I ran a small experiment on Twitter to determine best results for a male dominated industry. Here's what I found.

Hi all. I wanted to share with you guys a small experiment that I ran on Twitter to determine what works best for building a following. I am by no means a marketing or social media expert but I am feeling it out as I go. Here's what I found:

My wife is working on entering a niche market that is primarily male dominated with those males typically being somewhat rough around the edges. I'd prefer to not reveal the specific market to avoid any added competition but think something along the lines of beermaking/homebrewing.

My hypothesis is that, since this is male dominated, an attractive female entering this market would increase the interactions/shares compared to a less attractive female or a male. (Sorry if that sounds sexist or shallow...I am interested in what works and what doesn't. Not being Politically correct.)

In order to test my hypothesis, I set up three accounts; one of myself (a moderately attractive male), one of my wife (an attractive, yet typical female), and one of a random female (model status; well beyond your typical female).

From there, I began posting industry related articles, images, and tweets about 1-2 times a day on each account. I picked the things to be posted so that they would all be very similar but not identical. I also began following others that were in the industry or showed interest in the industry (again primarily males). I also used manageflitter to unfollow those that were not following me so that I could stay below the follow limits that twitter allows.

I gave myself three months to gather a decent sample size and here's what I found (This is an average of the analytics over the last week):

Male:

• Followers - 1,264

• Tweet Likes - 24

• Tweet Replies - 4

• Tweet Retweets - 3

Typical Attractive Female:

• Followers - 3,219

• Tweet Likes - 64

• Tweet Replies - 12

• Tweet Retweets - 7

Overly Attractive Female:

• Followers - 2,901

• Tweet Likes - 39

• Tweet Replies - 6

• Tweet Retweets - 5

I should mention that the posts I was writing/sharing were intended to encourage sharing, and interacting among the community. In my opinion this is the most important part when beginning a venture as it helps spread the word about you and leaves a lasting impression with your followers.

My takeaway:

While I did receive a moderate level of success on all accounts, I proved to myself that, when dealing with a male dominated industry, the female provides an different element that isn't as common and therefore intrigues the viewers. My intention with the overly attractive female was to prove that it's important to be perceived as real person. Anyone that uses social media sees those obviously fake accounts with profile pictures of super models. I believe those are useless and do more harm than good.

This is by no means intended to be concrete evidence toward anything or to be the best way of going about doing this. I also want to apologize again for coming off as shallow or sexist. I don't condone lying to your audience. That will do nothing but create trouble for you down the road. My only thought is, if you're entering a partnership with others in a similar industry, perhaps the female of the group may be a good face for the business. Hope this helps in your ventures!