Is your company active on Twitter? If you answered yes, then good for you. If you answered no, then you have to get with the program! Twitter is essential to your marketing strategy. Don’t believe me? Here are some statistics and facts that will have you running to your Twitter account before you can say “follow me”.
The Numbers
- There are 554,750,000 active users on Twitter
- 460,000 people sign up for Twitter every day
- There are 400 million tweets a day
- On average, there are 9,100 tweets per second
- 24% of people check their feed more than twice a day
What this means to you:
From the numbers above, it’s crystal clear that a ton of people are spending a lot of time on Twitter. With such an active user base, you have the potential to market your product or service to millions of people – for free! Developing an effective Twitter outreach plan allows for an increase in brand awareness and consequently, an increase in sales. Be sure to take advantage of the millions of people in the Twitterverse – they could be dreaming of your product, but just don’t know it yet.
The Business Facts
- 77% of top 100 companies are on Twitter
- 70% of small businesses are on Twitter
- 33% of Twitter users follow a brand
- In the last two years there has been a 663% increase in users asking for business recommendations
- 50% of shoppers have made purchases based on recommendations found through a social network
- 79% of Twitter users are more likely to recommend brands they follow
- 67% of Twitter users are more likely to buy from brands they follow
What this means to you:
These statistics are black and white – there is a direct correlation between following on Twitter and sales. If this isn’t reason enough to get active on Twitter, I’m not sure what is. If you haven’t already started coming up with a plan to increase your brand awareness on Twitter, the time to start was yesterday (but today will also do).
What you should be doing
- Twitter engagement rates for brands are highest on Saturdays and Sundays, but only 19% brand tweets happen on these days
- Engagement is 200% higher for tweets that include image links
- Engagement is 17% higher for tweets that contain less than 100 characters
- The retweet rate is 86% for tweets that contain links
- 92% of engagement with brand’s tweets come in the form of link clicks
- Tweets that ask followers to retweet have a 12x higher retweet rate than those who don’t (but only 1% of brands actually ask)
What this means to you:
The research has been done for you. Apply the information learned from these statistics into your own Twitter strategy.
- Don’t neglect Twitter on the weekends – just because fewer people are working, doesn’t mean they aren’t checking their Twitter stream.
- Include links to images.
- Less is more – don’t make your tweets to long.
- Include links in your tweets.
- Don’t be shy to ask your followers to retweet.
There are many resources out there that provide great information on Twitter best practices. This post on 10 Twitter Best Practices, by Michael Brito is a great place to start. Infographics are also a great resource for information. As the saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words”. One of the best I’ve come across is from Search Engine People. It provides statistics, best practices, and the demographics of Twitter users.
Click on the image above to be directed to the full size infographic.
Hopefully these facts and stats have reinforced the importance of Twitter for business. Don’t neglect this free resource that is priceless to your online marketing strategy. Are there any interesting stats that I’ve missed? If so, please share them in the comments below.
Sources: mediabistro.com, expandedramblings.com, searchenginepeople.com
