TikTok influencers and followers’ engagement: the role of authentic leadership, immersion and inspiration

Do TikTok influencers need to be authentic to engage their followers? Taking a novel approach based on authentic leadership theory, this research investigates the distinctive features of TikTok influencers that drive followers' engagement, that is, in achieving a greater number of watches, likes, shares and recommendations to other users. In particular, the article analyzes how TikTok influencers' authentic leadership (uniqueness, sincerity, and relation-oriented) promotes followers' immersion and inspiration, key variables that trigger followers' behavioral engagement. Results from an exploratory study addressing actual followers of a Spanish mid-tier TikTok influencer revealed that different components of authentic leadership have different impacts on followers' responses. Relational orientation (i.e., sharing relevant content) positively affects followers' immersion and inspiration, whereas uniqueness (i.e., unbiased originality) favors inspiration, but not immersion. In turn, influencers' sincerity (i.e., authentic behavior) does not significantly affect followers' immersion or inspiration, which suggests that being seen as honest is not particularly important in TikTok. Finally, followers' immersion and inspiration increase their behavioral engagement (e.g. likes, comments). The discussion of the findings contributes to a better understanding of users’ reactions toward the influencer marketing phenomenon on TikTok and provides practical guidance for brands to implement this kind of collaboration successfully.