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The social media expands the scope of museum marketing. Through the social media marketing, visitors get a rich and colorful visual experience, and the museum can quickly and effectively convey various information to visitors. At present, the research on social media in the museum industry mainly focuses on the level of technology use, while the research on the marketing application of social media is relatively scarce, especially from the empirical perspective. This study constructs a conceptual model to identify the impact of SMMAs on visitor experience in the context of the museum industry through the empirical analysis.

A survey is conducted with a total of 538 visitors who follow the fan page of the Palace Museum Weibo. The collected data are analyzed via structural equation modeling.

The results show that SMMAs have significant effects on social presence and social support, which in turn significantly affect flow state. Moreover, the results demonstrate that social presence and social support partially mediates the relationships between SMMAs and flow state.

The contribution of this study is twofold. First, from a theoretical perspective, it offers new insights into the conceptualization of social media marketing. Second, from a pragmatic perspective, the results are helpful to guide museums how to carry out social media marketing activities.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-12-2020-0564