Influencer Marketing on Instagram: A Sequential Mediation Model of Storytelling Content and Audience Engagement via Relatability and Trust

Abstract

Storytelling content is where the facts are conveyed by emotion and that make people more engaged and want to take action or change their surroundings. Stories fascinate people and can easily be remembered compared to the facts alone. The much-hyped feature “stories” of Instagram, a trendy social media platform, has become a game-changer for influencer marketing. The present study extends reactance theory in the context of Instagram’s millennial users. Previous researchers have tested the effectiveness of the stories feature of this particular social media platform. Therefore, in line with the earlier studies, we propose a sequential mediation model that investigates the effect of storytelling content (made by Instagram Influencers) on audience engagement using two sequential mediation mechanisms of relatability and trust. Data were obtained using a cross-sectional study design from 273 millennial users of Instagram. Our results justify the direct and indirect hypothesized relationship through Process Macros. We found that relatability and trust play a significant role in building a strong relationship between storytelling content and audience engagement. Ultimately, the research findings suggest that professionals should be more creative while making the content on Instagram to engage the millennial market. Moreover, this research has tried to fill the gap in the literature on Instagram “stories” as an advertising platform.