EXPRESS: Understanding Internal Linguistic Consistency of Person Brands on Social Media: an Empirical Investigation Using the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

Social media is essential to how brands are built and managed, especially for person brands. This research investigates how political person brands’ internal linguistic consistency shapes social media engagement. Specifically, the authors examine linguistic consistency relative to a candidate’s own prior social media posts (i.e., internal linguistic consistency). Using social media data from the 2020 U.S. presidential election and adopting an empirics-first approach, the authors find that three distinct constructs comprise internal linguistic consistency of person brands: topic (consistency in subject matter or themes), psychological (consistency in psychological states), and semantic (consistency in information and meaning), revealing that each dimension has its own best strategy: (1) topic inconsistency, (2) psychological consistency, (3) semantic inconsistency. The authors find that these effects are moderated by sudden changes in word of mouth, such as a sudden spike in online conversation about a political opponent, and by whether the election is a primary or a general election, such that moderate semantic consistency is most effective during the general election. The findings demonstrate the importance of simultaneously considering multiple dimensions of internal linguistic consistency in person brand strategies.