Five Rules for Brand Management on Twitter

8/8/2019 Five Rules for Brand Management on Twitter

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Five Rules for Brand Management on Twitter By Richard Nevins

04/29/2009Professor Patti RileyCOMM 599 - Global PracticumAnnenberg School for Communication University of Southern California


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Five Rules for Brand Managers on Twitter

I. Introduction

Branding has always been a social practice. The goal of brand management - to establish and

nurture a preference is accomplished by appealing to the needs, wishes and demands of consumers.

The methods of reaching that consumer are numerous, and they are ever-evolving through a process of

technological and social change. Over the past 20 years, the development and adoption of digital

communications has offered the tantalizing possibility to individuate and specify the messages that are

delivered to each customer on the basis of relevance and affinity. Brands are able to participate in this

individuation, and can even serve as a valued marker of a customer's identity in the process, but there

are risks inherent in attempting to influence such a sensitive and personal activity as the construction of

identity.

The growth of microblogging services such as Twitter, which permit users to broadcast short

messages to a mass audience, represent only the latest communications technology trend to attract a

high level of attention in popular discourse and introduced a new channel of communication for brand

management. With millions of users 1, Twitter has come a long way from its early origins in 2006, and

now boasts hundreds of accounts connected to brands, products and celebrities. Numerous companies,

from start-ups to well-established firms, have used Twitter as a means of establishing brand presence

and building customer preference with varying degrees of success. What kind of strategies should

commercial firms employ on Twitter, and how do the other users feel about this increased commercial

presence? This paper is intended to establish a framework for understanding Twitter within the broader

context of social network sites (SNS); to examine the nature of Twitter users, their expectations and

motivations; and finally to propose best practices for brand management on Twitter in light of these

findings.

1 Schonfeld, E. Twitter Eats World: Global Visitors Shoot Up to 19 Million TechCrunch . 04/24/09.


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II. Background: Microblogging and Social Media

While Twitter is the center of attention today, it is useful to take a step back and consider the

broader field of computer-mediated communication of which it is a part. Many of the popular websites

and services that exist in this field focus on a particular function, whether that is link sharing sites like

Digg and Delicious, photo and video sharing sites like Flickr and YouTube, location-awareness

services like Four Square and Dopplr, or user review sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor. Typical of so-

called 'social media' sites such as these are an emphasis on user contribution of content, and the overt

articulation of relationships between the users of these sites, often using the 'friends' nomenclature

borrowed from social network sites (SNS).

For their part, SNS like Facebook and MySpace have attempted (largely successfully in many

respects) to supplant the traditional web portals like Yahoo and MSN as the 'default' web destination of

users. Rather than attempt to compete in particular service areas, SNS have now adopted an 'app'

(application) model that marries the specialized functions of social media services such as Twitter to

the SNS's broad base of users. In this mutually-beneficial arrangement, application developers gain

access to a large pool of potential users, while the SNS is able to further integrate itself into a users'

web experience by providing access to third party content.

Twitter, as compared to the other services named above, is simultaneously open-ended and

limited in its function. While Twitter serves as a platform for one-to-many communication and enables

any user's message to reach a potential audience of millions, it also imposes a restriction on message

lengths of 140 characters (letters, symbols and spaces) per message. While one might imagine that such

a fundamental limit would stifle the uses for Twitter, it has in fact proven to be the dynamo that drives

the development of sophisticated user conventions to support a wide variety of uses. Previous studies of

Twitter 23 have found that although Twitter provides a prompting question that suggests it be used as a

2 Mischaud, E. (2007) Twitter: Expressions of the Whole Self. London: Media@LSE3 Nevins, R. (2008) Who Do You Think You Are?: The Performance of Identity in Microblogging. London:

Media@LSE
mailto:Media@LSEmailto:Media@LSEmailto:Media@LSE


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log of activities ('What are you doing?'), users regularly employ Twitter to share news, post links,

engage in conversations and generally say whatever they please. In this regard, Twitter is a versatile

service that can be used for an increasingly meaningful array of activities from organizing political

protests 4 to proposing marriage 5, and from sharing the latest breaking interplanetary news bulletin 6 to

getting a job 7. Twitter has also proven itself to be a useful resource for live events, including breaking

news, conferences and festivals, and is being increasingly adopted by fire and police departments

across the USA to issue bulletins and other emergency information. 8

As is natural for a social media property such as Twitter, some user accounts have accrued vast

public attention. In one highly publicized event, the actor Ashton Kutcher raced a Twitter account

owned by CNN to be the first user account to reach one million followers. Two other celebrities

