How YouTubers Make Popular Marketing Videos? Speech Acts, Move Structure, and Audience Response in YouTube Influencer Marketing Videos

Abstract

In recent years, the promotional discourse has grown more versatile due to the emergence of new social media. YouTube influencer marketing is of increasing significance for brands’ promotion, especially in the beauty category. Many studies on the effect of influencer marketing used self-reported surveys, the results of which provide limited help in formulating effective videos. The current study aims to characterize YouTube influencer marketing videos through speech act analysis and genre analysis and then determine the features significantly associated with audience response through correlation analysis. The study collects 12 videos from 8 YouTubers in the beauty category and finds that the overall speech act composition is 56% assertives, 26% expressives, 10.1% commissives, and 7.4% directives. The study also proposes a 10-move structure. Significant positive correlations are reported between audience response and the percentage of directives and three moves, advising YouTubers to utilize more directive speech acts, share more personal experience, and spend more time preparing the audience in the opening of videos soliciting subscription.