Observations from three experiments and a review of more than 55,000 Instagram posts.
September 12, 2024
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Influencer marketing is a billion-dollar industry, and its recent meteoric rise has sparked curiosity about which factors makes some influencer posts more popular than others. In a new paper, researchers analyzed more than 55,000 Instagram posts from the top 763 influencers worldwide during a six month period and discover that posts that read as more authentic to the influencer, for example posts that show close family or friends, receive the highest engagement. They offer considerations for how to harness their findings to improve brand-influencer post success.
One week in July, soccer star and entrepreneur David Beckham made four posts on Instagram. A sponsored ad for sunglasses garnered 460,000 likes. A photo celebrating a league win by Inter Miami, a team he co-owns, got 360,000. The two other posts — pictures of the athlete with his father and with his wife — received triple that engagement, with 1.3 and 1.8 million likes, respectively.
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Jaeyeon (Jae) Chung is the William S. Mackey Jr. Distinguished Assistant Professor at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business. She earned her Ph.D. from Columbia Business School. Her research focuses on digital marketing, emerging technologies, and consumer engagement with social media and AI-driven marketing, including platforms like YouTube, ChatGPT, and NFT markets.
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Ajay Kalra is Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Marketing at the Jones School of Business, Rice University. His current research interests include how familial associations impact consumer perceptions. His research has been quoted in New York Times, Economist, Washington Post, Fox News among several other outlets.
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