How the social capital of influencers drives social media engagement?

Purpose This study aims to examine the impact of the influencer-follower relationship on engagement, integrating social capital theory and consistency theories to assess how social capital affects user engagement. Design/methodology/approach This study collected publicly available data on the TikTok platform, including 278 target posts and 5,722 past posts. Based on these data, the authors measured bonding, bridging, contributing, creating and post frequency and examined the relationships among them. Findings Bonding social capital is positively related to contributing and creating engagement, whereas bridging social capital is negatively related to both. Post frequency mitigates the positive effects of bonding and the negative effects of bridging. Research limitations/implications This study discussed the relationship between social capital and user engagement from the influencer’s perspective and revealed the double-edged effect of post frequency, providing valuable insights for influencer marketing strategies. Future research could further consider psychological factors to complement the role of social capital in the context of influencer marketing. Practical implications Influencers can strategically control their posting frequency based on their social network relationships to boost user engagement. Originality/value By measuring social capital using online metrics, this study examines the relationship between social capital and user engagement from an influencer’s perspective. This study provides a comprehensive understanding of social capital in influencer marketing.