(musician Britney Spears and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres), as well as President Barack Obamas

user account, have now passed the one million follower milestone, and yet more have taken to Twitter

as a means of increasing their contact with fans, sharing information about upcoming projects and

events, or even just using it as a personal account like a regular user. Indeed, celebrities are now among

the most-followed category of user accounts on Twitter as of this writing, with eight of the top ten

most-followed users being celebrity accounts (the two others are the CNN account and Twitter's own

brand account) 9.

While a celebrity could be said to be a brand unto itself, the presence of honest-to-goodness

brands on Twitter has become increasingly apparent of late. It is not difficult to see why brands would

want to occupy a position in this social media space, and some early experiments have shown the

4 Morozov, E. Moldova's Twitter Revolution. Foreign Policy . 04/07/09. Available online at:http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/04/07/moldovas_twitter_revolution

5 @MaxKiesler: To @emilychang - After fifteen years of blissful happiness I would like to ask for your hand inmarriage? Available online at: http://twitter.com/maxkiesler/statuses/774352312

6 @MarsPhoenix: Are you ready to celebrate? Well, get ready: We have ICE!!!!! Yes, ICE, *WATER ICE* on Mars!Available online at: http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix/statuses/839088619

7 @TomRaftery Re my new RedMonk position. The formal job offer was made and accepted via Twitter! Availableonline at: http://twitter.com/TomRaftery/statuses/818258891

8 Gamiz, M. Some fire, police departments use Twitter to inform public. The Morning Call (Allentown, PA).04/19/09.

9 Most-followed statistics taken from http://twitterholic.com as of April 29, 2009
http://twitterholic.com/http://twitterholic.com/http://twitterholic.com/


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further into an analysis of brand management techniques on Twitter, however, it is essential to establish

a framework for understanding Twitter as a part of the emergent social spaces of the internet, and to

understand how theories of identity and taste seek to explain the ways in which users act in that space.

III. Background: Social Network Sites, Identity Performance and Cultural Capital

Social network sites have emerged as a potent site of social interaction in a relatively short time,

with leading sites claiming hundreds of millions of registered users. Academics are racing to publish

research in this growing field of the social sciences, and some scholars have already staked out claims.

An influential definition by social network scholars danah boyd and Nicole Ellison has established

three criteria for social networks: providing public or semi-public profile pages, articulating the

connection between different profiles (often in the context of 'friends'), and permitting users to traverse

those connections between profiles 10. From the perspective of digital brand management, the site of

perhaps greatest interest is the creation of profile pages, where users attempt to explain themselves to

others through expressions of association, reference and affinity.

When a user creates a profile page on a SNS, they are typically confronted with a list of

questions about their interests and taste, and are prompted to fill in responses for their favorite bands,

books, films and other personal information. The decisions that users make when creating their profiles

are not innocent choices, but rather carefully considered efforts of impression management. Impression

management can be defined as the process by which individuals attempt to control the impressions

others form of them 11, and plays a crucial role in the performance of identity in social network sites.

Given the knowledge that their profile pages will be viewed by an audience of both friends and

strangers, there is an incentive for users to construct a flattering or idealized identity on their profile

page in the hopes that the audience will receive a positive impression of that user.

10 boyd, d. & Ellison, N. (2007) Social Network Sites: Definition, History and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication . 13(1). Available online: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html

11 Leary, M. & Kowalski, R. (1990) Impression Management: A Literature Review and Two-Component Model. Psychological Bulletin . 107(1).


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This notion of identity performance was pioneered by the Canadian sociologist Erving

Goffman, who situated his analysis within the context of the stage performance 12. On stage, a performer

is able to control the way that he is perceived through his choice of actions and statements to the

audience. This is impression management, and applied to SNS profile pages would refer to the various

'performances' that users engage in on those pages (such as the choice of profile picture, selection of

'favorites', or the content of status updates). It is not uncommon for users to employ references to

products, brands or services on their profile pages, and these can be considered identity performances

in the same way as their love of skydiving or haiku poetry. These taste statements 13 all contribute to

an impression of identity that the user seeks to promote among the audience of their profile page, based

on a desire for social acceptance and recognition.

