Identificación de líderes de opinión leales en Twitter

Abstract

Twitter has been chosen by lot of companies as social network site to create brand communities. Although consumers can write opinions about the brand in many websites, the development of brand communities enhances this word of mouth and allows consumers to spread the word about the brand in the brand community context. Some opinion leaders could be part of the brand community. Thus, companies can enhance positive word of mouth toward the brand by identifying these opinion leaders. However, the company needs to know whether the opinion leader is loyal to the brand in order to avoid negative word of mouth. Twitter offers information about community members that can be useful to identify these opinion leaders. This study analyzes both, the answers to an online questionnaire and the Twitter profile of 265 followers of three camera brands on Twitter. The results show that analyzing the information written by members in their Twitter profile, how many followers they have and how many people or brands they follow is key to identify loyal opinion leaders in brand communities developed in Twitter. Loyal opinion leaders have many followers; however, they do not follow many accounts in this social network site.