Social Media Virality as a Marketing Asset: Predictive Modelling of Engagement and Conversion

Abstract

The social media has become a powerful marketing tool, which helps to connect companies and their customers, create brand names, and promote purchases. Timely spreading of posts through likes, shares, comments, and hashtags is the distinct feature of Facebook that is called viral; it plays the key role in influencing users’ interaction with marketing communications. The current study analysed the concept of social media virality, as a marketing tool with the focus on the degree to which numerous engagement behaviours predict user conversion, the examples of purchasing, registering, and following a brand. The empirical investigation was conducted involving those respondents who were based in Punjab and Chandigarh regions that have undergone faster growth in digital marketing in the recent past. The research methodology followed was a quantitative one whereby data was accrued among 300 respondents by use of online survey. Responses obtained were analysed with IBM SPSS Statistics and both a descriptive statistic and a regression framework were utilized to isolate salient predictors of conversion. Results revealed that engagement behaviours such as sharing, liking, commenting, and the use of hashtags had a positive link with higher rate of conversion. It is important to note that the content sharing action and the use of hashtags became the strongest predictors of virality and conversion. Therefore, the more the users share and /or enter content through the use of hashtags, the higher the chances of achieving a positive marketing reaction. This study shows that the social media virality is an organized and measurable and predictable marketing insight as opposed to a chance event. Marketers are able to identify the most effective engagement variables and create content that provokes interaction and conversion by utilizing the power of data-driven analytics and statistical modelling. The findings also highlight the excellence of emotionally resonant, interactive and discoverable content to regular posting habits which are repetitive and dull. The study increases the understanding of the translation of social media usage into marketing excellence and provides practical additions to businesses and digital marketing specialists, especially in the settings of Punjab and Chandigarh.