Crucially, however, Goffman notes that performers do not have total control over the way that

they are perceived. While a performer can spend a great deal of time calibrating the message that he

intends to 'give' his audience, the dissonance of what Goffman calls unmeant gestures can 'give off'

other information that may affect the audience's perception of that performer. What constitutes an

unmeant gesture can be construed quite broadly; everything from the presence (or absence) of a verbal

accent, to the vocabulary employed in a performance, or even the social implications of a given cultural

reference has the potential to provide clues about the identity of a performer that is not otherwise

suggested by their self-presentation. Consider the implied difference in authority or knowledge in a

user sharing their interest in wine when they say that they like red wines, that they like Bordeaux

wines, or that they like Chateau Margaux wine (or, for that matter, they like the 'extreme value wine'

Charles Shaw). This is an example of the kinds of inferences that an informed audience member can

make about another user based on an unmeant gesture during an identity performance.

In the context of social network sites, effective identity performance requires an understanding

12 Goffman, E. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor. 1959.13 Liu, H. (2007). Social Network Profiles as Taste Performances. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication .

13(1).


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of the role of cultural capital. While a user may make any association between themselves and a

cultural product such as a film or book, the choice should be made with some consideration of the

cultural significance of, and attitudes toward, that product. This is not necessarily to say that users

agonize over which bands to list as their favorites, but it does mean that there are some bands that the

user likes which they nonetheless will intentionally leave off of the list. If we are presuming that users

perform their identities on SNS with the goal of establishing a favorable impression among audience

members, then we must account for the role of taste in shaping those expectations.

In his influential book on cultural capital, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu defines taste as

'manifest preference,' and describes a hierarchical system of cultural capital, whereby individuals can

distinguish themselves to their peers through reference to, association with, and critique of cultural

products 14. In the context of social network sites, statements of taste play a central role in the

performance of identity, and users often build communities of interest surrounding their shared tastes in

cultural products 15. Significantly for this study, user reference to brands can be powerful taste

statements at the center of their identity performance, and act as one of the primary means for

conveying just what kind of person they are to their audience (e.g. they are the kind of person who flies

JetBlue, or drinks Cheateau Margaux, or listens to Britney Spears).

As we have seen, the construction and performance of identity are essential components of

social network sites. Users associate themselves with known cultural products as a frame of reference

for others to understand who they are, tapping into the existing reservoir of sentiments surrounding

those goods, products or ideas as a way of indicating their taste by proxy. Additionally, users

inadvertently give further clues to their identity through unmeant gestures that provide a fuller, and

perhaps more honest, understanding of who they are. This system of taste statement and identity

performance provides many opportunities for brands to participate in users' identity construction.

14 Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.15 Jenkins, H. (2006). Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Media Consumers in a Digital Age. New York: NYU Press.


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Following a presentation of the survey results, we will combine both to draw out insights and proposals

for brand management on Twitter.

IV. Survey

Research Questions & Methodology:

Theoretical concepts of identity and taste are all well and good, but it is important not to lose

sight of how real users act on Twitter. Having established the theoretical basis for describing Twitter as

a site of identity performance, the remainder of this paper is intended to put that theory to the test with

empirical research. To accomplish that, a survey was administered to investigate three different

research questions:

RQ1: Who uses Twitter?RQ2: How do they use Twitter?RQ3: Why do they use Twitter?

The survey consisted of 23 questions intended to provide information about the user

demographics, conventions, motivations and attitudes (see Appendix A). Online surveys were

distributed via multiple channels, including Twitter itself, and 160 survey responses were recorded. In

the following section I will describe the results of the research as related to the four research questions.

Twitter Demographics:

So who are Twitter users? According to the results of the survey, Twitter users are young, urban

and educated internet veterans. 75% of users were below the age of 35, and an equal percentage

reported using the internet for more than 10 years. The respondents skewed female, with 58% of the

sample, and 64% said that they lived in an urban area (with most of the balance living in the suburbs).

