SOCIAL MEDIA
Twitter has a lot of intricacies
you might not even think about
when you take a quick glance.
Sure, you can intuitively grasp
the basics of posting, following,
retweeting, and liking tweets.
You can even get some of the
details about RT etiquette and
follow-backs, and the various
abuses heaped on the site from
shady marketers. What you
don’t see are the little details
that matter to marketers. You
don’t see active hours, you don’t
see click-through rates, and
so on. Yet, this is all important
information for brands.
That’s why I produced this
cheat sheet; to give you a quick
reference for everything you
need to know:
How Brands Fare on Twitter
Twitter is undeniably smaller than
other social networks. Facebook
has over 1.5 billion monthly
active users, while Twitter has
only 1/5th of that, at about 320
million. Not that 320 million
users is something to sneeze at.
Twitter has one dramatic
advantage, though; Twitter users
are much more likely to follow
brands through the platform
than other site users. Only 16%
of users on sites like Facebook
or Pinterest are willing to follow
brands, while on Twitter, nearly
half of all users follow some
brand or another.
Chances are, this is primarily due
to the way brands use Twitter.
Think about it; how do the best,
most successful brands use it?
• Sharing valuable content to
their audience.
• Running contests and
giveaways.
• Posting humorous content
and interactions with people
and other brands.
• Implementing fast and robust
customer service directly.
All of these are attractive
to customers and potential
customers. Some attract new
users, while others keep existing
users in place.
Visual Contenting
How about Twitter engagement?
Well, for one thing, engagement
on Twitter is 17% higher on
weekends.
Monday through Friday, it varies,
with a peak on Thursday, but
weekends are where most users
are free to catch up. Every day
has peak active hours, which you
should learn and use – posting
only on weekends won’t get you
anywhere – but your real push,
your real important content,
should center around weekends.
Twitter isn’t just great for
obtaining a Twitter following.
64% of users are more likely to
buy when they follow a brand.
It just makes sense, right?
Following a brand is a sign that
you like them or that they’ve
had something valuable to give
you, be it a contest, content, or
assistance. Sure, maybe not all
of those people are clicking links
from Twitter to buy directly, but
that’s okay. They know, when it
comes time to make a purchase,
that your store is the place to
go. Roughly 36% of all marketers
on Twitter have stated that they
have successfully acquired a
customer via Twitter.
I’m sure many more have but
either didn’t know how to track
it, or had that customer come in
via an un-traced means.
How Twitter Charges Brands
Twitter has one downside for
brands, and that’s the cost of
advertising. The cost of running
ads on Twitter tends to average
around 6x more than the cost of
running similar ads on Facebook.
The smaller audience and the
difficulty in reaching them is the
problem here.