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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.

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.

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.

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.

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 purpose of this study is to analyze how product placement through social media influencers (SMIs) during “new normal” can generate user-generated content (UGC) and determine the manners of product placement by SMIs who have become “homefluencers” by their skills.

This research applies a qualitative approach of thematic content analysis of a total of 49 micro and nano-homefluencer's contents in beauty fashion, clothing, workout-yoga, food and lifestyle sectors on Instagram.

The findings of this study identify the main five themes of homefluencers by analyzing UGC in the new normal portraying both positive and negative comments incorporating four manners of product placement as a framework backed by two identified skills: relevance and relationship.

This research pioneers the study on how SMIs as “homefluencers” can adapt product placement skills in crises strengthening UGC by proposing a framework in the existing influencer marketing literature, where research is scarce.

The findings of this research represent a guideline for effective SMI marketing development in the new normal and post-COVID. Based on the findings, recommendations are provided for the brand managers and influencers uplifting UGC blending skill of relevancy and relationship in product placement.

The author has contributed to the body of research by qualitatively analyzing how “homefluencer's” product placement in a crisis period can manage consistency and humanitarian association amplifying UGC and the practical implications in post-COVID.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the deliberate social media marketing practices of a start-up company. The study aims to measure the effects of these practices (i.e. following potential customers and liking and commenting on their posts on Instagram) on creating and increasing awareness of the company’s business and gaining followers for the company’s Instagram account.

The research is exploratory in nature and adopts an approach similar to that of action research. The research was enabled and facilitated by collaboration between the researchers and a company representative. The company offers an application for young mothers.

The model developed in this study identifies the effects of the practice of endorsing and interacting with customers for marketing purposes. It points out following as a first-order practice that small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can employ to gain followers instantly on Instagram.

The method used limits the generalisability of the findings. However, the findings offer preliminary insights for future studies on Instagram marketing in SMEs.

Companies can attain success in social media marketing by actively engaging with customers and potential customers on various social media platforms.

There is a paucity of research focussing on Instagram marketing in SMEs. The model in this study contributes to theory on Instagram marketing and offers a framework that can help managers plan Instagram marketing strategies.

Social media marketers are keen to understand how viewers perceive their brands on a platform and how the learning experiences from content can impact their attitudes toward a brand. This study aims to focus on examining the effect of firm-generated content (FGC) on X (formerly known as Twitter), using Kolb’s experiential learning theory to analyze the viewers’ learning process. In addition, the study investigates how the length of time a viewer follows a brand and the type of brand can influence their attitudes toward it.

This study involved three qualitative studies on X to investigate how content learning affects consumer attitudes toward two brands, namely, Nike and Subway. The study also examined the impact of the duration of following the brands, with participants following the brands for 4, 8 and 12 weeks, respectively, to assess changes in their attitudes.

The results demonstrate that content learning significantly impacts consumer attitudes. By following brands and engaging with their FGC over time, viewers can transition from being occasional or intermittent followers to becoming devoted brand enthusiasts. Through the four-stage experiential learning process, followers undergo cognitive, emotional and behavioral transformations that collectively shape their brand attitudes. The impact of content learning varies according to the brand type, and the duration of following has a positive effect on brand attitudes.

The study’s findings have significant marketing implications for social media marketers, suggesting that they should restructure their social media platforms as learning platforms to effectively engage followers. Companies should adjust their content marketing strategies from a learner’s perspective, providing followers with content that resonates with them, enhances their learning outcomes and helps shift their beliefs and brand attitudes, ultimately converting them into loyal consumers.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this qualitative research is the first of its kind to apply experiential learning theories to investigate how users learn from FGC by following brands on social media and how this learning ultimately changes their brand attitude. The study provides a unique perspective on social media marketing, enriching the understanding of content marketing and consumer experiences on social media platforms.

