Tweet so good that they can't ignore you! Suggesting posting strategies to micro-celebrities for online engagement

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of post content, post media and post scheduling strategies on online engagement on Twitter in context of micro celebrities in Pakistan.

Design/methodology/approach

For this research, micro celebrities of Pakistan have been defined as the target population. Secondary data consisting of 464 tweets from walls of six micro celebrities belonging to both genders and diverse set of socio-political fields was collected. Tweedie estimation analysis was run to accept or reject the hypotheses. Mean values with standard deviations were utilized to analyze the different engagement patterns of dichotomous variables (content type, content language, mentions, hashtags, text, images, links, videos, hour of the day and day of the week) on online engagement.

Findings

Content type, content language, content length, hashtags, mentions, images, links, videos, hour of the day and day of the week have been found to have a significant relationship with online engagement on Twitter.

Research limitations/implications

First, the study has been conducted in context of micro celebrities on Twitter. It did not include influencers on other social media networks. Second, study considered only quantitative aspects of engagement based on secondary data ignoring qualitative aspects of phenomenon due to time and methodology constraints. Third, study did not include link clicks as a measure of engagement as clicks data is not publicly available on the posts.

Practical implications

The study contributes significantly to find out valuable “micro celebrity” strategies in Pakistan. The study suggests micro celebrities to tweet soft content in Urdu language along with relevant hashtags and mentions to get higher engagement on their tweets. Further, tweets should contain maximum number of characters. Micro celebrities should not insert images, links and videos in their tweets as these media types result in lower engagement on Twitter. Micro celebrities should tweet at low hours and weekends.

Social implications

As this study focuses on investigation of better engagement practices for micro celebrities, it will help general public to express themselves more effectively through social media.

Originality/value

First, this is the first study that investigates the online engagement model for micro celebrities. Second, the online engagement model designed in this study has yet not been investigated to best of our knowledge. The theoretical model combines multiple engagement factors discussed in previous studies conducted on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter.

Citation

Iqbal Khan, S. and Ahmad, B. (2022), "Tweet so good that they can't ignore you! Suggesting posting strategies to micro-celebrities for online engagement", Online Information Review, Vol. 46 No. 2, pp. 319-336. https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-08-2020-0334