Enhancing social media engagement: Speech act strategies across influencer types

Influencers play a critical role in driving audience engagement. This study examines the impact of influencers' speech acts (e.g., expressive, assertive, directive, and interrogative) on audience engagement. Utilizing natural language processing (NLP) and econometric analysis, we analyze a diverse sample of over 27,000 Facebook influencers, ranging from nano to mega influencers. Our findings reveal that influencers’ speech acts significantly impact social media engagement and improve the predictive accuracy of models assessing influencer marketing effectiveness. Furthermore, the relationship between speech acts and audience engagement is moderated by the influencer type (e.g., nano, micro, macro, and mega influencers). Notably, our results show that having a larger follower base does not necessarily enhance the effect of speech acts on engagement. These insights suggest that firms should strategically align speech acts with influencer types to optimize engagement in influencer marketing campaigns.