Who’s pulling the strings?

Purpose Firms increasingly rely on content marketing to trigger user engagement in social media brand communities. The purpose of this paper is to examine how three generic types of marketer-generated content (affiliative, injunctive and utilitarian content) drive user engagement by considering distinct motivational paths and the role of users’ preference for intimate (vs broad) social networks. Design/methodology/approach The authors conduct a field survey and a scenario experiment among social media users across different brands from three different product categories. They examine the impact of marketer-generated content on user engagement while considering the moderating role of network intimacy (i.e. the mutual confiding within a user’s social network in terms of small social circles) and the mediating role of user motivations (i.e. autonomous vs controlled motivation for community membership). Findings The findings show that affiliative content (i.e. content that highlights shared values) drives user engagement through autonomous motivation, and utilitarian content (i.e. content that highlights tangible benefits) drives user engagement through controlled motivation. Notably, injunctive content (i.e. content that demands specific user behavior) is not a promising instrument to increase user engagement in social media brand communities when not targeted correctly. Research limitations/implications The authors link three generic content types derived from literature on communal systems to user engagement, demonstrate the motivational underpinnings of their translation into engagement behavior and show that network intimacy can explain why the same content type can impact user engagement through two motivational paths. Practical implications The authors present three types of content that marketers can craft to trigger users to engage with a brand’s social media community and show when this content is most effective and why. By examining the moderating role of network intimacy, this research aims at providing targeting implications to social media marketers. Originality/value This research provides new insights on the effectiveness of marketer-generated content. The authors reveal two motivational paths that compete in explaining the overall effectiveness of different types of marketer-generated content to fuel user engagement. The authors further demonstrate that these relationships depend on the intimacy of a user’s circle of online friends.