Customer Engagement Enhancement on Instagram : Strategies for Small and Medium Enterprises

Abstract

This study aims to examine the effects of visual aesthetics (i.e., classical and expressive) and lengths of textual information (LTI) on customer engagement (i.e., likes and comments) in the contexts of Instagram and small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Data were collected through the content analysis on Instagram, consisting of 1,147 posts, 758,462 likes, and 24,059 comments from 10 fashion SMEs in Indonesia. The results demonstrate that longer LTI can improve likes and comments. In relation to visual aesthetics, while independently it has no effect on likes and comments, it negatively affects likes when combined with medium and long LTI. Theoretically, this study extends content marketing literature by discussing the roles of visual aesthetics and LTI in influencing customer engagement in the contexts of Instagram and SMEs. Practically, insights from this research can be applied to fashion SMEs' customer engagement enhancement strategies. Such a contribution is especially substantial given that it is evident that SMEs typically lack knowledge in developing effective content marketing strategies.