From Virality to Value: A Bibliometric and Thematic Analysis of Engagement Metrics in Brand Storytelling on Social Media

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for submitting your paper for review. I found the topic of brand storytelling on social media around narrative design interesting.  I also liked the perspective that micromeasures do not necessarily support a gauge of success. This focus is becoming more popular these days, as greater awareness that likes and shares alone may not generate meaningful interaction.

Your manuscript demonstrates potential, but I feel it needs quite a few revisions to meet publishable standards. Below, I have outlined specific suggestions to help you strengthen your submission:

1. The problem statement appropriately highlights the lack of consideration for emotional and psychological impacts, referencing attitudes, trust, and loyalty. These are broad areas, and the paper would benefit from a deeper explanation threaded through the document. While not the main focus, they need a stronger reason to be mentioned throughout the paper. Consider introducing these here, reinforcing them in the 'Value Creation through Narrative' section, and concluding with clear reasoning as to their significance in your closing remarks.
2. Please add a brief introductory section to your literature review, outlining the key aspects you will address. There are several different perspectives in this section, and a guiding overview would help readers connect the focus of your topic before reaching your research questions and methods.
3. As value is a central theme in your work and a significant concept in marketing, please include a definition and context relevant to your study. This will enhance the strength of your analysis and findings.
4. The methods section requires further detail regarding your sample construction. For instance, please clarify the rationale for selecting the 2015-2025 timeframe, other than that it is 10 years of publications.
5. Please specify the size of your dataset. While you explain the sources, key terms, and exclusions, the final dataset size remains unclear.
6. Further explain the thematic coding approach used. Expand on how you developed the final dimensions and provide more information about your quality assessment process. Define what constitutes methodological rigor in this instance and how evaluation factors were determined.
7. One of your research questions and literature review sections addresses virality and vanity. The results discuss virality well, but a clearer explanation of vanity is needed.
8. Strengthen the connection between your research questions and the results/discussion section. Please explicitly reference how your findings address each question to improve flow and clarity, and so the reader can see how your paper comes together.
9. It is unclear whether the results fully reflect the discussion points, such as the strategic value of long-form and serial storytelling, platform suitability for multi-part storytelling, and consistent meaning-making. Make these links more explicit so readers can see how your research questions are addressed.
10. Did you consider whether any of the papers consider the role of lurkers within this context? They can be highly influential outside social media platforms. This group may not have been important in your analysis, but it would have been helpful to see an acknowledgement of this and an explanation of why they were not included in the search terms. 

A final minor editorial suggestion is to review the journal’s recommended paper structure and ensure your submission aligns with it.  

I wish you all the best for this study.

 

Author Response

Subject: Response to Reviewers for the Revised Manuscript Submission

Dear Reviewer,

I sincerely thank you for investing your time and effort to go through my manuscript and offer constructive feedback and suggestions on where to improve. I have carefully considered this feedback and made revisions to improve on the clarity, rigor, comprehensiveness and overall contribution of my manuscript. In this letter, I will offer a detailed response which outlines the revisions I have made in response to your feedback,

 

 

Response to Reviewer 1

Comment 1: Within the problem statement section, I have explicitly positioned the emotional elements of attitude, trust, and loyalty as the central aspects in measuring value in brand narration. The revision clarifies how each of these elements is significant in reinforcing value in content creation.

Comment 2: Additionally, the revision has included a concise and well-structured introduction to the literature review section to guide the readers on what concepts have been used to guide and outline the structure in literature review.

Comment 3: With value being a central aspect in the research and its analysis, this revision has accurately defined it within the engagement metrics section in a way which accurately distinguishes it from virality which most brands use it as measure of reach and positive consumer behavior.

Comment 4: The revision has given the rationale for using the 2015–2025 timeframe emphasizing how critical these years have been in the growth of social media marketing, “Examples of studies” has insert below.

Comment 5: I have explicitly stated the peer reviewed articles used in research are 24, reflecting both the breadth and depth of the topic.

Comment 6: I have expanded the methods section to explain how the thematic coding approach was used to reach to the final dimensions while ensuring quality assessment. Additionally, the revision process discussed how methodological rigor was upheld and the evaluation factors were determined.

Comment 7: The virality metrics in the research have been clearly explained and their limitation in capturing emotional engagement stated.

Comment 8: At the beginning of the discussion section, I have revised the manuscript to offer an overview of how the research findings have been linked to the research findings.

