Using Social Media Data to Understand Brand Development

Today, the world is a deeply interconnected place, with a broad array of social-actors (e.g. organizations, customers, and community members) interacting online. These interactions are oftentimes enhanced, contextually and dialogically, with unique online capabilities such as image sharing, linking and tagging. Twitter, in particular, has emerged as a simple yet effective form of blogging, where social-actors engage using a limited number of characters (specifically, the “microblogs” are limited to 140 characters, not including links and user handles). Some unique aspects of Twitter make it a particularly ideal platform for some brands to get noticed and become influential within the platform—given that their content is relevant and engaging. However, we know little about how organizations and other social-actors engage on social media platforms such as Twitter, and what constitutes an “engaging content”.