I Don’t Need a Degree, I’ve Got Abs: Influencer Warmth and Competence, Communication Mode, and Stakeholder Engagement on Social Media

In this study we consider whether 1) image- and word-based communication modes and 2) warmth and competence cues vary in their relative influence on different levels of stakeholder engagement on social media. Specifically, we explore social media fitness Influencers’ abilities to attract followers and get them to positively interact with them via posts and comments. We theorize that differences in the ways each communication mode is processed, and differences in how competence and warmth cues are perceived, will lead to different relative effects on lower- and higher-engagement behaviors. Using the social media platform Instagram, we followed 488 social media entrepreneurs in the fitness and nutrition industry for six-months, and found that images have a positive relationship with less cognitively effortful engagement (following) whereas words do not have a significant relationship, and words have a stronger relationship than images with more cognitively effortful engagement (positive interactions). We also found that competence cues have a stronger positive relationship than warmth cues with the number of followers, and warmth cues have a positive relationship with positive interactions, whereas competence cues do not. Our findings have implications for research on multimode communication, social judgments, and entrepreneur-stakeholder engagement.