The engagement of literary influencers with their followers on Instagram- Bookstagrammers’ content and strategy

Abstract

Influencer marketing has emerged as an effective way for brands to connect with consumers through social media influencers. Although this form of marketing has led to increased interest from researchers in recent years, relatively little is known about the content and engagement strategy of influencers and their links to follower behavior. In this digital context, it is worth citing a type of influencer related to literature: bookstagrammers. These are individuals who share their passion for books, review publishing news and encourage the habit of reading. This study analyzes how the content and engagement strategy of bookstagrammers (as measured by number of followers, content volume and posts of interest) is associated with the engagement of the followers of these cultural influencers on Instagram, both independently and interactively. The study analyzes a data set compiled from bookstagrammers by analyzing the content generated by these online influencers in order to test the proposed hypotheses. Our findings show that posts that include photographs of the author or book covers are positively associated with follower engagement on Instagram accounts, while emotional posts expressing feelings are negatively associated with follower engagement. These findings demonstrate that the elements and content strategy of literary influencers contribute to the engagement of followers on Instagram.