The majority of users were also new to Twitter, with 60% of the sample having joined the three year

old service within the past six months. These results appear to reflect much of the recent news coverage


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of Twitter that depicts it as yet another phenomenon of social media-savvy youth, and also lines up

well with a report by the Pew Internet & American Life project that found Twitter users to be

overwhelmingly young and urban 16.

For brand managers and marketers, this may be encouraging. Young audiences are both a

coveted and moving target: where young consumers (and their disposable incomes) hang out today,

they may abandon tomorrow. Twitter is certainly vulnerable to this potential weakness, however given

its current growth rate it appears to be on the rise as the social network du jour, while other sites such

as MySpace are experiencing declining growth. Younger users are also likely to engage in more

frequent identity performances in a bid to gain cultural capital, and they consume media at a higher rate

than older audiences. These factors all combine to make Twitter an appealing destination for brand

management and marketing, although as we have seen there remain significant risks and challenges.

Usage Preferences:

Most Twitter users are reasonably active, with 76% reporting that they sent messages multiple

times a week or more (including 35% who said they update their tweets more than once a day). Twitter

allows users to submit their tweets via multiple methods, including by text message or using third-party

software, but the most popular method (used by 53% of the sample) was the web interface at the

Twitter website. Only 10% said that text messages were their primary method of sending tweets, with

the balance (37%) indicating a preference for third party software.

Although the poor performance of text messages is perhaps surprising given the SMS-based

origins of Twitter, it may actually be a boon to brand managers and marketers. Much of the content on

Twitter include hyperlinks, and as of now most mobile phones have limited or no functionality to

enable them to navigate websites. With the users mostly seated at computers, brand managers can be

more confident that when a user clicks on a link to promotional or branded materials, they will be able

to receive the proper brand experience, and can be directed from there to various interaction or

16 Lenhart, A. & Fox, S. (2009) Twitter and status updating. Pew Internet & American Life Project .


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purchasing opportunities. That said, with increasing adoption of so-called 'smart phones,' and the

emergence of location-awareness services, it is possible that the rate of use for text message tweets

could increase in the future.

Followers:

On Twitter, a user who subscribes to another account's feed of tweets is called a 'follower'.

Individual users 'follow' the accounts that contribute messages to their Twitter stream, and the people

who follow their account receive that users messages in their stream. Unlike most social networks,

following is not bi-direction (that is, you do not need to seek permission to become a follower of

another account), and it is not always necessary to reciprocate a new follower by adding them to your

stream. Indeed, one basic metric used within the Twitter community to gauge a user's influence is a

ratio of the number of accounts they follow to the number of followers they have 17.

According to the results of the survey, the majority of users follow between 11 and 100

accounts, and 49% of users have a number of followers that falls within that same range. Less than one

in five (17%) of users follow more than 200 accounts, and just one in five (20%) have more than 200

followers. When crossed with other data points, this appears to suggest that people mostly follow their

personal friends and some number of other accounts that they consider to be relevant, including brands.

This appears to suggest a split verdict for brand management on Twitter. Users are relatively discerning

in the number of accounts they follow, which means that they probably will not add a brand account for

no reason. On the other hand, relevance is a highly influential motivation for following an account, and

so provided the brand is relevant to the user, the chances that they will follow it are positive.

Power Users:

The number of followers a user has is an important figure when it comes to determining the

influence and reach of that user. Among users that reported having more than 200 followers, there are a

number of interesting departures from the norm. Highly-followed users tended to be older (more than

17 See http://twitterratio.com for an example of a service that calculates and interprets your Follow/Following ratio.
http://www.twitterratio.com/http://www.twitterratio.com/


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one out third of highly-followed users are over the age of 35, as compared to less than one quarter

overall), and more than half of them had been on Twitter for over one year (as compared to just 19% in

the total sample that reported opening their account more than one year ago). They were also more

active users, with 68% saying they posted updates more than once a day, about double the rate for

survey respondents overall. Highly-followed users should be a priority audience for brand managers on

Twitter. They are both more receptive to receiving brand messaging, and more influential in terms of

spreading that message within their large networks. Still, it is important to take care when interacting

with highly-followed users, as their negative responses will be syndicated to just as many users as their

positive ones, and they have relatively more power to shape the overall conversation on Twitter

through their network.

