Love the Customers: Principles of Interpersonal Relationships Applied to Social Media

Social media has changed the way virtually all of us communicate and its influence is far-reaching. Companies have even adapted and tweaked their marketing strategies to more personal approaches to reach their audiences. This is especially evident in recent years. We can see, for example, fast-food Twitter accounts attracting the attention of online users through witty personas and sarcastic tweets. Observing this phenomenon is what motivated me to look into relationships between brands and followers. Here, I refer to interpersonal relationship theories to uncover what encourages these kinds of relationships as well as discover which methods deliver the most positive responses, likes, and retweets from followers. I had conducted a content analysis on 250 tweets from 5 different fast-food brands accompanied by twenty random samples of comments from each tweet. Tweets were categorized by traits – Brand personality, maintenance, and targeting. Replies were categorized based on negative or positive reception. The findings suggest brand personality and targeting receive the best audience reception, with maintenance strategies lacking in personality possibly gaining negative reception on Twitter. This research ultimately exemplifies the differences between hard selling tactics on Twitter and interpersonal approaches, and serves to potentially set the stage for more research on brand interpersonal relationships and social media.