Browse > Article
http://dx.doi.org/10.52255/smarttourism.2021.1.3.5

Social Media Marketing Strategies for Tourism Destinations: Effects of Linguistic Features and Content Types  

Song, Seobgyu (Department of Apparel, Merchandising, Interior Design, and Hospitality Management, North Dakota State University)
Park, Seunghyun Brian (Division of Administration and Economics(Hospitality Management), St. John's University)
Park, Kwangsoo (Department of Apparel, Merchandising, Interior Design, and Hospitality Management, North Dakota State University)
Publication Information
Journal of Smart Tourism / v.1, no.3, 2021 , pp. 21-29 More about this Journal
Abstract
This study explored the relationship between post types and linguistic characteristics in marketer-generated content and social media engagement to find the optimized content to enhance social media engagement level. Post data of 23,588 marketer-generated content were collected from 50 states' destination marketing organization Facebook pages in the United States. The collected data were analyzed by employing social media analytics, linguistic analysis, multivariate analysis of variance, and discriminant analysis. The results showed that there are significant differences in both engagement indicators and linguistic scores among the three post types. Based on research findings, this research not only provided researchers with theoretical implications but also suggested practitioners the most effective content designs for travel destination marketing in Facebook.
Keywords
social media engagement; Language Expectancy Theory; linguistic feature; Facebook; destination marketing organization;
Citations & Related Records
연도 인용수 순위
  • Reference
1 Van Doorn, J., Lemon, K. N., Mittal, V., Nass, S., Pick, D., Pirner, P., & Verhoef, P. C. (2010). Customer engagement behavior: Theoretical foundations and research directions. Journal of Service Research, 13(3), 253-266.   DOI
2 Perez-Vega, R., Taheri, B., Farrington, T., & O'Gorman, K. (2018). On being attractive, social and visually appealing in social media: The effects of anthropomorphic tourism brands on Facebook fan pages. Tourism Management, 66, 339-347.   DOI
3 Alboqami, H., Al-Karaghouli, W., Baeshen, Y., Erkan, I., Evans, C., & Ghoneim, A. (2015). Electronic word of mouth in social media: the common characteristics of retweeted and favourited marketer-generated content posted on Twitter. International Journal of Marketing and Advertising, 9(4), 338-358.   DOI
4 Zeng, B., & Gerritsen, R. (2014). What do we know about social media in tourism? A review. Tourism Management Perspectives, 10, 27-36.   DOI
5 Byun, J., & Jang, S. (2015). Effective destination advertising: Matching effect between advertising language and destination type. Tourism Management, 50, 31-40.   DOI
6 Duncan, S. Y., Chohan, R., & Ferreira, J. J. (2019). What makes the difference? Employee social media brand engagement. Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, 34(7), 1459-1467.   DOI
7 Averbeck, J. M., & Miller, C. (2014). Expanding language expectancy theory: The suasory effects of lexical complexity and syntactic complexity on effective message design. Communication Studies, 65(1), 72-95.   DOI
8 Boley, B. B., Magnini, V. P., & Tuten, T. L. (2013). Social media picture posting and souvenir purchasing behavior: Some initial findings. Tourism Management, 37, 27-30.   DOI
9 Burgoon, M., Denning, P. V., & Roberts, L. (2002). Language expectancy theory. In J. P. Dillard & M. Pfau (Eds.), The persuasion handbook: Developments in theory and practice (pp. 117-137). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
10 Villamediana, J., Kuster, I., & Vila, N. (2019). Destination engagement on Facebook: time and seasonality. Annals of Tourism Research, 79, 102747.   DOI
11 Femenia-Serra, F., & Ivars-Baidal, J. A. (2021). Do smart tourism destinations really work? The case of Benidorm. Asia-Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, 26(4), 365-384.   DOI
12 Majid, S., Lopez, C., Megicks, P., & Lim, W. M. (2019). Developing effective social media messages: Insights from an exploratory study of industry experts. Psychology and Marketing, 36(6), 551-564.   DOI
13 Harrigan, P., Evers, U., Miles, M., & Daly, T. (2017). Customer engagement with tourism social media brands. Tourism Management, 59, 597-609.   DOI
14 Facebook. (2021, February 8). Company info. Facebook. https://about.fb.com/company-info/
15 Gretzel, U., Sigala, M., Xiang, Z., & Koo, C. (2015). Smart tourism: Foundations and developments. Electronic Markets, 25(3), 179-188.   DOI
16 Hair, J. F., Black, W. C., Babin, B. J., & Anderson, R. E. (2010). Multivariate data analysis. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
17 Hays, S., Page, S. J., & Buhalis, D. (2013). Social media as a destination marketing tool: Its use by national tourism organisations. Current Issues in Tourism, 16(3), 211-239.   DOI
18 Jensen, M. L., Averbeck, J. M., Zhang, Z., & Wright, K. B. (2013). Credibility of anonymous online product reviews: A language expectancy perspective. Journal of Management Information Systems, 30(1), 293-324.   DOI
19 Burgoon, M. (1995). Language expectancy theory: Elaboration, explication, and extension. In C. R. Berger & M. Burgoon (Eds.), Communication and social influence processes (pp. 29-52). East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press.
