Firms are increasingly focusing on understanding and managing their social media strategies in order to create discussions and optimize the spread of news in their communities. Most prior studies on information dissemination have mainly focused on the roles of influentials but ignored the essential for noninfluentials. To fill this gap, this paper takes a holistic view of the information dissemination process and investigates how the participation of both influentials and noninfluentials plays a role in affecting the volume and sentiment of microblogs, which are precursors to raise awareness and attraction for brands. To test our hypotheses, we build a novel econometric model and apply it to a dataset collected from the popular microblogging site Twitter. We have the following main results: (1) back-and-forth-type discussions and retweets are effective in generating awareness and positive attractiveness; (2) influentials or mavens (who have many followers but seldom follow others) help generate initial sparks toward microblogging, but during the cascading periods, the noninfluentials play an important role in driving the conversations; and (3) new users who gradually join the discussions also help increase awareness, although they may not generate a positive sentiment. Our results provide important implications for mediating consumer interactions and firms’ marketing strategies.

中文翻译：

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微博社区中的无影响力和信息传播

公司越来越关注于理解和管理其社交媒体策略，以进行讨论并优化新闻在社区中的传播。先前有关信息传播的大多数研究主要集中在有影响力的角色上，而忽略了无影响力的本质。为了填补这一空白，本文对信息传播过程进行了整体分析，并研究了有影响力者和无影响力者的参与如何影响微博的数量和情感，微博是提高品牌知名度和吸引力的先驱。为了检验我们的假设，我们建立了一个新颖的计量经济学模型，并将其应用于从流行的微博网站Twitter收集的数据集。我们得到以下主要结果：（1）来回讨论和转发有效地提高了人们的认识和正面吸引力；（2）有影响力的人或行家（其追随者很多，但很少跟随其他人）有助于产生微博的初始火花，但是在级联期间，无影响力的人在推动对话中起着重要作用；（3）逐渐加入讨论的新用户也可能有助于提高认识，尽管他们可能不会产生积极的情绪。我们的结果为调解消费者互动和公司的营销策略提供了重要的启示。非影响者在推动对话中起着重要作用；（3）逐渐加入讨论的新用户也可能有助于提高认识，尽管他们可能不会产生积极的情绪。我们的结果为调解消费者互动和公司的营销策略提供了重要的启示。非影响者在推动对话中起着重要作用；（3）逐渐加入讨论的新用户也可能有助于提高认识，尽管他们可能不会产生积极的情绪。我们的结果为调解消费者互动和公司的营销策略提供了重要的启示。