Do You Tweet? You Should

Oct 30, 2011 by cynterps

Trying to decide if you should start a Twitter following for your business?  Consider the following:

 

According to TweetReports,  Twitter  now boasts more than 200 million registered accounts.  And the numbers are growing.  On March 14, 2011, Twitter posted the following stats:

• On average, 460,000 new accounts were created per day over the last month
• The number of mobile users over the past year has increased by 182%.

 

Let’s break this down even further.  Digital Surgeons provides the following demographic information about U.S. Twitter users:

 

Gender:

• 48%  are men
• 52% are women

Age: 

• 30% are 26 to 34
• 27% are 35 to 44
• 17% are 45 to 54
• 9% are 55+

Annual Income:

• 49% of Twitter Users make more than $50k per year
• 23% make $51k – $75k
• 15% make $76k – $100k
• 7% make $100k – $150k
• 4% make more than $150k

Yes, but, Twitter is just for celebrities, right?  Think again.

• 25% follow a brand
• 67% of brand followers will purchase that specific brand

According to TweetReports:

• There has been more than 13.3 million brand mentions
• Close to 13 million brand recommendations
• More than 12 million brand recommendation requests
• More than 1.16 billion Twitter search queries per day

So, is Twitter is worth the investment?  After all, while using Twitter is free, it requires a great deal of time to manage it properly.  How do you measure the ROI in Twitter?

Twitter (and social media in general) allows us to have a relationship with customers that we might not have reached otherwise. It allows us to engage consumers in conversation.  Traditional advertising does not.   Think of Twitter as one of the quickest ways to build brand loyalty via free, word-of-mouth advertising.  It allows us to build excitement and allows us to track what people are saying about our brand.  Starbucks (1.7 million+ followers) does a great job with this by taking a lighter approach.  The company tweets trivia, conducts polls, and holds contest.

Even negative comments give us the opportunity to rebuild a relationship with a customer by proving that we are listening to the customer and actively improving our product or service.  JetBlue, which boasts over 1.6 million followers  provides a great example of a company that uses Twitter to interact with its customer and knows when to say, “I’m sorry.”

Before you try to determine a tangible ROI figure for your Twitter campaign, first ask, “What are we trying to accomplish?”  Simply counting the number of followers is meaningless if these followers don’t become loyal consumers or are willing to act as brand ambassadors.  Are you trying to create buzz around a new product? Are you trying to get more first time visitors to your retail outlet,online store, museum, or performance? Are you trying to get current customers to try your latest flavor of the month?  Are you trying to develop a collaborative environment where priceless customer feedback yields the next generation of applications?

Correlating the number of sales with a Twitter campaign can be tricky but the same can be said for any advertising campaign if you don’t have clear goals and a way to measure its effectiveness.  Know what you are going to measure (e.g. sales, lead generation, reduction in cost per sale versus traditional advertising), when you are going to measure it (e.g. start of campaign through six months), and how you are going to measure it.  Stay engaged.  Have a well thought out plan before you start tweeting but look for opportunities to shift course when one of your followers presents you with an opportunity you hadn’t considered.

Contact Sandalfoot Communications to discuss your Twitter strategy.  Call 866.235.1214 or email cynthia@sandalfootpr.com.

 

Sources:
http://tweetreports.com/twitter/twitter-200-million-accounts
http://blog.twitter.com/2011/03/numbers.html
http://www.digitalsurgeons.com/facebook-vs-twitter-infographic/
http://tweetreports.com/twitter/twitter-200-million-accounts/
http://business.twitter.com/en/basics/best-practices/
http://twitter.com/#!/JetBlue
http://mashable.com/2011/06/09/brands-twitter-success/#163072-Starbucks
http://twitter.com/#!/starbucks
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/342369/What_s_your_Twitter_ROI_How_to_measure_social_media_payoff?taxonomyId=16&pageNumber=3