Beer in the middle, wine on the coasts, says Twitter
Americans like to relax with a drink after work, and then they like to tweet about it.
The type of alcohol favored across the country can be measured using millions of tweets over the first quarter of the year, according to new data shared with CNBC by social intelligence company Brandwatch.
Residents in Colorado and Louisiana are more than twice as likely to tweet about hard liquor than beer. The Midwest, however, prefers beer, with Illinois, Missouri and Iowa more likely to mention cold brews in their tweets.
Overall, Americans tend to mention liquor most often in their tweets, with hard alcohol mentions making up almost half of all alcohol mentions. Wine was only brought up in 15 percent of alcohol-related tweets, but it showed up in a greater share of tweets in New York and California. Wine discussion didn't tend to deviate far from the national average in most states, but it made up about 20 percent of the discussion in California, the country's leading wine producer.
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"What I find really interesting is how the states have clustered," said Brandwatch content researcher James Lovejoy. "Clearly, those lines are not arbitrary, and there are some sort of cultural or geographical elements at play." (Tweet This)
But the data show more than just what types of alcohol people like to talk about the most, said Lovejoy. Brands can use this type of data to select the products they offer in different parts of the country, and to judge how their products might align with interests in each state, he said.
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"A burger chain may do better in regions that have a high level of beer discussions, rather than areas heavily chatting about wine or liquor," he said. "Social data helps companies better understand their customers as well as general consumer preferences, which in turn helps decision-makers base strategy and business choices off of data-driven insights and trends."