DETERMINANTS OF USER ENGAGEMENT ON SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF CONTENT AND INTERACTION METRICS

Abstract

The rapid growth of social media platforms has transformed the way individuals andorganisationscommunicate, shareinformation, and interact with audiences. Understanding the factors that influence user engagement is essential forimproving digital communication strategies. This study aims to examine the determinants of user engagementon socialmedia platforms byanalysingcontent characteristics and interaction metrics associated with social media posts. Thestudy adopts a quantitative research design using a publicly available dataset containing social media engagementinformation.The data set consists of different engagement metrics like "likes," "comments," "shares," "views," and
"saves," along with other content-related metrics. Various techniques like descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, andregression analysis were employed to study the relationship between engagement metrics and content metrics. The studymainly deals with the identification of the pattern of user interaction and the role of different factors in the overallengagement levels. The results reveal the strong relationship between engagement metrics, indicating that posts thatencourage one kind of interaction may encourage other kinds of engagement as well. The study also reveals the impactof content metrics like clarity and conciseness on the audience. Therole of multimedia formats and platform diversity isalso revealed. The study concludes that the overall engagement on social media platforms is the result of a combinationof content design, interaction mechanisms, and platform environments. The study provides a valuable insight forresearchers, digital marketers, and communication professionals who are interested in increasing the engagement levelsof the audience through effective content strategies.