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.
