Brand strategy and content management on Instagram: scheduling and message length as factors to improve engagement

Abstract

Companies use social media in their communication strategy to connect with their audiences via online brand communities and social media fan pages. In this context, the scientific community defines the term ‘engagement’ as the primary metric used to identify the degree to which brand and consumers are organically connected. This phenomenon gets measured by audience interactions with the brand content, which is the main factor stimulating participation and value perception in their relationship with the brand. Prior investigations show that the timing and duration of the messages published by the brand can predict the degree of social media engagement, however they do not provide the time and length patterns required for messages to increase engagement. For this purpose, we carried out a quantitative and descriptive content analysis of 14,067 Instagram posts from 14 Spanish brands across 10 industries. Findings allow us to conclude that brands are not fully optimising the scheduling of their timings during the working days and hours that drive the best level of interaction. Nonetheless, they do take advantage of the opportunity to publish longer messages to increase engagement. From a theorical and practical point of view, this analysis contributes to the understanding of the content factors that stimulate fan page engagement and provides guidelines for brand managers to efficiently define the content marketing strategy on Instagram.

La programación del contenido en Instagram como factor clave del Engagement en la Liga Asobal

“…Otros trabajos anteriores como los de Kanuri et al (2018), Matosas-López y Cuevas-Molano (2021) y el más reciente de Cuevas-Molano et al, (2022), que han implementado este mismo análisis a empresas de otros sectores, desvelan datos similares indicando que las horas de entrada y salida de la jornada laboral hay un mayor grado de Engagement entre los seguidores. En este caso, sí que la mayoría de las marcas analizadas están aprovechando correctamente y de forma eficiente el factor horario en su estrategia para incrementar el grado de Engagement de los consumidores.…”

“…En la misma línea, aparece un motivo subyacente al interés de los consumidores en redes sociales y es que aquellas marcas sin presencia en redes sociales provocan una falta de confianza y credibilidad entre los usuarios (IAB Spain, 2023). Esta conexión está atrayendo cada vez más la atención de los responsables de comunicación, que identifican el potencial de estas herramientas y canales para establecer relaciones fieles, duraderas y estables con sus públicos, mejorando, de este modo, lo que se conoce como la estrategia de marca (Cuevas-Molano, 2022).…”

“…Desde entonces, otros autores como Cuevas-Molano et al (2022) han investigado sobre este asunto en otros sectores. Ambos estudios han mostrado una existencia de correlación significativa entre las variables citadas.…”

Social media hook sports events: a systematic review of engagement

“…This goes along with the findings of Annamalai et al (2021) who found that Facebook content strategies need to adapt depending if it is peak season or offseason. Additionally, Cuevas-Molano et al (2022) point out that brands need to consider their timing schedules for posts to increase engagement.…”

Conceptualizing Flow for Content Marketing Effectiveness

“…Research has found that both content quality (visuals and text) and media quality (intuitiveness and interactivity) positively impact flow (Cuevas et al, 2021). Combining the Use and Gratification (U & G) Framework (Cuevas-Molano et al, 2022;Katz et al, 1973) and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Lin et al, 2017;Venkatesh et al, 2007) help explain these impacts by highlighting underlying consumer motivations for consuming certain type of contents through adopting certain media (Florenthal, 2019). U&G theory is a widely used framework to identify and understand consumer motivations for using marketing communications media ( (Halaszovich andNel, 2017) Florenthal, 2019).…”