Viral Marketing - A study on influencers’ behaviour through their pronoun use on Twitter

Abstract

Viral marketing has been defined as the task of triggering word-of-mouth (WoM) and in order for it to acquire traction it is crucial to identify and understand the behaviour of influencers i.e. well-connected individuals. A computerised text analysis software was used to map influencers’ pronoun use on Twitter, as pronouns are inherently social and reflect behaviour. When compared to a sample of 11.4 million tweets of common Twitter users it was found that influencers use first-person pronouns “we” more frequently and “I” to a lesser degree. Accordingly. influencers on Twitter are high status individuals and in relation, average Twitter users are low status individuals. This study argues that the approval seeking of low status individuals is acknowledged via pronoun clusivity forms used by influencers, and that influence is a process co-created by their dualistic behaviour. Furthermore, influencers’ use of second and third-person pronouns was significantly lower. Seeing as Twitter is a micro-blogging platform where users write about themselves, the findings suggest that higher use of second and third-person pronouns are not correlated with influence on Twitter since the speaker is excluded from the context and thus detract the attention of their followers.