Characteristics of Social Media Influencers That Affect Engagement with Fashion Brands

Characteristics of social media influencers that affect engagement with fashion brands on Instagram -------------------------- A content analysis on social media influencers’ brand engagement rates and brand engagement valence, influenced by the frequency of posts, the frequency of sponsored posts and whether they are a micro or macro influencer Kiyara Makatita (11417641) Master's Thesis Graduate School of Communication Master track Corporate Communication Suzanne de Bakker 02-02-2018 1 Abstract Even though social media afford brands to build up loyalty with consumers, brands are still having difficulties engaging with their consumers online. To solve this problem, both academics and professionals have been recognizing the potential of social media influencers (SMI) as effective endorsers in brand-related communication. Due to their influential reach and their ability to connect with a brand’s target audience, they can serve as effective intermediaries between brands and their consumers. However, professionals do not know what characteristics make a social media influencer influential. The current study attempts to answer to what extent brand engagement can be positively affected by social media influencers on Instagram? Seventeen SMI’s in fashion and their 64 brand-related Instagram posts have been studied. Three SMI characteristics and their relationship with brand engagement have been investigated through a content analysis. The three characteristics are frequency of posts, frequency of sponsored posts and whether they are a micro or macro influencer. Brand engagement was measured by brand engagement rate, brand engagement valence and who the engagement was referred to. The results indicate that frequency of posts it not a relevant characteristic to judge influence on. The frequency of sponsored posts has contradictory results: the more posts are sponsored the lower brand engagement rates are, but the higher the chance brand engagement is positive. And last, micro influencers generate higher brand engagement rates and more engagement towards the brand than macro influencers. This implicates brands should invest in collaborations with micro influencers who have worked with other brands as well to engage their consumers. 2 Introduction Social media Social media have changed the way we live our lives. On a daily basis, the amount of time we spend on social media ranks second, just after watching tv and before time spend on eating and drinking (Eror, 2017). Not surprisingly, to reach us, organisations are increasingly recognizing the importance of social media as a central tool use (Killian & McManus, 2015). It is expected that 36 million dollars has been spend on social media marketing in 2017 globally (Eror, 2017). The reason why so much money is worth investing is because social media give brands better communication platforms to build up loyalty with consumers (Erdoğmuş & Cicek, 2012). According to Vernuccio (2014), organisations can build up a strong brand by capitalizing on the strengths of social media in three ways. First, the brand’s image can be established, maintained and reinforced by interactive communications on the platforms. Second, social media can be used to listen to stakeholders and monitor conversations. Third, brands can use social media platforms in public relations to reach new opinion leaders, such as social media influencers. The present thesis focuses on the third way. Social media influencers In the academic world, scholars are increasingly recognizing the possibilities for organisations to collaborate with social media influencers (SMIs) (Booth & Matic, 2011). While influencers used to be described as “everyday consumers who are substantially more likely than average to seek out information and to share ideas, information and recommendations with other people” (Keller, Fay & Berry, p.2, 2007), SMIs now represent “a new type of independent third party endorsers who can shape audience attitudes through the use of various social media” (Freberg, Graham, McGaughey & Freberg, p.1, 2011). The latter definition matches the persuasive power that social media influencers nowadays have and has led to 3 organisations seeing the potential of influencers as endorsers in their corporate communication (Freberg et al., 2011; Gräve, 2017). Because of their ability to connect with a brand’s target audience, SMIs can serve as effective intermediaries between brands and their consumers (Erdoğmuş & Cicek, 2012; Uzunoğlu & Kip, 2014). However, social media have made it more difficult for brands to engage with their public online (Enginkaya & Yilmaz, 2014). It has become harder for organisations to directly reach their consumers because they do not have the needed voice in social media (Booth & Matic, 2011,). Next to that, consumers do not turn to organisations anymore for brand information, but to others online (Enginkaya and Yilmaz, 2014). Collaborating with SMIs could solve this engagement-issue for brands. According to a marketing platform, 92% of the consumers trust messages from influencers more than traditional advertisements or even celebrity endorsements (Weinswig, 2016). SMIs are trusted more than organisations because they are seen as “one of them” by consumers and their messages are perceived as own experiences (Enginkaya and Yilmaz, 2014; Wu & Wang, 2011; Zietek, 2016). Collaborating with social media influencers has therefore led to new ways for brands to engage with their consumers more directly, more organically and at a larger scale (Adweek, 2015). Brand engagement According to Gambetti, Graffigna and Biraghi (2012), brand practices that are carried out with the goal to engage consumers belong to the concept of (consumer) brand engagement. From an organisational point of view, the aim of brand engagement is to establish a strong and lasting relationship with its consumers (Gambetti et al., 2012; Hollebeek, 2011 & Schultz, 2007). As a consequence, consumers become loyal to the brand (Dwivedi, 2015). From a consumer point of view, consumers express their engagement with a brand through certain 4 behaviours, such as interacting with other social media users about the brand, sharing and even creating brand content. Muntinga and his colleagues (2017) refer to these behaviours as COBRAs, which is short for consumers’ online brand related activities. When consumers feel more engaged with a brand or its product, they are more likely to express that engaged behaviour. The other way around, engagement behaviour leads to consumers feeling more engaged with the brand (Mangold & Faulds, 2009). Thus, once consumers are engaged with a brand, it is likely they keep on engaging. To conclude, brand engagement is a dynamic and interdependent concept where organisations try to manage the engagement behaviours of consumers and the engagement of consumers drives organisational practices. Now, to develop relationships with a brand’s consumers, online influencers are becoming part of PR strategies in organisations because of their broad and influential reach (Jarvis, 2006). In other words, through social media influencers, organisations want to engage consumers, so that strong and lasting relationships can be formed and consumers become loyal to the brand. Thus, organisations can boost the impact of their brand messages by working together with influencers (Adweek, 2015). However, as De Veirman, Cauberghe and Hudders (2017, p. 799) say “to increase the message’s impact one should search for the most likeable, credible influencer who has a high value as an opinion leader”. But this is exactly where the practical problem lies. Professionals do recognize the significance of social media influencers, but do not know what the effective metrics are to decide who the most influential people are (Enginkaya & Yilmaz, 2014). Probst, Grosswiele and Pfleger (2013) argue that practical approaches in identifying online influencers are still in their early stages. Their overview of scientific articles shows that many studies attempt to find out to what extent people could be influential, but only based on the 5 strategic location within a social network. Therefore, a person’s network size is often seen as an important factor in identifying influencers (De Veirman et al., 2017). The authors add that it is important to ask how these influencers can be characterized? Keller, Fay and Berry (2007) investigated consumers’ daily conversations through a survey in order to identify influencers. The identification was based on three characteristics: the network size, the frequency of communication, and past recommending behaviour. Booth and Matic (2011) combined a person’s strategic location and characteristics in their study. They presented an index valuation algorithm organisations could use to identify influential bloggers. Factors they considered to be influential are views per month, post frequency, popularity of blog post links, how often the blogger is cited, topic-related posts, reader response and amount of comments, and the rank of the influencer. Through an experiment, De Veirman and colleagues (2017) studied what effect the number of followers has on attitudes towards the influencer and brand, and also looked at the moderating effect of the product type that is promoted. Furthermore, Freberg et al. (2011) studied consumers’ perceptions and found that SMIs are thought of as smart, ambitious, productive, and poised. However, these studies by De Veirman et al. (2017) and Freberg et al. (2011) used prototypes of SMIs for their research

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