68%

18%

14%

How Frequently Do You Tweet? MoreThan

Daily

Daily

Multiple/Times wk


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Following:

But just who are Twitter users, highly-followed or not, following themselves? According to the

survey, users first follow people that they know in real life, with 88% of respondents attesting to this.

Following real life contacts, Twitter accounts for news organizations and blogs came in second, with

62% saying that they follow them. Significantly for our study, just under half (49%) of respondents

said that they follow both brands and celebrities, and just over half (51%) said that they follow business

professionals. When asked what the most important factors are in deciding whom to follow,

respondents said that relevance to their interests was the most important, with 84% agreement. Having

a personal relationship was the second most significant reason to follow an account, with 74% of users

saying it helped them decide to follow another user. Finally, the quality of messages published by a

user also influenced the decision, with 59% of users saying that they preferred high-quality messages.

The nod towards quality should be instructive to brand managers on Twitter. It is not simply

enough to push out the brand dogma each day. Time and resources should be expended to develop

compelling and quality microblog content, or else a brand account will lose followers. When the data is

controlled for highly-followed users, the value placed on quality content is raised even higher (86%)

due to those users desire to find valuable content to ReTweet to their network.


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Twitter Motivations:

When asked their primary motivation for

using Twitter, users in the survey did not

coalesce around one particular use, which

supports the assertion that Twitter is an

open-ended application suited for many

different purposes. The most common motivation was to use Twitter as a source for gathering

information, which was selected as the primary motivation for 23% of the sample. The 'Other' category

was the second most common choice, with 19%. In the open field, users made frequent referrals to their

use of Twitter in a business setting, particularly related to learning about their industry or sharing news

about their company or clients. Other motivations that ranked moderately were staying in contact with

friends (18%), promoting oneself (14%) and satisfying one's curiosity about Twitter (14%).

As the high level of 'Other' responses suggests, users employ Twitter to various different ends.

While gathering information is clearly a very important purpose for Twitter, it is not the only way that

users want to use the service. Still, from the perspective of brand management, it should be heartening

to see that users look at Twitter as a resource for information gathering. As we will see later, at least

one kind of information that users are looking for is related to products and services. The business use

tack that was taken in many of the Other open field comments seems to suggest that there is a real

opportunity for the use of Twitter within organizations and industries.

Gather Information 23%Other (Explain) 19%Contact Friends 18%Satisfy My Curiosity 14%Self-Promotion 14%Meet New People 5%Everyone Else is Doing It 4%Follow Brands/Celebs 3%


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Attitudes:

Perhaps the most interesting results came from a question that asked respondents to evaluate

their attitudes towards various types of user accounts. Users registered favorable, neutral, or

unfavorable opinions about each category of user account, with largely similar results. Easily the most

notable figures are related to the high unfavorable ratings of marketing accounts, which registered 38%

unfavorable ratings, with only 38% favorable. The next highest unfavorable rating came for brands, at

18%, but this represents a more than 50% drop from the marketing account's unfavorable rating.

Although the distinction between a brand account and a marketing account may not be entirely clear

(no definitions were provided in the question), it is very clear that in the mind of users the difference is

very important. They generally tolerate brand accounts on Twitter (brands had a 62% favorable rating),

but they are not welcoming of marketing accounts.

From the perspective of a brand manager this is a disheartening figure, but one should not lose

hope. Firstly, just because users have an unfavorable opinion of the presence of brands and marketers

on Twitter doesn't mean that they are not influenced by them. Indeed, despite the fact that 18% of users

registered an unfavorable opinion of brands, only 10% said that they do not follow brands! Secondly,

as we have seen, Twitter users value relevance. A brand that is not relevant to a given user is almost

never going to attract that user. But for a brand that is relevant to a user, they are much more likely to

be interested in following it, no matter what they say in a survey. Thirdly, one in five users (20%)

registered a neutral opinion of brands, with slightly more (24%) stating that they are neutral towards

Favorable Unfavorable NeutralPersonal Account 84% 4% 12%

NGO Account 81% 7% 12%Government Account 74% 11% 15%News/Blog Account 78% 11% 11%Brand Account 62% 18% 20%Marketing Account 38% 38% 24%Celebrity Account 70% 10% 20%Organization Account 80% 7% 13%Event Accounts 74% 11% 15%


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marketing accounts. While it may be that these respondents preferred to say they were neutral than

register a negative impression, it is also worth considering that these users are simply reserving their

judgment until they have observed more brands and marketers on Twitter and made a decision about

their attitude towards that behavior. Provided that brands do not violate these users sense of propriety

and 'netiquette, they may well come around to the idea of brands on Twitter.

