We examine the impact of firm social media engagement on sales performance, answering “whether,” “what,” and “how” questions. The study uses a quasi-experimental design in a social e-commerce setting, for which propensity score matching and difference-in-differences methods quantify a mean 20.67% sales increase after firm social media adoption. We also find that firms that sell low-involvement products benefit more from social media adoption, compared to those that sell high-involvement products. Further, in terms of how to manage social media engagement, we find that informative content, in general, is effective for sales of high-involvement products, whereas promotional content, a new type of content discovered in this study, is more beneficial for sales of low-involvement products. Meanwhile, more social media followers generate better firm sales performance. We used instrumental variables and the control function method to address endogeneity issues and conducted robustness checks to support our conclusions. This study sheds light on the value of firm social media, particularly regarding industry differences and firm know-how.

中文翻译：

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了解您的公司：管理社交媒体参与以提高公司销售业绩

我们检查公司社交媒体参与对销售业绩的影响，回答“是否”、“什么”和“如何”的问题。该研究在社交电子商务环境中使用准实验设计，倾向得分匹配和双重差异方法量化了公司采用社交媒体后平均 20.67% 的销售额增长。我们还发现，与销售高参与度产品的公司相比，销售低参与度产品的公司从社交媒体采用中获益更多。此外，就如何管理社交媒体参与而言，我们发现信息内容通常对高参与度产品的销售有效，而促销内容（本研究中发现的一种新型内容）对销售更有利低参与度的产品。同时，更多的社交媒体追随者会产生更好的公司销售业绩。我们使用工具变量和控制函数方法来解决内生性问题，并进行稳健性检查以支持我们的结论。这项研究阐明了公司社交媒体的价值，特别是在行业差异和公司专业知识方面。