20 Koo, C., Gretzel, U., Hunter, W. C., & Chung, N. (2015). Editorial: The role of IT in tourism. Asia Pacific Journal of Information Systems, 25(1), 99-104.   DOI
21 Krishna, A., & Ahluwalia, R. (2008). Language choice in advertising to bilinguals: Asymmetric effects for multinationals versus local firms. Journal of Consumer Research, 35(4), 692-705.   DOI
22 LIWC. (2021). Interpreting LIWC output. Retrieved February 11, 2021, from http://liwc.wpengine.com/interpreting-liwc-output/
23 Jansen, B. J., Zhang, M., Sobel, K., & Chowdury, A. (2009). Twitter power: Tweets as electronic word of mouth. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(11), 2169-2188.   DOI
24 Stepchenkova, S., & Zhan, F. (2013). Visual destination images of Peru: Comparative content analysis of DMO and user-generated photography. Tourism Management, 36, 590-601.   DOI
25 Parhankangas, A., & Renko, M. (2017). Linguistic style and crowdfunding success among social and commercial entrepreneurs. Journal of Business Venturing, 32(2), 215-236.   DOI
26 Dewnarain, S., Ramkissoon, H., & Mavondo, F. (2019). Social customer relationship management: An integrated conceptual framework. Journal of Hospitality Marketing and Management, 28(2), 172-188.   DOI
27 Di Gangi, P. M., & Wasko, M. M. (2016). Social media engagement theory: Exploring the influence of user engagement on social media usage. Journal of Organizational and End User Computing, 28(2), 53-73.   DOI
28 Edosomwan, S., Prakasan, S. K., Kouame, D., Watson, J., & Seymour, T. (2011). The history of social media and its impact on business. Journal of Applied Management and Entrepreneurship, 16(3), 79-91.
29 Kim, C., & Yang, S. U. (2017). Like, comment, and share on Facebook: How each behavior differs from the other. Public Relations Review, 43(2), 441-449.   DOI
30 Leek, S., Houghton, D., & Canning, L. (2019). Twitter and behavioral engagement in the healthcare sector: An examination of product and service companies. Industrial Marketing Management, 81, 115-129.   DOI
31 Burgoon, M., Jones, S. B., & Stewart, D. (1975). Toward a message-centered theory of persuasion: Three empirical investigations of language intensity. Human Communication Research, 1(3), 240-256.   DOI
32 Park, S., Park, K., Park, J. Y., & Back, R. M. (2020). Social Media Analytics in event marketing: Engaging marathon fans in Facebook communities. Event Management, 25(4), 329-345.
33 Li, Y., Hu, C., Huang, C., & Duan, L. (2017). The concept of smart tourism in the context of tourism information services. Tourism Management, 58, 293-300.   DOI
34 Li, Y., & Xie, Y. (2020). Is a picture worth a thousand words? An empirical study of image content and social media engagement. Journal of Marketing Research, 57(1), 1-19.   DOI
35 Mariani, M. M., Mura, M., & Di Felice, M. (2018). The determinants of Facebook social engagement for national tourism organizations' Facebook pages: A quantitative approach. Journal of Destination Marketing and Management, 8, 312-325.   DOI
36 Pennebaker, J. W., Booth, R. J., Boyd, R. L., & Francis, M. E. (2015). Linguistic inquiry and word count: LIWC2015. Austin, TX: Pennebaker Conglomerates.
37 Song, S., Park, S., & Park, K. (2021). Thematic analysis of destination images for social media engagement marketing. Industrial Management and Data Systems, 121(6), 1375-1397.   DOI
38 Usakli, A., Koc, B., & Sonmez, S. (2017). How 'social' are destinations? Examining European DMO social media usage. Journal of Destination Marketing and Management, 6(2), 136-149.   DOI
39 Van Asperen, M., de Rooij, P., & Dijkmans, C. (2018). Engagement-based loyalty: The effects of social media engagement on customer loyalty in the travel industry. International Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Administration, 19(1), 78-94.   DOI
40 Seraj, S., Blackburn, K. G., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2021). Language left behind on social media exposes the emotional and cognitive costs of a romantic breakup. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 118(7), e2017154118.   DOI