Celebrity Accounts:

Although brands encountered some resistance among users, other commercial accounts enjoyed

greater acceptance. Significantly, celebrity accounts registered general approval, with 70% of users

having a favorable opinion of them, and only 10% unfavorable. This may suggest that brand managers

and marketers should consider operating through their celebrity spokesmen, or to somehow attempt to

benefit from the goodwill that users have towards celebrities as compared to brands and marketers.

That said, there are concerns about the appropriate ways for celebrity accounts to operate, with users

showing a desire for an authentic connection to the celebrity, and not just their publicist. 40% of users

complained that so-called 'ghost twitterers' (ghost writers for celebrity Twitter accounts) were not

acceptable although this data should be handled cautiously as 50% of users said that they don't care

whether celebrities use ghost twitterers or not.

News Accounts:

Unsurprisingly, personal accounts were the most accepted, followed by non-governmental

organizations and general organizations. Fourth most accepted were news organizations, which benefit

from the community's desire for immediacy and up-to-the-minute information furnished from a

trustworthy source. News organizations have been one of the earliest commercial adopters of Twitter,

and have already learned many of the lessons that brand managers will find themselves confronting, so

it may be instructive to look to their experience when drawing up a Twitter strategy for other brands.


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That said, many news accounts fail to participate with their followers, opting instead to simply post

headlines and links to their latest articles. It is not unusual to find news accounts that follow zero or

very few accounts, especially when compared to the thousands or tens of thousands of followers that

they boast. News accounts may have legitimate concerns about maintaining the appropriate tone and

detachment when addressing their audience, but they would also likely benefit by participating in a

more social way with their followers.

Interaction:

Users who followed celebrities and brands were prompted to answer a question about their

motivation to follow such accounts. The results showed that curiosity was the most significant

motivation to follow those accounts, which suggests that users for whom brands are relevant will be

curious to know what the brand account is saying. This may offset some of the concern brought on by

the negative attitude towards brands in the previous question, as the portion of the audience that

expressed an unfavorable opinion of brand accounts are not likely to consider them relevant, which

may have contributed to their answer. 43% of users also said that celebrity and brand accounts

delivered useful information, thus satisfying one of the main motivations for using Twitter in general,

which is gathering information. Following the general motivations of users, an interest in interacting

with brands and celebrities was also recorded, with 27% responded that they wanted to 'interact' with

the accounts, and 19% indicating that they asked questions of celebrities and brand accounts. Feeling a

connection to the brand or celebrity was also common, with 34% of users suggesting that this was a

motivator in following such accounts. Finally, 33% of users also gave hope to marketers by admitting

that they were interested in following brand accounts so that they could learn about sales promotions

and new product launches from the Twitter feed. This indicates that, although there does appear to be

some general resistance to marketing and sales on Twitter, at least one third of users would be

interested in that kind of information.


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Brand Naming:

If marketers are nervous with these results,

then brand managers can relax somewhat: 60% of

respondents said that they used brand names or

product titles in their Tweets 'sometimes' or 'often'.

These figures are even more impressive considering that only 13% of the sample said that they had

participated in Twitter campaigns such as Skittles' Tweet the Rainbow. That means that users are

employing brand names as a part of their regular identity performance, something that should help

brand managers locate users for whom their brands are relevant. Additionally, users are talking about

brands amongst themselves, and even ReTweeting posts that others have sent that included brand

names. If you can get a sense of how well-seeded your brand is on Twitter, it can provide a useful

starting point for establishing your brand presence and developing a strategy to grow on the network.

Do You Name Brands?Often 7%Sometimes 53%

Rarely 23%

Never 13%


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V. Proposals for Best Practices in Brand Management on Twitter

Our theoretical framework established Twitter as a social network site, similar to other social

media services where identity and relationships are crucial components. We discussed how users

employ microblogging on Twitter as a means for identity performance, where the conscious decisions

of self-presentation, as well as the unconscious clues 'given off' by a social actor, work to manage the

impression that others develop of them. We further suggested that 'taste statements' act as a useful

proxy for those actors to inform others about who they are, based on the sorts of references and

affiliations that they make. So what does this all mean for a brand manager eying Twitter as a

component of their next brand strategy? In this final section I will review the main findings of our

investigation and make proposals for best practices in brand management on Twitter.

