While the experts suggest that content creators should always use gender-neutral language, the results of this research suggest that the Twitter populace doesn’t agree.
What We’re Told: Use Gender-Neutral Language
How often have you heard the advice, “Use ‘gender-neutral’ language when you create content”? Nearly all sources for online content creation recommend this strategy, and the sites that don’t recommend this strategy certainly refrain from suggesting the opposite. This advice is especially prevalent in the health and beauty industry, which is known for its commitment to inclusivity.
A major problem lies in how influencers use deliberately gender-neutral language on Twitter. Some use intentionally gender-neutral language so often that it seems unnatural and insincere. When it comes to increased engagement, which guideline prevails? Is it more important to use gender-neutral language or to sound natural?
After analyzing Twitter content from the health and beauty sector, I discovered some results that may surprise you. Learn what these results are and what they mean for you.
Experts Recommend Using Gender-Neutral Language
If you want to create engaging health or beauty content, following best practices could help you achieve that goal. But there are a lot of hypothetical best practices.
For instance, Neil Patel, an industry expert, says to “always use inclusive language and gender-neutral terminology…being more inclusive with your content is about increasing the number of audience members who will be able to relate to your content, or see themselves within it.” Patel is a renowned expert, so this advice must be good if you’re wanting more engagement, right?
Creating content that has high engagement rates is the goal of any Twitter marketer. If creators always use gender-neutral language on Twitter, that must mean it’s the best way to drive engagement, because, hypothetically, gender-neutral language should appeal to a broader range of people.
However, before we fully accept this claim, it needs to be tested to reveal its validity. So that’s exactly what I did.
Methods
For this particular analysis, I looked at the Twitter accounts of some well-known health brands. I pulled five thousand tweets each from Vogue, Men’s Health, Dove Beauty, Gillette, and Cosmopolitan. Then I parsed through all the tweets and found examples of those that use gender-neutral language on Twitter and those that do not. I randomized the order of these tweets in a new data bank.
I coded each of these tweets into two categories, gender-neutral or control, while I pulled them from the bank. In this case, gender-neutral means any Tweet that includes (1) a "singular they," (2) a gender-neutral term for an occupation, title, or relationship, or (3) a plural pronoun referencing an indefinite pronoun antecedent. Control is defined as a post that has either (1) no language related to gender or (2) normal “gendered” terms for people, occupations, titles, and relationships. I had an independent coder also categorize the tweets into these two categories, and we reached an 87.1% agreement rate and a Cohen’s kappa coefficient of .739. I normalized the engagement rate across all five accounts based on the number of followers and compared the interaction, like, and retweet ratios between my two test groups.
Results
Tweets in this analysis that used gender-neutral language performed 22% worse than those that used gendered language. Though not statistically significant, these results are different enough that creators should consider whether or not intentionally gender-neutral language is best in a given circumstance. More research is needed to find whether or not this guideline would hold true for Instagram, Facebook, and other social media platforms.
The main finding of this research reveals that the use of deliberately gender-neutral language on Twitter in the health and beauty industry (for my sample of data) does not increase engagement, contrary to suggestions by many experts. There may be other reasons to use (or to avoid using) gender-neutral terms, but the data suggests engagement will actually go down when people use purposely gender-neutral language on Twitter.
What You Can Do
Going forward with this knowledge, health and beauty content creators (and others, if they desire) should evaluate whether or not using gender-neutral language is the best choice. Though recommended by many industry leaders, using gender-neutral language will actually decrease engagement on Twitter, according to this research. Although the small sample suggests that additional research is needed, content creators in the health and beauty industry specifically may see an engagement boost by using gendered language on Twitter that resonates best with their target audiences.