Brands Insignificant on Twitter, But They Don’t Have to Be
AdAge recently ran a story titled “Study: Most Brands Still Irrelevant on Twitter,” which covered the latest report from digital marketing agency 360i. For brands and marketers, some of 360i’s findings could be, well, scary. According to the report, an astounding 94 percent of tweets analyzed were personal updates – conversations between friends, information about what users are doing: “drinking a skinny latte @Starbucks!” And 360i’s findings show that more than 90 percent of tweets come from consumers, of that only 12 percent of consumer brands mention a brand.
While this news could be frightening to all the marketers out there who spend countless hours blasting out branded tweets to no avail, this should be seen as an opportunity.
The study also shows that 92 percent of users have unprotected accounts, which makes their profiles and tweets public, allowing anyone to monitor their conversations. A marketers dream.
The study also finds that Twitter is a conversational platform with more than 40 percent of all tweets starting with @, meaning they are directed at someone. Marketers are still talking TO people and not WITH people. Twitter reports more than 100 users that log 65 million tweets a day. 360i points out that Twitter reports 190 million site visitors per month, showing that an enormous amount of people are coming to Twitter to read content, and not conversing.
As BuzzRocket wrote in a previous blog, keep the “social” in social media. A significant factor in running a successful social media campaign is to keep your online activities very conversational.
360i summed it up nicely in their report, “The real value for marketers who participate in Twitter is in creating an ongoing dialogue with consumers that enables brands to become a more meaningful part of people’s everyday lives.”
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