Note that Facebook brand pages can engage consumers in various ways, two of which have been quite popular with the public: liking and commenting. If a company can get consumers to like its posts, then the brand’s posts will appear on consumers’ profile pages, ensuring that whatever that brand posts is seen by consumers and their friends. The Like button feature for brands enabled by Facebook has gained traction among brands from various industries that have seen spikes in Internet traffic and improve their performance after implementation. It has also been suggested that “Likes” on Facebook help companies increase brand awareness and engagement, and thus positively contributes to their return on investment. Those engaged consumers are not only more likely to research products of the brands that they like, but also more likely to be satisfied with the brand and to continue using it in the future. Another type of engagement involves getting the consumers to comment on a brand’s Facebook page. When a consumer comments on a brand’s Facebook post, in addition to his or her friends on his or her own profile, anyone who views the brand’s post can also see the comment, even though the consumer does not know those viewers personally. Commenting behavior allows consumers to share their opinions about or agreement/disagreement with the content on the brand’s Facebook page, created either by the brand itself or other visitors. These two behaviors, liking and commenting, let Facebook users casually signal their affinity for a brand, item, or product and share that with their own personal network on Facebook. Through this functionality, users can lend their support to a brand and influence their peers solely by liking and/or commenting on the posts of that brand, without any purposeful influencing activity. While both behaviors take place in a public space, liking can be less visible and less-exposing to the general public than other types of engagement, as it does not explicitly state users’ feelings, opinions, thoughts, etc. Nevertheless, liking is more about building that personal relationship between the brand and the consumer, which does not have to be very revealing to the public, specially to those who are not friends with the consumer on Facebook. On the other hand, commenting is more visible to the public not only by showing the user’s name and picture next to his or her comment, but also by exposing the consumer’s thoughts about a brand or its posts on a public display. These comments do not only appear on the consumer’s friends’ Facebook news feed and sidebars where friends of friends can see them even though the consumer does not know them directly, but also appear on the brands’ own profile pages where anyone, including total strangers, can see and read them.
In terms of consumer interaction in the social networks, there are two – Broadcasting and Communicating. Broadcasting entails “one-to-many” style of interaction. In this mode, the users seek to promote themselves to a large network of people. Broadcasting can be perceived as a more active form of public interaction and communication style characterized by the individual’s self-projection. People who use this mode are generally concerned with impression management and engage in interaction for public consumption. Individuals operating in the broadcasting mode of interaction tend to use every opportunity in social media to increase their presence and visibility. They prefer to engage in activities aimed at public consumption to enhance their self-presence and self-promotion in the public domain. The second mode is the “communicating” mode, characterized by a “one-to-one” or “one-to-few” type of interaction. This mode is more private and generally produces more high-quality interactions with individuals the user already knows. The communicators are more likely to have anchored relationships. They interact with individuals who are close to them and prefer to be less visible. They focus on the maintenance of a strong, close-knit social friend group and have regular high-quality interactions with smaller online communities.