Comment 9: The connection between long-form storytelling, serial storytelling, platform suitability, and meaning-making has been clearly explained within the discussion section allowing it offer a strong link between the results and the findings.

Comment 10: The revision process acknowledged the role of lurkers in shaping brand perception visibility and highlights how it is a limitation that future research should address.

 

All the revisions made within the manuscript have been highlighted in yellow to aid you in identifying them and analyzing how effectively they addressed feedback.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I respectfully wish to maintain the 2015–2025 since this period marked a significant period in which the concept of brand and influencer marketing rapidly developed. This period reflects the growth and dominance of algorithm-driven platforms and contemporary storytelling practices. While the earlier years of the 21^st century laid the foundation for social media use in organizational branding, social media was still very new and there is limited evidence on how branding and engagement surfaced. Also, we observe that different prior studies have effectively used similar time-bound approaches which supports the validity of this methodological choice.

 

Examples of studies:

The Impact of Social Media on Health Behaviors: A Systematic Review (2010–2025) https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare13212763

A decade of social media in public relations research: A systematic review of published articles in 2010–2020 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2022.102154

Social Media Metrics and Popular Legitimacy: Content Analysis of Pre– and Post–COVID-19 Public Engagement With the World Health Organization on X https://doi.org/10.2196/69959

 

I believe that these revisions have not only strengthened my manuscript but also addressed all feedback. I sincerely appreciate your contribution which has greatly improved the quality of my work.

 

With thanks,

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please see attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Subject: Response to Reviewer for the Revised Manuscript Submission

Dear Reviewer,

I sincerely thank you for investing your time and effort to go through my manuscript and offer constructive feedback and suggestions on where to improve. I have carefully considered this feedback and made revisions to improve on the clarity, rigor, comprehensiveness and overall contribution of my manuscript. In this letter, I will offer a detailed response which outlines the revisions I have made in response to your feedback.

 

All the revisions made within the manuscript have been highlighted in yellow to aid you in identifying them and analyzing how effectively they addressed feedback.

Response to Reviewer 2

I appreciate your observation and can clarify that the review of articles published within the last ten years does not adopt a purely descriptive stance but engages these articles to present a well structed analysis of the foundational concepts. The use of thematic analysis to explain the relationship between the digital storytelling and engagement metric is evidence of this structured analytical approach. Respectfully, I highlight that this manuscript informs this topic by combining different frameworks including narrative theory, engagement metrics, and digital marketing to offer one unified framework. Most importantly, the distinction of virality and value in digital narration offer a novel lens that aids both the theoretical and practical understanding of engagement metrics in social media marketing.

I acknowledge and respect your feedback on the need to extend the timeframe. However, I respectfully wish to maintain the 2015–2025 since this period marked a significant period in which the concept of brand and influencer marketing rapidly developed. This period reflects the growth and dominance of algorithm-driven platforms and contemporary storytelling practices. While the earlier years of the 21^st century laid the foundation for social media use in organizational branding, social media was still very new and there is limited evidence on how branding and engagement surfaced. Also, we observe that different prior studies have effectively used similar time-bound approaches which supports the validity of this methodological choice.

 

Examples of studies:

The Impact of Social Media on Health Behaviors: A Systematic Review (2010–2025) https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare13212763

A decade of social media in public relations research: A systematic review of published articles in 2010–2020 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2022.102154

Social Media Metrics and Popular Legitimacy: Content Analysis of Pre– and Post–COVID-19 Public Engagement With the World Health Organization on X https://doi.org/10.2196/69959

 

I believe that these revisions have not only strengthened my manuscript but also addressed all feedback. I sincerely appreciate your contribution which has greatly improved the quality of my work.

 

With thanks,

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for attending to my recommendations.  The paper now presents a much tighter story.  There is a minor edit under your Virality vs Value paragraph, which contains typing errors. Please double-check that there are no others I might have missed.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your careful review and valuable observation.

I have corrected the typing errors in the “Virality vs Value” paragraph and thoroughly rechecked the manuscript to ensure that no similar errors remain.

Thank you again for your helpful feedback.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The submitted revised version has only additional paragraphs that clarify their work.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your detailed review, constructive comments, and valuable suggestions. I truly appreciate the time and effort you invested in evaluating my manuscript.

I have carefully addressed all the comments and revisions you requested and revised the manuscript accordingly. I sincerely hope that the changes made meet your expectations and that the revised version is now satisfactory.

Thank you again for your thoughtful feedback and support.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf