The Art of Post Captions: Readability and User Engagement on Social Media

Abstract

In addition to the significance of visual content, text characteristics serve as salient factors influencing how users react to social media posts. By extracting 9,766 Instagram posts published by destination marketers, this research investigates the interplay between the readability of post captions and destination attributes derived from pictorial content on user engagement. Grounded in the theoretical lens of processing fluency and image-text congruity, the findings revealed that vibrant spots/activities with simpler texts lead to a significantly higher engagement rate, while cultural and historical attractions that use more complex texts are unaffected. Yet, when complex texts are applied to spots that are neither vibrant nor cultural, user engagement decreases significantly. Overall, this research contributes to the interdisciplinary discourse on linguistics and psychological esthetics in destination marketing relating to computer-mediated environments. Regarding practice, the findings provide insights into the effectiveness of different levels of readability across diverse tourism marketing settings.