Follow me! I will be your best friend : global marketers’ Twitter use

Social media have grown into a powerful marketing communications tool in the global market. A number of companies are dedicating their time and resources for building trust and rapport with consumers through various social media platforms, but there is a dearth of research on their use of Twitter. The current study, therefore, examines global brands with a Twitter account and their tweets targeted at consumers. The results indicate that marketers attempt to attribute human characteristics to their brands using human representatives, personal pronouns, verbs in the imperative form. Also, satisfaction and investment were the most frequently found consumer-brand relationship determinants in the global brands’ tweets. This study offers the perspective that Twitter serves not only as an optimal vehicle for disseminating corporate information but also as a means to develop and cultivate consumer-brand relationships. Limitations and future research are discussed.