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

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

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.

7 reasons for brands to use twitter for business & product development

7 reasons for brands to use twitter for business & product development

A recent Twitter case study for companies reveals that Twitter can not only be a strong medium for customer service or reputation management, but can also be a very strong source for business and product development. In addition, there are some additional case studies which suggest that organisations can grow on Twitter faster than Facebook! Here we have summarised reasons for why small and big businesses must leverage Twitter for lead generation, product discovery and delivery, to make real revenue!

1. Realtime sheer numbers can’t be ignored

Twitter, with 200M+ monthly active users globally, 120M+ active mobile users monthly, one billion Tweets every 2.5 days and with each Twitter user following an average of six brands, presents a strong case that brands should not to ignore this medium and should find ways to tap realtime buzz to generate leads and convert those leads into real revenue!

2. Tweets with intents and interest invite brands to reach out to consumers

The best thing about Twitter is that the people show their interest and intent in realtime. For example, if a user is intending to buy a smartphone, a simple tweet to ask for suggestions can usually attract lots of attention from all over the place. In this example, where a user tweets for suggestions before buying a smartphone, his friends and followers reply, and brands can also tap into this opportunity to promote their product.

3. Twitter has a vast mobile presence

Over 60% of Twitter active users access the social network via a mobile device and further studies suggest that those who use their mobile as a primary device are three times more likely to access Twitter while shopping compared to the average user, 53% more likely to recall seeing an ad compared to average user and 66% more likely to retweet. Overall, Twitter is one of the most accessed social networks via mobile devices and the growing popularity of mobiles is a great reason for businesses to find ways to leverage this network to reach out to as many consumers as they can. Plus, a Twitter app can even substitute for a mobile app and save huge costs for businesses, compared to aligning their content to different mobile platforms and then promoting their products!

4. Twitter is the social network most aligned to TV viewership

A Twitter study claims that 85% of US mobile device owners incorporate their device into their TV viewing experience monthly, 64% of Twitter mobile-primary users use Twitter in front of the TV at home, 25% of Twitter mobile-primary users tweet about the shows they’re watching and an 8.5% increase in Twitter volume correlates with a 1% increase in viewership ratings! In addition Twitter bought online sentiment analysis start-up Blufin Labs and joined hands with Nielsan Research to demonstrate that Twitter is poised to leverage an automatic connection between their platform and TV viewership.

5. Tweets can embed to other platforms to enhance the customer journey

140 character Tweets with image, video and call to action button can be embed into any website or blog by adding a simple code and embedded tweets stand out on the page because they include graphic elements, so they draw the eyes of your visitors. If a business replies, Twitter posts not only the reply, but also the original tweet, giving you a conversation view. This puts individual tweets into context so they make more sense. Recently Twitter launched Twitter Card, which enables businesses to embed call to action buttons, such as a link to an app store or shopping cart check out. So a tweet with YouTube and Vine Video or a Flickr image with call to action button can be integrated into any website and enrich the customer experience!

6. A hashtag can reach across networks i.e. multiply audience

Recent adoption of the hashtag by Facebook confirms the power of this scripted language, which is universally accepted by Google+ and LinkedIn. However, Twitter has dominated conversations centred around the hashtag (#) for quite some time. If we believe the experts, “Twitter’s major pitch to advertisers is to tack little hashtag addendums and catchphrases onto the end of their commercials. From there, a viewer can do a quick search for the hashtag to track conversation about the ad and connect with other folks. Same with TV marketers: Identify a hashtag with your show and viewers can talk about the action in real time.” This means Twitter, with cross platform publishing tools like Hootsuite, provides a huge opportunity for brands to join the hashtag bandwagon and reach out across networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+!

7. Twitter API enables a combination of manual and automation actions

Despite the recent negative press that Twitter received for their API’s terms and conditions, they still have a more open and rich API than any other social network, which means with the help of tools like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck and now Tweepforce, businesses can leverage this very realtime 24*7 platform by amalgamating manual and automatic actions for business and product development. For example, a business can set an automatic search for people interested in their products and services and once relevant tweets are collected, they can manually take appropriate actions against each tweet.

Twitter is a real-time data powerhouse, combines consumer interests like TV viewership, and intent (active users follow at least six brands), and reaches a huge mobile audience, crossing networks via hashtag and embedded tweets. It can definitely help brands’ lead generation and product development, going well beyond reputation management!