1 TWEETS AS ONLINE WORD OF MOUTH: INFLUENCING & MEASURING EWOM ON TWITTER What Twitter tactics are most successful for spreading a brand’s electronic word of mouth? Master Thesis Paper August, 2011 Author: Danny Oosterveer Student Master of Business Administration - Specialization Marketing Telephone: 06-36174838 Email:
[email protected] Website: www.dannyoosterveer.nl Twitter: @DannyOosterveer Principal: Nijmegen School of Management Radboud University Nijmegen Thomas van Aquinostraat 3 6500 HC Nijmegen The Netherlands Primary supervisor: Dr. Ir. N.G. Migchels Secondary supervisor: Dr. M.J.H. van Birgelen Cover: People connected in a network. Some people are more strongly connected than others. The people highlighted in yellow are spreading the word of mouth to the other people within the network. Keywords: WOM, word of mouth, eWOM, electronic word of mouth, viral marketing, buzz marketing, influence, word of mouth marketing, Twitter, microblogging, connected marketing, Web 2.0, retweets, retweet criterion, brand mentions, mentions criterion, brand sentiment analysis, opinion mining, text mining, number of followers, followers indegree, hashtag, communities, customer-relationship management, brand reputation management, customer service management, one to one communication, Radian6, social media, user-generated content, UGC, network theory, dissemination, communication, consumer to consumer, consumer to business, S-D logic of marketing, Tweetfeel Biz, engagement, big seed marketing, collaborative filtering, diffusion, influential, webcare, online brand management, online branding Tweets as online word of mouth: Influencing & measuring eWOM on | August 16, 2011 | Page 1 ABSTRACT During the last decade, the way consumers communicate has significantly changed. This change is facilitated by the World Wide Web as a platform whereby information is no longer produced by a small group of institutions.