Introduction: Twitter is a micro-sharing platform where 280-character limit can be used in limitless and unimaginable ways. We take a look at 5 most influential tweeters from our generation and observe how they use Twitter to drive engagement creatively and strategically. It is their habits we are trying to decipher, along with their choice of words.
You have to make the world mean.
-Stuart Hall
Words matter! And on the internet, words matter a lot. What you say stays forever in the archives of an electronic world; maybe as a memory for a later time or doing rounds as the butt of all jokes.
The stakes are even higher when you are a celebrity; an influential figure who is susceptible to criticism for everything you do or say. We almost take it for granted how the world awaits to roast someone who has a poor choice of words and a poorer sense of humour.
Come, let’s take a look at how we generally scroll past many things online. And for this study we will be examining the tweets of five most influential political figures of our generation!
- Donald Trump (U.S. President) 49.88m
- Pope Francis (Head of The State of Vatican) 17.43m
- Theresa May (Prime Minister of England) 501k
- Narendra Modi (Prime Minister of India) 41.63m
- Justin Trudeau (Prime Minister of Canada) 4.08m
This is how they tweeted on weekdays for sixty days!
Donald Trump – Trump has the most incoherent speech patterns amongst the lot here. Most of his sentences are rushed, wavering, informal and heavily dependent on punctuations – lots of it! His is a style one would see in the texts of a teen to their friends. He even announces matters of national importance like you would invite your close pal for a weekend bash.
You wouldn’t be surprised to see punctuations at the end of his sentences which makes him look like the victim.
Trump is a good-salesman and he uses this skill effectively in his speech. Notice the excessive use of exclamation to end his sentence? He plays the victim to win the public opinion. Not cool, Mr. President!
Now look at the tweet put up by his office, below! Notice the lack of abuse and straight to the point talk? (WE CAN’T FORGIVE THE ABUSE OF ALL-CAPS THOUGH). Trump is known for his bashing, unapologetic views which comes from the same place where his logic and views on the world comes from.
Facts: 81.45% of 733 tweets from Trump were links.
Trump got a massive engagement on this day.
Trump’s handle is managed by him (tweets from Samsung phone), and his social media manager Brad Parscale (tweets from iPhone). Here is a video from Nerdwritter1, explaining Trump’s Tweet habits in detail.
Pope Francis – The head of the Catholic Church is also the head of the Vatican State (for those who didn’t know). Pope Francis must be on the diametrically opposite spectrum of the POTUS. He is very articulate, calm and quotes on the lines of faith, belief, love, suffering and empowerment on Twitter. Much of his views are startlingly progressive compared to the combined conservative stance of Christianity.
However, he has refrained a lot from comments on Twitter about his stance, which he has otherwise been vocal about in the media.
Pope uses more complex and compound-complex sentences. Yet he rarely tweets more than a single sentence and uses commas, semi-colons and colons efficiently. He must be at the reading level of a 9th grader.
Notice how he starts with a rhetoric and usually supports it or counters it in the end to present his point of view.
This is the Pope’s most popular tweet with 4,16,553 engagements.
Unlike others, he chooses to keep his views short and crisp. He also enjoys the most average engagement rate than anyone else on our list here.
Facts: Pope tweets at least once every day – and always towards early morning! It is clearly the sign of a punctual and a modest life which he leads as a pontifex.
98.35% of 1511 tweets from the Pope were status updates. Which means he has rarely endorsed a third-party content.
Theresa May – The Prime Minister of United Kingdom is least popular amongst the lot with just half a million followers. Clearly because she joined twitter much later compared to all four – to be precise, on June 28th 2016.
Theresa May uses a mix of complex and compound-complex sentences and it is totally acceptable for a Brit. Nearly 80% of her tweets run into two or more sentences, which means she prefers being elaborate and detailed when it comes to communication.
Facts: Pope tweets at least once every day – and always towards early morning! It is clearly the sign of a punctual and a modest life which he leads as a pontifex.
98.35% of 1511 tweets from the Pope were status updates.
