Social media influencers’ community and content strategy and follower engagement behavior in the presence of competition: an Instagram-based investigation

Abstract

Purpose Drawing on insights from social influence theory, the MAIN model of digital media affordances and the literature on the attention economy, this study aims to investigate how social media influencers’ community and content strategy contribute to follower engagement behavior in the presence of competition. Design/methodology/approach This study used a web-scraped data set of Instagram influencers. It measured community strategy using influencers’ number of followers, number of following and breadth of interest; content strategy using modality type and number of posts; competition using number of influencers operating in the same primary domain of interest; and follower engagement behavior using number of likes and comments. A negative binomial regression model was estimated to test the proposed hypotheses. Findings The findings reveal that elements of influencers’ community and content strategies, such as number of followers, modality type and number of posts, influence follower engagement behavior. Similarly, competition significantly influences follower engagement behavior both independently and by interacting with influencers’ community and content strategy. Practical implications The findings offer insight for brands to identify suitable influencers for partnerships. For instance, brands can judge influencers’ suitability for partnership based on how many followers they have, how many posts they share and how many competitors they have. Further, the findings offer insight for influencers on how they can drive follower engagement behavior by managing their social media community and content. Originality/value This study develops an integrated model of factors that determine follower engagement behavior for social media influencers. The findings emphasize influencers’ strategy as the primary driver of follower engagement behavior. Extant studies focus on followers’ motivation and perception to explain follower engagement behavior while the role of influencers’ strategy is underplayed.

The effectiveness of influencer endorsements for smart technology products: the role of follower number, expertise domain and trust propensity

“…Although the three-way interaction effects among the independent variables were the main interest in this study, the results revealed that the main and interaction effects of domain breadth and follower number were all significant. Consistent with prior literature (Tafesse and Wood, 2022;Gross and Wangenheim, 2018), the findings supported that follower counts and breadth of expertise domain, which are cues readily available by reviewing an influencer's profile page and previous posts, significantly predicted consumer attitudinal and behavioral responses to influencer endorsements. Thus, brand managers should review the recent posts of influencers, and their follower counts when deciding which influencers to partner with.…”

“…Wiedmann and von Mettenheim (2021) empirically examined the impact of influencer expertise on consumers’ brand satisfaction by manipulating the influencer’s education such that an influencer who endorsed a fashion brand had studied fashion design (high expertise) or computer science (low expertise). Tafesse and Wood (2022) also investigated the impact of influencers’ breadth of interest on follower engagement by examining how the number of domains of interest listed on influencers’ profile pages affected the number of likes and comments that they received. In addition to the direct cues on profile pages, influencers can brand themselves as experts in a particular domain of interest based on what they post (De Cicco et al , 2021).…”

Antecedents and outcomes of Generation Z consumers’ contrastive and assimilative upward comparisons with social media influencers

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Brand anthropomorphism on Twitter: communication strategies and consumer engagement

“…Following this perspective, consumer engagement is defined as “as the customers’ behavioural manifestation towards a brand or firm, beyond purchase, resulting from motivational drivers” (van Doorn et al , 2010, p. 254). These behavioral manifestations prompted by motivational drivers can inform marketers about the kinds of content that fuel such behaviors particularly on social media (Tafesse and Wood, 2022).…”