Increasing Consumer Engagement on Social Networks : Social Media Influencer’s Followers ‘Like’ to See a Face in a Post

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to test whether Instagram influencers can affect followers’ engagement using a simple modification to an Instagram post content. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study focused on the posts sampled from the Croatian Instagram SMIs with more than ten thousand followers. Ten posts from each SMI were analyzed for low, number of likes, and high, number of comments, engagement along with information on whether there was a face shown in a post and additional SMI’s characteristics. Findings and implications: Human face in post affects engagement, but only the lower type of engagement (i.e. number of likes a post receives) even when the effect of the number of followers was controlled for. A higher type of engagement (i.e. number of comments) is not influenced by the presence of a face in a post. Limitations: Lack of formal SMIs operationalization lead to the more conservative sample of only SMIs with more than 10k followers. The content of the posts preceding the analyzed post which could have influenced followers’ behavior, could not be measured and due to the study design. Originality: Although previous researches showed that showing a face in Instagram post leads to more likes and comments among friends, relationship between the SMIs and their followers lacks the exact reciprocity of like-for- like. Given that the followers’ gains are not as straight forward in this kind of relationship, finding that simply showing a face in post can affect engagement is worth of scientific attention