Proposal #1: Play by the rules that the community has developed.

First brand managers should respect that Twitter has existed prior to the arrival of their brand to the

service. While the site is currently absorbing a massive influx of new users, those users will find that

their predecessors have made important strides in establishing norms and conventions for the Twitter

community. The development of now-standard conventions like the @reply (which permits one to

direct a message at a particular user) originated within the user community. The same goes for the

ReTweet and the use of #hashcodes to tag messages by category. These are not trivial developments,

and they are accomplishments that the users are rightfully proud of having established. Wise brand

managers will spend some time observing these user conventions in practice, and demonstrate their

capacity to employ them correctly once they begin posting updates to a brand account. The appropriate

use of these conventions by a brand account will endear you to the user community, while

inappropriate use or non-use will provoke users ire.


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Proposal #2: Focus on building brand presence first.

As was clear from the survey results, Twitter users have mixed feeling about brands and

marketers coming into their playground. Brands should be careful to not play into those users' fears of a

commercialization of Twitter, and instead work to ingratiate themselves among a set of users for whom

the brand's presence is a boon instead of a burden. Don't just tweet public relations boilerplate or press

releases; consider linking to reports and news stories that are relevant to your product category or

industry. Remember that 85% of users said that the primary reason that they follow a Twitter account is

because it is relevant to their interests. Find the users who are interested in your brand, and establish

your presence through them. As users refer to your brand, they will help spread your presence in their

own networks through their @reply's and other kinds of comments. Focus on identifying influential

users for whom your brand is a relevant source of information, and work on spreading your brand's

presence through their larger networks. Twitter users love to talk about Twitter, and the highly-

followed users even more so. This can be a fruitful method for getting those early followers.


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Proposal #3: Be authentic and consistent in your Tweets.

Nobody likes a phony, and particularly not on Twitter. Study the different strategies that have

been employed by brands on Twitter in regards to the style and tone of their tweets. I don't pretend to

tell you what to say to your followers, but be certain to engage with them in an authentic and consistent

manner. Often, it is useful for the individual or individuals that are writing the tweets to identify

themselves in the profile's biography box. It is also important for the copywriters to inject some degree

of personality and humor into the tweets. This serves to disarm the follower's cynicism, and can open

the door to meaningful exchanges between your followers and the brand account. Finally, follow your

followers! It is fair to establish rules governing which users to follow, and it is not necessary to follow

each and every user who has elected to receive updates from your account, but a brand account with

thousands of followers that is following only a few dozen users is not an authentic account, and

suggests a lack of interest in your customers. On the contrary, you should be keenly interested in your

followers!


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Proposal #4: Give users a reason to interact with you.

Twitter users, as we have noted, love to express themselves. Indeed, more than one critic has

called attention to the fact that Twitter users appear to be willing to tweet about pretty much anything.

Use this attitude to your brand's advantage by engaging with your followers, and the Twitter user

community in general. As revealed by the survey, the majority of users make reference to brands in

their tweets, and you should be encouraging this kind of behavior! Develop campaigns and strategies to

assist users in employing your brand in their identity performance, and use the powerful tools available

for monitoring Twitter to keep an eye on how effective these campaigns have proven to be. Be mindful

of not filling your page with @reply messages in response to user compliments and complaints, as

these conversation posts are much less interesting to observers who are not engaged in the discussion.

However, when a particularly meaningful comment pops up do not be afraid to @reply to that user,

which will enable readers to click through and see the user's original comment. The goal is to drive

engagement, so you are going to have to interact with users proactively, not just in reaction to their

tweets.


