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Tweepforce Roundup (5Sep)-Twitter Stats, New Widgets & IPO News for Businesses

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Tweepforce Roundup (5Sep)-Twitter Stats, New Widgets & IPO News for Businesses

Once again we have summarised recent Twitter developments and their impact on businesses, brands and digital agencies that are helping their customers to make full benefit of the Twitter platform.

1.Twitter continues to introduce new features and widgets:

a. Twitter and The New York Times test a feature that lets people tweet highlighted text

The New York Times recently tried a new Twitter feature in which users can tweet specific highlighted text within an article. Twitter also said in a blog post that the story chosen for the experiment, “The God of ‘SNL’ Will See You Now”, was tweeted 11 times more than the average of the top 500 shared NYT stories from last month.

b. Twitter timeline flips to put emphasis on engagements

Twitter just reversed the format of its timeline with a new conversation view. The full timeline will still display in the old-style ‘newest stuff at the top’ view, but now there are linked Twitter engagements which group tweets in a Facebook-like conversation format. At first glance this might seem like a simple enhancement that relates interconnected tweets together with a thin blue line and an elegant foldout box, but the aim is for this to make the timeline feel more human and less Twitter. The new feature is rolling out on Twitter.com, iPhone and Android apps and features an ‘old’ tweet first, with newer replies to it in order afterwards.

Example of Twitter Thin Blue Line Engagement

2. Twitter is gearing up for an IPO later this year or early next year!

Not many people have any doubt that Silicon Valley based micro-blogging site Twitter is on the road to a public offering and the way things are progressing the company is on track to file for a public offering early next year in order to tap the markets in spring of 2014. But, according to pundits, in order to do that, the company needed to hit three major milestones:

1. Over 400 million users

2. About a billion dollars in revenues.

3. Building a strong management team

It would appear that by hiring the Google Ad Director and ex-MD of Live Nation, together with new statistics about the number of accounts, Twitter is on the way to achieving the first and third milestones. However, as per eMarketers, Twitter will hit about $580 million in revenues this year which is some way short of one billion dollars.

3. Hashtag continues to be the epicentre of Twitter’s scheduling strategy

Hashtags have become synonymous with Twitter and recently the company has revealed an infographic with a blog post highlighting tips to select the best hashtag for your tweet. The main rationales behind releasing this hashtag guideline are:

a. To ensure the tweet is shared with the right group of users by finding the right hashtag for that group.

b. To filter what can otherwise be a wide array of difficult-to-categorize information.

c. To join any conversation on the platform by adding the appropriate hashtag to a tweet.

In summary, Twitter has emphasised making your hashtag notable, fitting it in with other marketing activities such as ads or campaigns and not being afraid to attach it to a popular term or phrase.(Like below -:))

Example of twitter hashtag engagement

4. Usage of Twitter is aligned to smartphone growth

The Pew Research Centre Study revealed the following:

a. Some 15% of online adults use Twitter as of February 2012.

b. 8% do so on a typical day.

c. Overall Twitter usage has nearly doubled since November 2010.

d. The percentage of online adults who use Twitter on a typical day has doubled since May 2011. e. The proportion of adults using Twitter on a typical day has quadrupled (now 8%) since late 2010 when it stood at 2%.

According to the study, the two takeaway points to be considered in marketing campaign planning are:

f. The growth of smartphone adoption is highly correlated to the growth of Twitter usage.

g. The 400% growth in Twitter usage by 18-24 year olds.

5. What are the takeaways for business?

1. Share mobile friendly content on Twitter

Twitter’s correlation to smartphones means businesses must make sure whatever content they are sharing on Twitter is mobile friendly and should be aligned to the right time, such as when people are travelling, watching live events or viewing favourite TV programs.

2. Use hashtags to extend reach beyond your followers

Don’t over-use hashtags but if you can find or create the right one don’t be afraid to use them as they take your conversation beyond the reach of your followers and help to create an identity on the social platform.

3. Increase Twitter engagement for higher reach

The new Twitter timeline with expandable conversation box means that businesses must try to engage with their audience as much as they can to get higher and highlighted impressions on the timeline and subsequently greater interest and conversion.

4. IPO means Twitter, like Facebook, will become more advertising centric

Twitter wants to go public and in order to do so it needs to grow really fast, both in terms of revenues and users. Businesses should not be very surprised, therefore, if Twitter rolls out many new features and widgets in the future; we will keep you updated on those advances and advise how businesses can drive more traffic and sales using new Twitter features.

