Reading Reflection: “Micro-blogging as Online Word of Mouth Branding”

Source:

Jansen, B. J., Zhang, M., Sobel, K., and Chowdury, A. (April 2009). Micro-blogging as online word of mouth branding. In Proceedings of the 27th international Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Boston, MA, USA, April 04 – 09, 2009). CHI EA ‘09. ACM, New York, NY, 3859-3864. DOI= http://doi.acm.org.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/10.1145/1520340.1520584

This paper reports research results about micro-blogging (Twitter) as a form of online word of mouth branding. The analysis covers app. 150.000 postings over a 13 week period for 50 brands. Research results show that a significant amount of Twitter postings (tweets) contains some branding expressions with more than 50 percent were positive and 33 percent critical of the company or product. This brings the potential of using micro-blogging (Twitter) for organizations as a marketing and online reputation management tool.

Chart1: More than 60 percent of the aggregate weekly sentiments for the brands were positive (Great or Swell)

The report also shows that if organizations start listening online word of mouth, the propensity of micro-blogs to change categories has important implications for businesses. Chart 2 shows how sentiment changed from week to week.

Chart 2: More than 64 percent of the time there was a change in sentiment or a change to no tweets.

The report concludes that micro-blogging (Twitter) is a promising competitive intelligence source with a discussion by pointing out:

1- Micro-blogging can be used to provide information and draw potential customers to other online media, such as Websites and blogs.

2- With micro-blog monitoring tools, companies can track micro-blog postings and can get valuable customer feedback.