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Proposal #5: Leverage celebrity endorsements

Although we did observe a general resistance to marketing and (to a lesser degree) brand

accounts, celebrities were notable in their high favorability ratings. If your brand has secured a

celebritys endorsement, make sure to encourage them to establish a presence on Twitter, and to

include references to your brand or products in their tweets. Celebrities are highly-followed user

accounts, and many of them have hundreds of thousand, or even millions of followers. These are the

bullhorns that attract the most attention to your brand, while your own Twitter account should work on

developing relationships and preferences on a smaller, ground-level, basis. If you do not have a

celebrity endorsement deal, certainly consider a Twitter audit of candidates when you review your

options for spokespeople. A celebrity with an established Twitter account will have more clout than a

newly-minted celebrity account, but depending on that celebrity's popularity they can rapidly shoot to

the top of the most-followed lists.


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VI. Conclusion

Twitter has emerged as a cultural force in its own right over the past several months. While

some may question the longevity of the service, or suggest that it is merely a fad, the millions of users

that are rushing to sign up to the site suggests otherwise. Given the recent coronation of Twitter by

influential taste-makers such as Oprah and mass-media outlets like CNN, as well as the increasingly

meaningful use-cases that have made news over recent weeks and months, it appears that activity feed

services such as Twitter will be here to stay. Even much larger social media sites such as Facebook

have made substantial alterations to their user-interface that reflect the influence of Twitter's model.

Surprisingly, the versatility of Twitter's platform is the product of its lack of a particular focus.

It turns out that, given a platform without a purpose, user communities develop valuable ways to

employ the service, and establish conventions and standards on their own accord. The upshot of this

somewhat chaotic social media environment is that there are no rules prohibiting participation by

commercial actors, but there are no special provisions for them either. As of now (and frankly, this is

highly likely to change in the near future as Twitter seeks to develop more robust revenue streams)

brand accounts are just another kind of account on Twitter. This can be both tantalizing as an

opportunity to interact on an equal footing with interested customers, and terrifying in terms of the

risks that brands may expose themselves to in that relationship based on equal standing.

However, brand managers should be aware that, whether or not they have an official presence

on Twitter, users are employing their brands for all manner of purposes. These can include airing their

complaints about a brand or product, as well as employing the reservoir of sentiments related to that

brand in their identity performance. Once brand managers understand that Twitter users are engaging in

discussions about your brand and making associations with or about them, they should recognize that

there is nothing to gain from maintaining their absence from the discussion, and everything to gain

from the respectful, appropriate and engaging participation in the conversation on Twitter.


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Messages | E. Popularity of User | F. Recommendation | G. Other (Please Specify)

15. Do You Use @replies to Engage in Conversation With Other Users?A. Yes | B. No | C. I dont know

16. Do You Use #hashtags to Categorize Messages?A. Yes | B. No | C. I dont know

17. Please Indicate Your Attitude Towards the Following Types of User AccountsA. Disagree | B. Somewhat Disagree | C. Neutral | D. Somewhat Agree | E. AgreeI. I Welcome Personal Accounts on Twitter II. I Welcome NGO Accounts on Twitter III. I Welcome Government Agency Accounts on Twitter IV. I Welcome News Media Accounts on Twitter V. I Welcome Brand Accounts on Twitter VI. I Welcome Marketing Accounts on Twitter

VII. I Welcome Celebrity Accounts on Twitter VIII. I Welcome Group Accounts on Twitter IX. I Welcome Event Accounts on Twitter

18. Which of the Following Motivations Explain Your Choice to Follow a Brand or Celebrity?A. It Makes Me Feel a Connection With the Brand | B. I am Curious to See What They Will Post | C. IWant to Ask Them Questions | D. I Want to Learn about Products and Sales | E. They Provide Me WithUseful Information | F. I Want Others to See I am Interested In These Brands | G. Because Others AreFollowing Them | H. I Want Them To Follow Me | I. I Want to Interact With the Brand | J. No Reason,Just Because | K. Other (Please Specify) | L. I Dont Follow Brands or Celebrities

19. Have You Ever Participated in a Twitter Marketing Campaign?A. Yes | B. No | C. I dont know

20. Do You Include Brand or Product Titles in Your Tweets?A. Often | B. Sometimes | C. Rarely | D. Never | E. I dont know

21. Do You Participate in User-Generated Communities?A. Yes | B. No | C. I dont know

22. What is Your Opinion of Ghost Twitterers?A. Its OK | B. Its Not OK | C. I dont care

23. Does Twitter Serve a Useful Function?A. Yes | B. No

Five Rules for Brand Management on Twitter

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