Tweepforce Roundup (27Aug): Recent Twitter Trends, Stats & Apps for Businesses

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Tweepforce Twitter Roundup brings together all stories related to Twitter statistics, current and evolving product updates and third party applications and how these developments can help brands to leverage this social media platform to grow their business. Let’s start with, how Twitter as a platform is evolving

Twitter is embedding information beyond 140 chars

Twitter introduced a fresh approach to explain the story behind popular tweets, adding a “related headlines” section below tweets that have been entrenched on other websites. Clicking through to a tweet’s permalink page will show websites that have included those links, adding context around tweets that might otherwise be difficult to comprehend.

Tweet with related stories.

Twitter is localising information

Techcrunch has spotted that like the Trending TV feature on Twitter, proximity-based alerts are also rendered around hashtags, such as for actual, in-person events nearby rather than TV programs. This is one more example of Twitter’s play to be the platform of choice for discussions about all occasions, i real and virtual. Overall Twitter is finding ways to become a powerful player in location-based services so that they can drive revenues in the form of paid placements.

Then see Twitter Statistics, Facts and Figures

According to a new Twitter study, below are the Twitter statistics related to tweets per day to per second:

In another case study for Eventbrite (the online ticketing company), analysts started assessing the value of a Facebook share in 2010 using their own in house technology; back then it was worth $2.52. In 2012 their latest study illustrates that the value per Facebook share has augmented to $4.15 which is an increase of 65%. The most fascinating statistic is that the value of a Twitter share has grown by 330%, from $0.43 to a $1.85. LinkedIn’s value has only risen minimally, by 2%.

Furthermore according to the study, despite Twitter not generating the same level of revenue for Eventbrite, the traffic statistics show that Twitter drives more traffic per share than Facebook, with 33 visits per share compared to Facebook’s 14 visits per share. LinkedIn visits per share are not irrelevant at 10 visits per share, but sit at less than one third of the Twitter stat.

How are Twitter and third parties controlling spamming and malware?

Twitter knows spam is an issue, and their users know well that the social network has its fair share of it. Therefore a team of researchers is working to combat this problem. In a paper released this week, they explained how they’ve been working with Twitter to take a close look at how fraudulent accounts are made and how they can be stopped, and they’ve already come up with some promising results. The team, made up of researchers from George Mason University, the International Computer Science Institute, and the University of California, Berkeley, teamed with Twitter to buy over 127,000 dubious, automatically-generated accounts from 27 different suppliers over a ten-month period. Their aim was to try and create a way to block spam accounts before they’re created or before they’re used to spread viruses across the web. With Twitter’s help, the team were able to recognise a set of identifiers that could be used to determine when accounts were created using bots. Subsequently, when the researchers tried to buy 14,000 additional Twitter followers after Twitter implemented the suggested changes, 90% were dead on arrival.

And finally what these recent Twitter developments means to businesses:

Looking at current Twitter progress, the platform is on the rise when it comes to both sharing content per day and click through rate once content is shared on the platform. In addition, Twitter is rendering information based on interest and location with no place for spam accounts. Therefore brands can think of taking following steps to drive more traffic and revenue via Twitter:

Tip 1: Tweeting must be integrated to social media strategy

Businesses must integrate content distribution via Twitter into their social media strategy and share as much as relevant content using Twitter tools like Hootsuite or Bufferapp, which give an option to schedule content distribution based on their followers’ activities to gain maximum reach. The auto schedule feature also stops businesses from seeming to spam their content to followers. Businesses can use promoted tweets in order to reach people with similar interests, demographics and location to their product.

Tip 2: Tweets must contain relevant hashtag and location specific information

As Twitter is focusing more on rendering location-based information, businesses must include as much as location specific information via geo-tagging, setting up profile location, using local hashtags and scheduling messages as per local or event timeframes.

Tip 3: Disengage bogus followers and focus more on engagement

Recently, Twitter has been doing everything in their power to reduce spamming, through tightening their API usage rules and working with data scientists to identify patterns that indicate spamming, so that they can offset those issues. This means that to grow their following, businesses must do more engagement by identifying potential customers using Twitter advance search or relevant hashtags, or use tools that can identify a target audience and subsequently leverage various Twitter actions such as @mention, Retweet, Favourite or adding them to lists, to overcome the Twitter API limitation.

Twitter Roundup (19Aug): Why Business Must Use Twitter for Business Development

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After the success of last week’s Twitter round-up, we have summarised Twitter’s progress to help businesses, brands and digital agencies to leverage one of the most open and customer-driven social media platforms for businesses development.

Data Confirms that Tweets Influence Buyers

Recent Findings from Datalogix suggest that Twitter users who engage with promoted tweets buy more i.e. if you retweet, favourite, or reply to a tweet, you’re likely paying attention, understanding what’s been promoted, and reacting to it emotionally enough to respond. That engagement, Datalogix’ study says, drove an average 12% sales increase across 35 brands with dozens of products in the study.

