The role and forms of social media branded content driving active customer engagement behaviours

ABSTRACT In today’s saturated digital ecosystem, content is crucial for brand differentiation and audience engagement. This study adopts a consumer-centric approach, using event-based diaries and semi-structured interviews to explore how different types of branded content on social media – informational, entertaining, remunerative, and contextual – drive active customer engagement (i.e. deliberate interaction). It also examines the motivations behind these behaviours, identifying three core drivers: functional, hedonic, and symbolic, along with varying levels of engagement, from low to high involvement. In an era defined by the attention economy and generative AI – where content is abundant but meaningful engagement is scarce – our approach advances the understanding of branded content’s strategic role in digital marketing and offers actionable insights for content marketers aiming to optimise audience engagement.