A few years ago, if a business was heavily using Twitter to promote its message it might have been labelled a pioneer. Such is the pace of social media that today nearly all consumer brands have a presence on the micro blogging site. But how should those precious 140 characters be used to really connect with the people you want?
Thankfully, social media monitoring providers Brandwatch have carried out a study on the Twitter landscape and found some interesting results:
Promotional tweets
Targeted promoted tweets are just one way of increasing reach to your target audience but are no guarantee of engagement. In fact the study found that “too many promotional tweets” and “too much spam” were the main reasons for unfollowing an account.
Twitter competitions
Competitions are very popular on Twitter with the entrance criteria usually just a retweet (RT). This seems on the face of it a good way to increase the reach of your brand, but many accounts are set up with little or no followers in order to take advantage of these competitions. It also might be viewed as spam and end up negatively portraying the brand.
Targeting influencers
Another, more effective way of increasing exposure is to target influential authors and encourage retweeting or even to create mentions themselves. This, the study suggests, is not as simple as it sounds. The author is anticipating the reaction of their audience – they have their reputation to protect.
A model is proposed in which online and offline brand activity reaches its target audience. It becomes ‘acceptable’ to mention the brand in a positive way. Authors who believe in the brand are more likely to tweet an endorsement and increase exposure.
MEC opinion
The full 50 page study makes no apologies for delving into sociological theory and statistics. Not only does it uncover the ‘what’ but also looks at the ‘why’. The main conclusions of the study are all sound principles for earned media. Have a consistent message across your media channels and you will be talked about, with the caveat that it must be worth talking about.
Twitter’s reach, despite its massive online population, is still relatively small in comparison to some traditional media. A TV ad in Coronation Street might deliver a few million ratings. To reach a similar amount on Twitter your message would have to ‘go viral’ – the holy grail of social media marketing. More likely, a few RT’s will result in exposure in the thousands, when you take into account follower overlap and missed tweets. This message however, comes directly from one of their carefully selected followed accounts and might pack more of a punch.
The study can be found as an extended research paper or a summary presentation