Informal Research: Brands in Social Media

I’ve been curious for some time about brands in the social media, but have not been able to find any good research (quantified and verifiable) into the subject – merely general claims and personal opinions that assert that brands are pervasive in the social media.   And so, I did a little informal research …

Methodology

The methodology for this research was entirely casual:  I visited a site that served up random Facebook profiles (www.randomfbusers.com) and examined the “timeline” and “about” sections of 100 users to seek activities related to brands (any commercial product whose maker is mentioned) in various ways, as detailed in the findings.

Naturally, this means that it is a random (rather than structured) sample and I was only able to observe material that is made fully public by the individual who posted it.   So the behavior of users who are more discreet in their posting were not included (I skipped those whose newsfeeds and profiles were empty).

Another caveat is that this study was conduced in December, during the holiday season, when the mention of brands is more likely to appear in discussions (regarding gifts) than at other times of the year.

Findings

Since 100 profiles were examined, the raw numbers below can also serve as percentages:

• 32 of the users’ newsfeeds contained a mention of a brand in the last ten posts
• 18 profiles included brand-related content that was “liked” by the user
• 2 of these 18 instances liked content that was published by the brand itself (as opposed to mentioned in content that was published by someone other than the brand)
• 9 of the users’ newsfeeds displayed posts containing brand content that was shared with the user by friends
• 0 of those 9 instances were content published by the brand itself
• 46 of these users’ profiles contained brand-related content (which includes music, movies, books, pages, and profiles “liked” by the user)

Interpretation

In the broadest sense, my interpretation of this data leads me to the conclusion that brand content is not as pervasive in social media as some sources suggest.   Brand is not absent, and some of these statistics (brand mentions in newsfeeds and profile) do seem substantial, though somewhat less than a majority of users.

Ultimately, this means that social media is still quite non-commercial in nature, and the mention of brands is entirely casual and likely no more prevalent in social media than it is in face-to-face conversations of a social nature.

Suggestions for Future Research

Since this was an informal study that was very limited in scope, there is much room for refinement and validation of these results.   A more structured sample could be used, the inclusion of private (versus public) conversation might alter the findings, and a more rigid definition of “brand” would be useful (to exclude entertainment brands such as movies, which are mentioned more often than non-entertainment ones).

But for my present purposes, simply to get a feel for whether brand is “pervasive”: in the social media, this informal observational study is sufficient for me to conclude that it simply is not.