Assessing the engagement of social media marketing: the case study of a tourism Toronto video-based marketing campaign

The purpose of this research is to assess user engagement for a video-based social media campaign by a destination marketing organization (DMO). A case study methodology was applied to examine the Tourism Toronto video-based campaign of 2017 on Instagram and Twitter. Social interactions were analyzed to compare the relative engagement rates across platforms. This determined that Instagram had a higher relative engagement rate compared to Twitter. Instagram can be considered as a more desirable tool for DMOs to share videos digitally. The limited sample size presents research limitations through potentially not representing a larger population opinion’s on the content. It enables practical implications for destination marketers who have limited resources by highlighting that Instagram may be a preferred channel over Twitter due to higher engagements rates. There is a lack of research on the comparison of relative engagement rates from an academic perspective and this is the first study to explore the topic for a video-based marketing campaign in the DMO industry.