Market research firm Pear Analytics has released a new study evaluating how people use Twitter. The results made clear that almost half of all tweets are “pointless babble” or the “I am eating a sandwich now” type messages.
The main question Pear Analytics set out to answer was if Twitter can be used successfully to network with potential customers, or is Twitter simply a means of sharing comments and pictures rather then a platform to influence buyer behaviour and endorse brands.
The study was carried out over a 2 week period, where tweets were divided into six categories depending on their content. The categories included, news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversational and pass-along value.
The study showed that the vast majority of tweets were found to be “pointless babble” (40%), closely followed by conversational tweets at 37%. A distant third of tweets were pass-along value, also know as re-tweets at 8.7%. Self-promotion tweets about products or services from specific brands 5.85% and finally at the bottom of the list spam and news tweets with 3%.
The results from the study were certainly not as anticipated by the organisers and I see myself asking the question should studies such as this really deem Twitter as an ineffective resource for brands? Yes the volumes of tweets created by brands are small, but the effects can be huge.
For instance, multinational technological corporation Dell has been highly successful on Twitter with their strategy to provide a human face of the organisation rather than being a “corporate backwater”. Following their launch on Twitter Dell claims to have earned more than $1 million (£653,000) through the platform which is truly inspirational.
Furthermore, o2 has also adopted a similar strategy by offering personal customers service using twitter employing friendly staff and using a conversational tone where most of its messages are @replies to users.
Twitter allows brands to have on-to-one communication with each user which gives a highly personal impression of a brand. This is a marketing experience hard to accomplish through most marketing channels making Twitter a valuable platform to work with.