Are More Followers Always Better? The Non-Linear Relationship between the Number of Followers and User Engagement on Seeded Marketing Campaigns in Instagram

Abstract

Seeded marketing campaign (SMC) is a newly created type of marketing activities with the widespread use of social media. Previous research has examined to find out the optimal seeding strategy that yields the best outcome from the campaign. This research explores the relationships between the characteristics of the seeded influencer and user engagement. The data consists of information from 1062 seeded Instagram posts posted in September 2020 in Korea and 778 seeded influencers who posted those contents. Analyzed by negative binomial regression, our quadratic model suggests that the relationship between user engagement and the number of followers of the seeded influencer draws an inverted U-shape, indicating influencers with greater number of followers may not always be the best choice for the marketers. Moreover, this research shows that the negative marginal impact coming from the huge number of followers can be attenuated when the influencer is an expert of the seeded product.