How Content Characteristics Foster Audience Engagement on Instagram

Social media has transformed place branding from a predominantly institutional communication strategy into a participatory and networked process in which multiple stakeholders actively shape place identity. While existing research emphasises authenticity, user-generated content, and co-creation, there is limited empirical research on how specific content characteristics influence engagement on social platforms. This study examines how content authorship, visual aesthetics, and audio elements affect engagement on Instagram within the context of Oman’s nation branding. Using a mixed-methods approach, the research combines quantitative analysis of engagement metrics with qualitative thematic analysis to assess how distinct content features shape audience interaction. The findings demonstrate that self-created content generates significantly higher engagement than collaborative, reposted, or unattributed posts, highlighting the importance of authenticity and relational proximity. Visually refined content, characterised by strong composition, vivid colour, and creative perspectives, enhances interaction, underscoring the role of aesthetics in digital place communication. Audio elements like ambient sound and narrative voiceovers emerge as powerful drivers of immersive engagement and emotional resonance. By empirically linking stakeholder authorship to measurable engagement outcomes and highlighting audio as a critical dimension of multimodal engagement, this study advances understanding of digital co-creation in place branding, offering theoretical insights and practical guidance for place-brand marketers.