Should brands foster their Instagram account followers’ fear of missing out by posting ephemeral content?

Abstract

Several blogs and websites with a focus on social media marketing suggest that brands can benefit from fostering their Instagram account followers’ fear of missing out (FoMO) by posting ephemeral content. Relying on an online survey with 550 followers of Instagram brand accounts and a scenario-based experiment with 535 participants, this article shows that content ephemerality triggers followers’ FoMO, which increases brand account engagement and brand account fatigue. Brand account engagement (fatigue), in turn, positively (negatively) relates to brand attitude and brand attachment. Further analyses reveal that the total effect of followers’ FoMO on brand attachment is positive and significant, while the total effect of FoMO on brand attitude is not significant. Moreover, content ephemerality has a negative and significant total effect on brand attitude. A key implication of these findings is that it is not beneficial for brands to foster their Instagram account followers’ FoMO by posting ephemeral content.

Are diverse models really non-idealized? Investigating body positivity public feed posts of fashion and beauty brands on instagram

“…As compared to text-focused social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram is regarded as an image-focused social media platform (Vandenbosch et al, 2022). Instagram allows users to share pictures and videos both permanently (i.e., feed posts that remain visible in the long run) and ephemerally (i.e., time-limited exposure to messages, e.g., Maar et al, 2023). These pictures and videos may be accompanied by a textual caption, sometimes including hashtags (i.e., keyword that categorizes content within similar content).…”