Second, people who are exposed to a brand’s organic tweets buy 8% more than those who are not. This is possibly inevitable, as Twitter followers are very self-selecting. However, the fascinating part is that this buy-more impact increased almost 300% when users saw five or more un-paid tweets.

The third, and most striking, finding is that a brand’s Twitter followers who see the brand’s promoted tweets buy almost a third more than other followers who simply see organic tweets.

Twitter and TV Complement Each Other

This Nielsen study found that Twitter chatter had a really good effect on certain TV genres. For example, tweets around reality programming influenced ratings for 44% of episodes. Comedy shows gained a 37% ratings increase from Twitter exposure. Sports programs got a lift of 28%, while drama shows had an 18% hit. Overall After analysing more than 200 episodes of prime-time television programs, Nielsen indicated that a surge in the number of tweets about a show increased its ratings almost a third of the time. The reverse is also true: The more people tuning in, the more usage there is on Twitter.

Facebook is Copying Twitter

Facebook has rolled out Twitter-like features in recent months. First, “Verified” accounts to let users know that a celebrity’s profile is genuine. Second, “Hashtag” to help group conversations on and around the same subject. Third, embeddable posts, which let interesting things that happen on Facebook also appear on web sites and blogs. And very recently Facebook has indicated that it intends to introduce another Twitterish feature called “Trending Topics” — a billboard that streamlines things lots of Facebook users are talking about.

What does this mean for businesses?

Spend Money on Twitter Advertising and Align that to Live Events and TV Shows

Brands must start allocating some portion of their online advertising budget to Twitter advertising, especially businesses that can see their potential customers are tweeting or reading tweets during live events, and watching TV. Businesses can also use some Twitter marketing tools to measure their customer activities and engage them when they are active on Twitter.

Alight Twitter and Facebook Advertising to leverage 1.5bn audience together

Facebook alignment to Twitter, first with introduction of the Hashtag and now the inevitable Twitter-like Facebook status timeline means businesses can align their Twitter and Facebook advertising strategy with complementing Hashtag and status updates.

Twitter Roundup(13 Aug): Why Twitter is the Best Social Media Platform For Brands

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Twitter Roundup(13 Aug): Why Twitter is the Best Social Media Platform For Brands
Twitter News for Business

We have done a Twitter round up for businesses, brands and digital agencies. If you want to understand how Twitter as platform evolving, so that you can leverage this platform for maximum lead generation, customer service, product discovery and delivery and enjoy a higher return on investment, read on.

After all, Twitter is in the most popular social media tools, when it comes to content sharing and influencing to buyers before they buy something; in other words businesses cannot ignore this platform for business development.

1. Twitter has enhanced Search Results

There are three primary changes to Twitter.com’s main search results panel:
1. Accounts (or “People” ) are now weaved into the search results.
2. Pictures are now showing as search results .
3. There’s also a new Pictures tab on the left, in addition to the “Results” and “People” filters.

https://twitter.com/mattmcgee/status/363054099811409920

2. Twitter #music app gets new ways to discover artists

Twitter has updated its Twitter #music iPhone app with many new ways to find new artists in addition to personalised recommendations based on the content in your iPhone’s music library.

https://twitter.com/engadget/status/365916149021556738

3. Twitter Partners With Datalogix to Track When Tweets Lead to Offline Sales

Twitter has announced it is partnering with with Datalogix, a digital media and database marketing firm, to highlight the “offline sales impact” for tweets, which means these two companies are promising to capture how much having an active Twitter account can improve a brand’s bottom line when buyers are shopping in stores and away from Twitter enabled device.

https://twitter.com/CNET/status/365574680125509632

4. What does this mean for businesses?

Over 600m Twitter searches made every day means Twitter search has become a valuable source of capturing people’s intent data i.e. a force to reckon with for businesses and brands. And to make it more sensible for users, Twitter search is now returning more data, such as images and people with relevant profiles. And to capitalise on this enhancement, businesses and brands must configure their profiles, including Twitter handle, profile text, header and profile images, in addition to embedding pictures into their tweets, keeping their target audience in mind.

Here is an infographic around how businesses can enhance their Twitter profiles and utilise meta tags around tweets in order to leverage Twitter search.

The Twitter music app update to track iTunes library, along with teaming up with Datalogix, indicates that Twitter is now looking beyond 140 characters to identify consumer behaviours, so that Twitter advertising can become more relevant for businesses. In other words brands must look to:

1. Find ways to promote their business on Twitter such as advertising products through promoted tweets and promoted Twitter accounts.
2. Find ways to sponsor Twitter chats. Some popular Twitter chats such as #brandchat, #ToolsChat, #SWChat give great real time exposure to businesses.
3. Use a Twitter marketing tool such as Tweepforce to capture people’s intent and engage them accordingly.