Brand Marketing

By adaptive - January 29th, 2014

Twitter has been developing its platform for several years, and with a raft of new features on the way, corporations are now paying much more attention to the power that 140 characters can deliver

Twitter has become a phenomenon. With over 230 million active users posting hundreds of millions of posts each day, the ecosystem that this platform has built offer a wealth of opportunities brands are now leveraging with great success. Twitter itself has also had a development roadmap that has listened closely to user and corporations to ensure that each new feature moves the environment forward.

New research from Simply Measured has looked closely at how Twitter is currently being used by its millions of users. The good news for brand owners is that 98% of the top brands in the marketplace are active across the network. The key findings of the research include:

• 92% of top brands Tweet at least once daily as audiences grow.
• Study shows Twitter’s maturity as a marketing and engagement platform.
• Top brands average 43,100 engagements per month.
• Over 36% of all brand Tweets contain links. As content marketing becomes increasingly important, and top brands are behaving more and more like media companies, Twitter is proving to be a critical distribution and engagement channel.
• Audiences this quarter grew by 20%. More and more consumers are opting into receiving brand messages.
• 98% of all top brands are active on Twitter. The social network has matured into a valuable and necessary channel for marketing organizations.
• The average Interbrand company Tweets 12 times per day. Top brands are all in when it comes to creating content, making a big investment in daily resources.
• Tweets that include photos and links receive 150% more engagement than brand averages. Visual content is effective on Twitter, driving more engagement on the content that brands post.
• 54% of Interbrand companies send less than one @reply per day. While top brands are dedicating resources to brand promotion, many aren’t engaging with users in a one-on-one capacity.
• 58% of these top brands have an audience of 100,000 or more. With audience sizes growing by an average of 20% throughout the quarter, these brands continue to reach new users.

New analytics for Twitter Cards

The introduction of Cards delivered to brand owners the ability to connect rich media experiences to their tweets. Twitter have now gone one stage further and announced their analytics dashboard for Twitter Cards. Twitter stated: “Publishers, developers and brands around the world use Twitter Cards to make Tweets more engaging with pictures, videos, content previews, deep links into their apps, and other rich media experiences. Now for the first time you can gain insight into how your content is performing on Twitter, and find personalized tips to help make more strategic decisions about your use of Cards.”

Brands that have been leveraging the insight that Google Analytics has given them for several years will welcome this move by Twitter. As the platform has matured, brands have been waiting for a service that will give them reliable data to base the development of campaigns across this expanding social media network.

Simply Measured concluded: “As Twitter continues to grow, and see record activity, brand marketers are focusing more and more attention on their audience engagement across the network. While 98% of Interbrand companies have invested in the network, several of the growing brands from the Forbes list haven’t.

“While growing an audience on Twitter and regularly engaging requires time, patience, and work; there’s an established value to doing so. The example from the successful Interbrand companies speaks to the importance of a dedicated presence. While over-Tweeting has a diminishing return on audience growth and engagement, there is a happy minimum for each brand, and an opportunity to make a big splash in a big pond.”

The addition of further analytics and brand support for the network has made Twitter a major player in social media marketing. With the ability to communicate rich media messages, Twitter must now be a central component of any marketing campaign.