Theresa May – The Prime Minister of United Kingdom is least popular amongst the lot with just half a million followers. Clearly, because she joined twitter much later compared to all four – to be precise, on June 28th, 2016.
Theresa May uses a mix of complex and compound-complex sentences, which is totally acceptable for a Brit. Nearly 80% of her tweets run into two or more sentences, which means she prefers being elaborate and detailed when it comes to communication.
But the UK Prime Minister is the least active on twitter with only 0.92 posts/day and her tweets cover a wide range of topic from banning hidden charges on using debit/credit cards to steps taken against animal cruelty.
She likes to discuss the state of affairs and hardly talks anything personal, which is pretty decent and acceptable from a political figure.
Theresa May uses twitter effectively by making the platform a go-to source for public information regarding PM’s duties.
The PM ran a paid post on April 03’.
Facts: 70.47% of May’s tweets from 447 are links.
Narendra Modi – The Indian Prime Minister is known to be very active on Social Media with 41.63m followers on Twitter alone. As a tech savvy politician, Modi has the highest average tweet per day.
Let’s look at the syntactical structuring of his tweets.
Modi has a decent command over the language and also uses Hindi frequently to tweet. This is a testimony to his nationalistic pride which he has held on to despite roasting criticism.
He uses more adjectives than any other leader on this list and his sentences are inclusive of simple, compound, complex and compound-complex. But you can be assured to find simple sentences rarely when he tweets.
We must admit he (or his social media team) has a knack to use words wisely and in measured manner.
Notice how most of his tweets are popular opinions. There cannot be a point beyond these where the talks can be condoned within national unity.
He also has a habit of talking about India, his counterparts, public sector organizations more than himself.
Facts: Modi is the only politician to post 8 video tweets from 2553 tweets. 20.92% of tweets are photos and 57.58% are links. Only 541 tweets are statuses.
Modi has a highest daily engagement second only to Donald Trump.
Justin Trudeau – The Canadian Prime Minister is known for more than his charming attitude. Considered as one of the most politically correct office-holders in the world. As much as he is progressive, Trudeau isn’t a populist like Trump or Modi.
Here is how Trudeau tweets!
Trudeau makes use of lengthy yet simple sentences to convey his message. He concentrates on details like the whats, whys and hows more than the others on this list.
Trudeau in solidarity with the UK. He exercises his power and lets the world know it.
Facts: Trudeau tweets in English and French. His status comprises the lowest at 2.3%. Prefers posting more links, the highest of the average at 95.26%.
The Canadian PM has an affinity for retweets amongst all five politicians at a ratio of 60:40 to retweets.
Upshots
We took a sample size of 60 days. After studying all the tweets within these timelines we analysed carefully the engagements, retweets and favourites for each tweet and ranked these politicians in terms of their popularity.
We discovered certain quirks and peculiarities in the patterns in which these politicians tweet. Specifically, their choice of words and how they choose to break a piece of news to their followers.
- Trump is informal and lashes out at his opponents and critics, and it is exactly this for which he gets all the engagements.
- Pope Francis never discusses anything political or topical. His tweets are mostly about religion, faith, humanity and kindness.
- Theresa May discusses a lot of the reforms and current affairs pertaining to her Office.
- Narendra Modi puts up most congratulatory posts and makes sure he tweets in Hindi once in a while.
- Justin Trudeau’s tweets are in both French and English, for one. He likes tweeting links more than anything else.
In an ideal world, as a creative Digital Marketing agency, these research help us in studying the content that is on social media.
There are many angles to why two similar posts or content on social media may perform differently. It could be the freshness and authenticity on one hand and on the other it could be entirely dependent on the source.
What this means for brands then?
On Social Media, there are billions of words that are being shared every day. The key for your brand to cut through the scattered information lies in locking in on the key words which are trending, and these are not hashtags we are talking about.
Like all the politicians here who have deployed smart keywords and phrases are relying on coherent language patterns to win public vote of faith through them. It is the same for brands. If you have a loyal customer base, they need a These words, at the end of content marketing, are the crux of a campaign and there is very less that’s been said or discussed about them.
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Research Courtesy: Mondovo
