Brand Marketing on Twitter (and a few tips to make it work for you)

There are always lots of opinions floating around on Twitter. Many have become familiar, such as, “Without followers, you’re Tweeting to an empty room” or “People Tweet about useless stuff.” Most of those comments come from folks who simply don’t favor Twitter as a useful social media platform and they’re certainly entitled to their opinion. But the truth is that Twitter’s network is huge and major brands have embraced it in a big way. A research brief published this week by MediaPost Communications cites some huge numbers reported in the Quarterly Twitter Network Study compiled by Simply Measured.

The Twitter network had grown to 284 million monthly active users, up from 230 million in November 2013. All those users send more than 500 million Tweets each day!  On the business side of things, 98% of the top brands in the world now have a Twitter account. Even more significantly, 70% of brands have more than 100,000 followers, up from 58% just a year ago. Nearly all of those brands Tweet at least once per day.

Major brands are indeed Tweeting more and, according to the MediaPost brief, “…a greater percentage of these Tweets are coming in the form of @replies to individual users, showing a greater effort by brands to engage and interact with their Twitter audience.” Similarly, Twitter users are becoming more willing to engage with the brands, endorsing branded content more than in the past. In fact, Retweeting of brand Tweets has increased 89% since late 2013.

We believe these trends are a good thing. They give Twitter credibility as a useful, rather than frivolous, social media network. And they support its use as potentially powerful brand marketing tool. With that in mind, here are several tactics and tips that contribute to brand marketing success on the Twitter network:

• Regular Tweeting is key. 75%of brands Tweet at least three times per day
• Brands are interacting more with individual users/followers. @Replies made up 70% of all brand Tweets
• Recognize that user engagement with brand Tweets is up 83% over Q4 2013; pay attention to your content and reward their willingness to interact with your brand
• Photos and video links currently account for 51% of all engagement with brand Tweets
• Tweets with hashtags drive more engagement than Tweets without them

This is exciting stuff!  You can find more information at Simply Measured.