Does brand posting behaviour influence follower engagement on Instagram?

The Instagram application captured the attention of hundreds of millions of users. The goal of this paper was to study whether there is a statistically significant relationship between the posting behaviour of corporate retail brands on Instagram and follower engagement. The proxy variables used to describe the posting behaviour were: number of days with posts, number of posts and existence of calls to action within posts. The proxy variables for engagement were the number of likes, as well as the sum of likes and comments for each post. The study referred to the Instagram activity of the top fifty global specialty retailers. Lately, the researchers’ interest in social media grew substantially. In contrast, the studies relative to the posting behaviour of companies on Instagram are rather scarce. At present, scientific research on this topic is in an preliminary state. In addition, there are no published findings of scientific research on the use of Instagram by top global specialty retailers. The paper aimed to answer the following research questions: (a) “Is posting on Instagram a common behaviour of the top fifty global specialty retailers?”; (b) “How active are these companies in posting own photo and video content?”; (c) “Are there statistically significant relationships between the variables describing the posting behaviour and those reflecting the follower engagement?”. The data were collected by monitoring verified badge Instagram accounts of the top fifty global specialty retailers. The t test was applied on data from the online study of 612 posts. Findings reveal statistical significant relationships between the analysed variables. There is a strong correlation between the number of posts and engagement. To the best of our knowledge, this article is the first to approach this topic. As a direct implication for retailers, an intense posting activity may lead to an increased engagement of followers.