By adaptive - February 25th, 2015
As one of the trinity of social media networks, Twitter has become an essential component in every corporation’s marketing armoury.
Engagement is a core aspect of the power that Twitter delivers to every brand that uses its network. Q4 2014 showed how the 288 million monthly active users, who send 500 million tweets a day delivered earnings of $479 million.
“We closed out the year with our business advancing at a great pace. Revenue growth accelerated again for the full year, and we had record quarterly profits on an adjusted EBITDA basis,” said Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter. “In addition, the trend thus far in Q1 leads us to believe that the absolute number of net users added in Q1 will be similar to what we saw during the first three quarters of 2014.”
And with recent news that Twitter had agreed a deal with Google for tweets to appear on search results pages, the profile of the company is set to move into overdrive. For corporations and their brand assets, Twitter is a vital component of all marketing messages.
Simply, all brands must have a presence on Twitter if they are to engage with their customers, not only in commercial relationships, but also in the even more critically important customer service delivery. Great customer service on Twitter now directly influences a corporation’s bottom line.
For marketers research has revealed some important statistics:
- The average Interbrand company Tweets 12 times per day.
- Top brands average 43,100 engagements per month.
- 98% of all top brands are active on Twitter.
- Tweets that include photos and links receive 150% more engagement than brand averages.
- 21% of users never post a tweet.
- 93% of uses have less than 100 followers.
- 92% of users follow less than 100 people.
- 5% of Twitter users account for 75% of all activity.
- New York has the most Twitters users, followed by Los Angeles, Toronto, San Francisco and Boston.
- More than 50% of all updates are published using tools – mobile and Web-based – other than Twitter.com. TweetDeck is the most popular non-Twitter.com tool with 19.7% market share.
- There are more women on Twitter (53%) than men (47%).
Simply Measured concluded: “As Twitter continues to grow, and see record activity, brand marketers are focusing more and more attention on their audience engagement across the network. While 98% of Interbrand companies have invested in the network, several of the growing brands from the Forbes list haven’t.”
The behaviour that marketers now see across Twitter has also changed since its inception. One interesting and worrying trend from a marketer’s perspective is the rise of the so-called ‘hidden’ users that browses and interacts with Twitter without logging in.
For your corporation’s customers Twitter has become a multi-use platform that they leverage to engage with your brand. Businesses need to understand how Twitter can be a friend or foe in equal measure.
The retweet can offer a massive opportunity for messages dispersion, as the propensity to share is huge on the network. However, when customer services are concerned, Twitter can easily and quickly damage a brand. Corporations that can understand and respond to this Jekyll and Hyde persona will become Twitter champions.
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