Social Media Influencers and Instagram Storytelling: Case Study of Singapore Instagram Influencers

Abstract

While the use of social media influencers (SMIs) by brands is becoming more widespread, the academic literature about SMI communication is still scarce. This is one of the first studies on SMI brand storytelling, using data mining and natural language processing to understand how SMIs tell brand stories on Instagram, what kinds of stories they tell, and the impact they have on follower engagement. The findings show that the “rise-fall” emotional arc was the most common story arc used by SMIs. In addition, SMIs frequently used the first-person perspective and featured themselves as the protagonists in their stories. Last, SMIs who used more first-person pronouns and more positive emotions in their stories received more “likes” than those who used fewer first-person pronouns and fewer positive emotions. The paper concludes with a discussion of the study’s implications for SMI communication theory-building and practice as well as its limitations.