Fake Twitter Profile Reveals Consumer Engagement Levels [Study]
Using a fictional fashion brand's Twitter profile as a case study, Isobar found consumers' perceptions of the brand were altered by number of followers and tone of voice.
Using a fictional fashion brand's Twitter profile as a case study, Isobar found consumers' perceptions of the brand were altered by number of followers and tone of voice.
Unconscious cues on Twitter have a significant impact on people’s perceptions of brands, according to findings from a new research report by Isobar.
As part of an experiment with Cambridge University and Twitter, the digital agency studied consumers’ interactions with Resident, an affordable unisex London fashion brand comparable to ASOS or Topshop. The main difference between Resident and those brands, however, is that Resident doesn’t actually exist.
“If we’d used a real brand, like Coke for example, people would have expected large follower numbers and a particular tone,” says Nick Siantonas, a behavioral strategist at Isobar UK. “[Fashion is] also an industry where [consumers are] used to interacting with brands in both a commercial and transactional way, and a traditionally more social way. Therefore we were able to test for both consideration and likeability without any strong biases one way or the other.”
Research focused on five key variables: number of followers, number of accounts the brand follows, number of tweets the brand has sent, the tone of the tweets and bio, and whether tweets were accompanied by a promoted stamp.
Isobar sampled three different blurbs for Resident’s bio: straightforward, funny, and responsible, which mentioned that 10 percent of the company’s profits go to a nominated charity each year. Upon surveying 4,511 Twitter users on their perceptions of Resident with a seven-point scale, Isobar found that 24 percent of respondents graded the brand five or higher when its bio was straightforward. Men, in particular, preferred the straightforward bios, while women were more responsive to funny and responsible bios.
While a promoted stamp didn’t affect a brand’s likeability, it did make respondents more likely to trust the brand, recommend the brand, and buy from the brand. A high number of followers also influenced how much consumers trust a brand, with 2.7 million followers boosting trustworthiness and desire to purchase by 5 percent. This sentiment was particularly prevalent among 18- to 34-year-olds and men.
“Trust amongst women was fairly constant at all follower numbers. This may be an industry bias,” Siantonas hypothesizes. “Perhaps women are more confident when it comes to buying clothes and are less influenced by the ‘norming’ heuristic than men in this instance.”
On the other hand, respondents were much less likely to trust brands that follow a high number of accounts, with consideration dropping by about half when Resident went from following 1,056 accounts to 12,122.
“We all have that feeling about the ratio between a Twitter user’s following and follower numbers,” Siantonas says. “If someone has 10 followers, but follows 2,000 other accounts, we naturally become suspicious. It’s the same with how we expect brands to use the platform. If we do a study like this again, it would be really interesting to explore that ratio further.”
Graphics via Isobar.