higher engagement rates. Regarding homogeneity, this study shows that higher interaction occurs with homogenous fan bases in terms of culture and personality while this is not the case for demographics and levels of Facebook activity. Moreover it is shown that fan page categories with more emotional themes score higher on the ER while the amount of fans does not have a significant impact. Furthermore this study points out that a higher number of friends among fans causes higher engagement rates. Contrary to expectations, this study found that active Facebook users are not active fans and that extravert fans have a negative influence on the engagement rate. Finally, the second analysis shows that a higher engagement rate will attract more new fans. The combination of findings provide practical implications for fan page managers to achieve more interaction with fans and consequently also a higher reach and growth.