How to be competent vs fun on socials

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📝 Context

Topic: Social Media
For: B2C
Research date: June 2025
Universities: The Open University of Israel, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Tel Aviv University, Babson College

You’re brainstorming your 2026 social media strategy. Your goal this year is to grow your following exponentially. You've noticed some competitors are always positive and cheerful online, while others sometimes seem to post some more negative content too.

You’re wondering which content approach might resonate best with your audience.

Science says, the best way to find out is to think of what your audience is looking for from you on social media - and how you want to be perceived - and adapt from there.

P.S.: If your focus is to promote products and drive sales, make sure you use a friendly, genuine tone. Previous research has shown that “friendly” influencers drive more sales than opinion leaders.

📈 Recommendation

If your audience expects entertainment from you on social media (e.g. looking for get ready with me videos when looking up apparel brands), build likability through consistent positive content (e.g. cheerful try-on videos). 

If they expect information (e.g. what product is more reliable), build credibility instead, by creating balanced content (e.g. a positive client testimonial but also an honest review of your product limitations).

🎓 Findings

• People who look for information and solutions online are more likely to follow accounts with balanced content and tone of voice (e.g. “The best & worst skincare brands”). People who look for entertainment and fun online are more likely to follow accounts with mostly positive content and tone of voice (e.g. “Do my skincare routine with me while I tell you the product I love”).

• As part of an analysis of over 27 billion following decisions across 4 major platforms and an experiment, researchers found that:

  • When people looked for information, accounts on Yelp that gave balanced ratings (averaging 3-4 stars) had up to 105.5% more followers than those that were overly positive (averaging 4-5 stars), and up to 500% more than those giving consistently low ratings (2-3 stars)

  • When people looked for entertainment, accounts with highly positive content had up to 116.3% more followers on average (vs those with less positive content)

  • When people looked for credibility, other trust signals (e.g. verified status on Instagram or LinkedIn) helped attract followers even when the content was more positive than balanced

🧠 Why it works

• We have two separate motives for following accounts on social media: get information or be entertained.

• When we look for specific information, we are more motivated to follow accounts with a mix of negative and positive content, because they appear to be more credible.

• On the other hand, if we use social media for fun, we care less about credibility but look for entertainment.

• This makes us more likely to follow accounts with highly positive content which we perceive as more fun.

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✋ Limitations

• The study looked at accounts on four specific platforms: Yelp, Goodreads, Instagram, and X (Twitter). People might behave differently on other platforms,  although the effect is likely to be the same or similar.

• It’s unclear how unfollow rates may change in the long-term (e.g. perhaps credibility makes people more likely to follow in the moment but less likely to be long-term followers, or vice versa).

• Some brands might have both fun and informational value propositions (e.g. a fun, yet sustainable fashion brand). How this effect would apply to these brands was not analyzed.

• Only text-based content was analysed. It’s likely, but wasn’t tested, that multimedia content might follow a similar pattern.

👀 Real-life example

Sult is a newly launched electrolytes brand growing fast on social media with over 50k combined followers on Instagram and TikTok.

❌ Issue: They’re growing fast through entertaining content. However, it’s likely that a great share of their audience follows them simply for the fun of it, but might not be interested in their product.

✅ Solution: Talking about the science of electrolytes and performance is more likely to attract their ideal customer, increasing the probability of a purchase. For example, they could:

• Build credibility by thoughtfully answering recurring specific wellness questions. 

• Showing the behind the scenes of developing their products, including their failures.

• Across both types of socials, they could encourage followers to post a picture with their product, making people more likely to engage with the brand.

🔍 Study type

Online experiment and market observation (of 320,707 accounts on Goodreads, 1,968,685 accounts on Yelp, 1,296,223 accounts on X, and 4,300,583 accounts on Instagram)

📖 Research

Search or Scroll: How Credibility versus Likability Premiums Shape Consumers’ Following Decisions, Journal of Consumer Research (June 2025)

🏫 Researchers

• Edith Shalev. The Open University of Israel.

• Coby Morvinski. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

• Meyrav Shoham. Tel Aviv University.

• Ellie J. Kyung. Babson College.

Remember: This is a new scientific discovery. In the future it will probably be better understood and could even be proven wrong (that’s how science works). It may also not be generalizable to your situation. If it’s a risky change, always test it on a small scale before rolling it out widely.

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