Twitter is the most popular instant messaging platform today. Thanks to the consistency factor typical of it, it offers every company or business the best opportunity to promote their products or services. Likewise, it offers an unprecedented opportunity to public utility or benefit organizations like libraries to promote their services and build a powerful digital information exchange community. However, because of its immense number of users and chaotic nature, the steps toward making the best of it must be precise and systematized, or else the information professional will end up squandering resources to no avail. The purpose of this paper is the optimization of the distribution of the libraries’ resources regarding the promotion methods on Twitter.

Such a model is initially built by recording and analyzing the potential offered by the social network platform in question. Third-party tools that help handle Twitter are also analyzed. The factors’ total is then modeled by using the iThink editor. This editor is able to receive data from the decision-maker with respect to the specific attributes of each product and given conditions and produce specific outcomes by use of the model.

This research paper, includes a decision-making tool (model) that combines a theoretical view of library information science (LIS) and marketing science with a practical tool, simulating the process and producing certain outcomes using specific resources. The model presents him with the outcome that is bound to be produced with regard to the given circumstances and the amount of resources invested, encouraging, or not, certain courses of action.

The decision-maker can accurately anticipate an outcome so as to respectively customize his data and moves.

Proper use of the tools available, alongside anticipation chances offered by dynamic simulation models, enables the model decision-maker use it according to any given context, hence maximizing library business profits.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how today’s new type of opinion leaders, “Citizen Influencers” (CIs), persuade their followers by exploring which characteristics contribute to their persuasiveness.

Combining theories within opinion leadership, celebrity endorsement, product placement and user-generated content (UGC) five source characteristics – namely, expertise, trustworthiness, likeability, similarity and familiarity – are investigated using fashion as an example. A longitudinal netnographic study of ten CIs and their UGC and six focus groups with followers of specific CIs on Instagram are conducted.

All five characteristics contribute to the persuasiveness of CIs with trustworthiness as the main contributor. CIs persuasiveness lies in their unique ability to encompass two opposing qualities simultaneously: being attainable and relatable like ordinary consumers; being taste leaders with superior, celebrity-like status.

Only qualitative studies within the fashion category have been conducted, wherefore the relative weight between the two qualities cannot be quantified.

When choosing a CI, managers may consider: the amount of followers per CI as an indicator of influence; similarity between follower and CI as it provides the basis for trust; and the CIs personal universe on their Instagram profile as it leverage the meanings associated with the brand.

The key driver of CIs persuasiveness is their trustworthiness which mediates and amplifies the effect of the other four characteristics. CIs’ persuasive power rests upon the balancing act of being relatable and aspirational.

In the current digital era where online content is riddled with fabricated metrics and rankings, this research aims to investigate the underpinning mechanisms of the calculative practices which actors engage with to evaluate digital platform content in the absence of well-defined performance measures.

The paper focuses on the online, photo-sharing platform Instagram which is devoid of common performance measures such as rankings, ratings and reviews. The authors applied netnographic methods to capture users' actions and interactions at the Greek Instagram community. The authors adopt a practice lens as informed by Schatzki's ‘site ontology’ to capture actors' calculative practices as organised by rules, teleoaffective structures and general and practical understandings.

Platform actors engage in aesthetic and palpable evaluations of other user profiles and their posted content. They employ permissible (e.g., using third-party apps) and illicit (e.g., lobbying and procuring engagement) tactics to measure and manage digital platform performance, fabricate metrics and blur others' evaluations, in pursuit of prestige and material teleologies. Their calculative practices are conditioned by an implicit social etiquette, which permeates the platform both horizontally and vertically.

First, the paper captures and theorises the mechanisms which underpin actors' calculative practices for performance measurement in the absence of robust judgement devices. Second, it demonstrates how ambiguous assemblages of material and prestige teleologies, aesthetic and palpable evaluative regimes and implicit rules and practical expertise collectively invoke platform actors' calculative practices and the construction of performance measures. In doing so, it contributes to performance measurement literature via demonstrating how management accounting is implicated in the evaluation of digital platform outputs.

The paper provides insight on how platform actors fabricate performance metrics, what they perceive as ‘good’ online content and what constitutes an ‘impactful’ user account or a ‘successful’ social media campaign. Such findings are valuable to management accountants, entrepreneurs and practitioners who seek to evaluate digital platform performance.

