Twitter this! (branding and micro-blogging)

Jim Jansen*, Mimi Zhang*, Kate Sobel**, Abdur Chowdury****College of Information Sciences and Technology, Penn State

**Smeal College of Business Administration, Penn State***Twitter, Inc.

@jimjansen, @abencat, @ksobes, @abdur

Outline• Set the stage

– Analysis of the marketplace• Introduction

– Observations of micro-blogging• Results of research study

– Twitter this! (branding and micro-blogging)• Implications for online marketing/branding

– Focus on businesses

Observations of the Online Marketplace

Twitter and other Web 2.0 services have or are planning to enter the online marketplace.

– Many commentators see Web 2.0 companies as having a major impact for online marketing; however, there are limited studies.

– Companies are beginning to use the search capabilities of communication services, like Twitter.

– How can companies leverage these Web 2.0 services for online marketing and other purposes? Do these Web 2.0 companies have an effect at all for online marketing?

Design of Research Study• Evaluated the micro-blogging phenomena; our

focus was on the implications for online word-of-mouth (OWOM) branding.

• Used the Summize sentiment analysis tool on tweets posted to Twitter.

• Summize uses a multi-nominal Bayes model lexicon of approximately 200,000 uni- and bi-grams of phrases that have a probability distribution to determine the sentiment.

• Collected data for 50 brands for 13 weeks, from April 4, 2008 to July 3, 2008, inclusive.

• There were 149,472 tweets mentioning the 50 brands over the 13 weeks.

Likert Scale• No Sentiment: just a mention (e.g., wondering what time the

banana republic store at the mall closes).• Wretched: Practically pure negative overall feelings of the

entire tweet. (e.g., Screw you google maps. Its a good thing I have this compass and sharp stick).

• Bad: Mainly negative phrases and words, disappointed tone. (e.g., Sitting next to a "smart car" in traffic. These things just look weird. About as long as a rickshaw).

• So-so: Mediocre or balanced sentiment. (e.g., wii fit is fine, just leave enough room around you to wave your arms!).

• Swell: Mainly positive statements, such as good or nice. (e.g., you might have those forever stamps that are all good no matter the price of a current stamp).

• Great: Purely positive in tone and wording. (e.g., Heaven on earth, the banana republic outlet store 40% off sale).

ResultsSentiment by Week Occurrences %

Great 194 29.8% Swell 200 30.8% So-so 78 12.0% Bad 102 15.7% Wretched 42 6.5% No Tweets 34 5.2% TOTAL 650 100.0%

Brand Sentiment by Week

• More than 60 percent of the aggregate weekly sentiments for the brands were positive (i.e., great or swell). • Just over 22 percent was negative (i.e., bad or wretched). • A smaller percentage (12 percent) was neutral (i.e., so-so) and an even smaller percentage of the brands (approximately 5 percent) had no tweets in a given week.

Results

• We can see that approximately 32 percent of the time there was no change from one week to the next. • More than 64 percentage of the time there was a change in sentiment or a change to no tweets.• Micro-blogging is volatile when dealing with brands!

Change Occurrence % Change to negative 182 30.3% Change to positive 184 30.7% No change 195 32.5% No tweets to negative tweets 8 1.3% No tweets to positive tweets 13 2.2% Tweets to no tweets 18 3.0% TOTAL 600 100.0%

Sentiment Changes By Week

Shortening of the physical and emotional distance between the business and the customer.

Implications: Micro-blogging can …

• used to provide information and draw potential customers (20% of tweets have sentiment and the other 80% deal with information seeking and providing)

• provide positive brand exposure via followers and others • ,with micro-blog monitoring tools, allow companies to track

postings and immediately intervene with unsatisfied customers.

• provide near real-time feedback by setting up corporate accounts, from customers using micro-blog polls, and surveys

• provide valuable content and product improvement ideas if companies tracking micro-blog postings

• allows companies to leverage contacts made via micro-blogging services to further their branding efforts

Thank you!

Jim Jansen*, Mimi Zhang*, Kate Sobel**, Abdur Chowdury****College of Information Sciences and Technology, Penn State

**Smeal College of Business Administration, Penn State***Twitter, Inc.

@jimjansen, @abencat, @ksobes, @abdur

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