Rising tuition fees and a growing importance on league tables has meant that university branding is becoming more of a necessity to attract prospective staff, students, and funding. Whilst university websites are an important branding tool, academic institutions are also beginning to exploit social media. Image-based social media services such as Instagram are particularly popular at the moment. It is therefore logical for universities to have a presence on popular image-based social media services such as Instagram. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the online presence of UK universities on Instagram in an initial investigation of use.

This study utilizes webometric data collection, and content analysis methodology.

The results indicate that at the time of data analysis for this investigation (In the Spring of 2015), UK universities had a limited presence on Instagram for general university accounts, with only 51 out of 128 institutions having an account. The most common types of images posted were humanizing (31.0 percent), showcasing (28.8 percent), and orienting (14.3 percent). Orienting images were more likely to receive likes than other image types, and crowdsourcing images were more likely to receive comments.

This paper gives a valuable insight into the image posting practices of UK universities on Instagram. The findings are of value to heads of marketing, online content creators, social media campaign managers, and anyone who is responsible for the marketing, branding, and promoting of a university’s services.

Anthropogenic activities such as unsustainable consumption pattern is one of the reasons responsible for the ongoing environmental issues. Although, consumers are becoming increasingly aware and concerned about environmental problems their attitudes are not resulting in sustainable consumption behavior (SCB). Celebrity institutional entrepreneurs can engage and inspire the public at large and contribute to institutional change. Hence, this study aims to explore the potential of celebrity institutional entrepreneurship in galvanizing mainstream SCB by increasing the awareness of environmental issues and their consequences.

This study examines the actor's influence by conducting a netnographic analysis of Leonardo DiCaprio's Instagram account. Further, qualitative interviews of account followers were also conducted to evaluate the influence of account on their awareness levels and consumption practices.

Our findings indicate that account had a significant impact on consumers' environmental awareness and engagement with environmental issues. However, a partial impact was seen in case of their sustainable consumption practices. Our study concludes that celebrity institutional entrepreneurship can help in addressing the attitude-behavior gap in sustainability research.

This study is amongst the few studies that attempted to explore the ways to reduce the attitude-behavior gap in SCB. It examines the potential of celebrity institutional entrepreneurship to galvanize mainstream sustainable consumption. The results of this study are useful to key stakeholders (policymakers, marketers, social-environmental groups etc.) in the development of more effective strategies for sustainable development.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on understanding the factors which affect the social interaction in the case of Facebook. Many authors point out the great potential of these networks for social interaction and as conduits of information. However, studies show that the topology of the network is disconnected, consisting of small sub-networks that make Facebook unsuitable for disseminating information. This situation has created the need to introduce exogenous factors, aimed at boosting and providing cohesion to the network structure. In this context, the authors test the following question: how exogenous and endogenous factors contribute to encouraging social interaction on Facebook.

For the analysis of social interaction on Facebook, a population consisting of all the followers of the walls of ten corporate social networks was used. From the total 269,424 users analyzed, a stratified sample of 132 followers was obtained and networks were built for each of them. The authors then proceeded to search for each follower’s friends and friends of friends to build the social network up to the fourth level, obtaining a total of 132 subnets with 1,628,074 links between them. To determine the impact of both exogenous and endogenous factors in the interaction of the network the authors performed a causal analysis.

The results obtained from this study provide empirical evidence on the adequacy of companies’ dynamization measures used and how exogenous and endogenous factors influence the social interaction on Facebook. Thus, the results show that exogenous factors, such as the activity of the community manager and the digital marketing investment in the network, do not have a significant effect on the interaction. On the other hand, endogenous factors, such as network density and clustering, have a positive effect on the trigger of social interaction between the followers. Therefore, companies must consider the importance of the structural factors that characterize network followers, such as density or clustering coefficient, to be able to interpret and optimize them to obtain higher levels of social interaction.

This is one of a few papers that examine interactions in social network sites (SNS), particularly in corporate network sites in Facebook. The results expose the importance for organizations to have reliable information on the patterns of interaction to properly manage the resources allocated for this purpose in SNS.