Study: 79% of Twitter Accounts Are Not Actively Used
Lots of cool Twitter statistics coming out of Barracuda Networks new study (pdf).
Where do I start?
- 21% of Twitter users are actually using the service–meaning that have at least 10 followers, follow at least 10 people, and have tweeted at least 10 times.
- 74% of Twitter users have less than 10 followers! However, that number is improving with a 30% increase in the number of users with 10+ followers (since June 2009)
- 60% of Twitter users follow less than 10 people
- 34% of Twitter users have more followers than others they are following, showing an 70% increase from 20% in June 2009
- 73% of users have less than 10 tweets, as compared to 79% in June 2009.
- 49% of Twitter users joined between November 2008 and April 2009–the period when many celebrities jumped on the Twitter bandwagon
- Twitter’s growth spiked at 21% in April 2009
Lastly, who tweets the most? Those with around 1,000 followers do:
I’m guessing that’s the sweet spot of actually being able to engage and keep-up with your followers.
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Twitter Gets Its Own URL Shortener To Stop Scams; Good Marketers Need Not Fear
Twitter has just announced that to protect people from scams, links in direct messages and sent via email will be shortened using its own URL shortener. It’s a welcome move. Still, I was curious about any impacts this might have for good marketers who are not trying to scam people. Good news, on [...]
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Does SEM = SEO + CPC Still Add Up?
I’ve found it annoying that over the years, more and more people use SEM to mean paid search, as if SEM excludes seo. That’s not how I defined SEM — search engine marketing — back 2001. I’d still like to see the original definition retained. But I might be swimming against the tide. Below, how [...]
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7 Tips To Deal With SEO Resource Constraints
I’ve been at companies large and small, fat and lean. Whether the company is two people trying to build a business out of their home, or 10K+ employees at companies like PayPal and Yahoo, no matter what the size of the company, there are always going to be resource constraints.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m the [...]
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Will Twitter Ads Be 140 Characters or Less?
Well folks it looks like the days of advertising free tweeting may finally be coming to an end. The rumors are flying around regarding the ad platform that Twitter has in the works and is testing. Everyone is “atwitter” with this change and for good reason. Of course, until there is more than what has already been released by Twitter itself any ideas / thoughts about what Twitter ads might look like are for the imagination.
MediaPost reports on how this whole thing really started to bubble to the surface.
Twitter plans to launch an advertising platform in about a month, according to Seth Goldstein. The chief executive officer and co-founder of socialmedia.com led a panel Monday focused on the next wave of interactive advertising at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting 2010 in Carlsbad, Calif., that shed light on Twitter’s strategy.
Declining to confirm exactly when Twitter would release the platform, Anamitra Banerji, head of product management and monetization at Twitter, told MediaPost following the panel that “we are working on an ad platform, but it’s only in the test phase.”
So while Seth Goldstein picked up some pub for being the “unofficial” press release of sorts for this next phase of Twitter it is probably too early to speculate on when this will be less talk and more reality. In the meantime let’s see what people are or have been putting out there. The Washington Post reminded us of Robert Scoble’s idea of the SuperTweet he introduced back in November
Robert Scoble, for instance, suggests the idea of a SuperTweet with all sorts of metadata that pops up when part of the message is rolled over with your mouse. This data could include things such as the location of the Tweet and how many times it’s been retweeted, but it could also trigger a contextual ad triggered by certain keywords.
Other questions that need to be considered on how will these ads be paid for. Will there be an AdSense type platform for Twitter users to share in the wealth? Where will the ads appear if they are not in the stream? The list goes on and on.
What are your thoughts on Twitter ads? Are you looking forward to seeing them? Will they impact your Twitter experience? Do you have a particular format that might or might not work for you? Why not join in on the speculation and guessing. Your guess is as valid as the next guy’s right now.
Super Bowl Ad Searches Less Brand Specific
One of the hopes of anyone who paid the money to advertise on this year’s Super Bowl (or any year for that matter) is to generate sales and web traffic. In addition, it would be nice result if the number of searches for your brand went up as well. Based on some research by Hitwise, I suspect that the retention rate for Bud Light commercials run during the game goes down as the consumption rate of Bud Light during the game goes up but that’s my informal theory.
It appears that in the week following a Super Bowl people seem to need a little reminder (or some kind of aggregation) of what ads were run during the big game. Hitwise ran some numbers on searches for Super Bowl ads for the week ending February 13 to see what the search landscape looked like and it was not exactly brand specific.
Some other numbers regarding how brands fared in searches show that it pays to have either a pre-game controversy about your ad (Focus on the Family and Tim Tebow) or have a kid smack down his mom’s date (Doritos) to get a little love in the area of search.
In the end who was the real big winner? Google. Why? Well, approximately 70% whatever searches that were done for anything were done on Google and they didn’t need their ad to make that a reality. That would have happened regardless. Also YouTube was the biggest winner by seeing almost 13 percent of the overall clicks from terms in Hitwise’s portfolio of ads for Super Bowl 2010.
Maybe next year Google should run a YouTube ad to remind everyone that when they are clear of their party they can see the ads there the next day. Heck, they might even make a little money.
In Amazon We Trust While Toyota Is A TBD
Some more Monday morning research for you to consider while getting back into work mode. A report from Millward Brown takes a look at the top trusted brands in the US based on trust and recommendation. These factors are combined into what the researchers call “TrustR” which is a new metric for understanding and strengthening the bond between consumers and brands. In this day and age where trust is more elusive than ever since it appears that saying whatever needs to be said to get out of any situation is more than OK, we will need some measurement of a brand’s trust level.
So who are the big winners according to Millward Brown?
This number was arrived at by using the following formula
TrustR is calculated by looking at consumer responses to the questions “how trustworthy is this brand?” and “would you recommend this brand?” The scores are indexed and combined to reach a TrustR score. The average score is 100, and anything over 105 is considered “good.”
Now, as you can see I have highlighted what I will call the “Toyota factor”. This data was collected before the recall shenanigans of Toyota (who apparently saved some nice coin by holding off any admission of issues) so this says two things. 1) Toyota was definitely a trusted brand before the recall and 2) It’s a safe bet that v2 of this study will be out in short order to see just what Toyota did to their TrustR (sounds painful doesn’t it?).
So what is your opinion of Toyota now that the full story is coming to bear? Would you expect their position in this chart to change after the recall incident? What have they done to the trust in their brand? Will people trust them more (which I have heard from some folks) or will there be suspicion because of the news of their history of delay tactics with regard to safety issues? What will their TrustR score be now?
Cup of Joe: Bonnie Raitt Knows the Secret to Social Media Marketing
The other day I was on Twitter and saw a tweet that really summed up social media marketing. OK, so I know that James is talking more about seo here, but truthfully, giving your audience something to talk about is at the heart of social media marketing. Bonnie Raitt knew this secret in 1991–way before our modern conception of social media existed!
When folks are talking about your content they are talking about your brand. When folks are talking about your content they are sharing your ideas. When folks are talking about your content they are linking to your site. When folks are talking about your content they are strengthening your brand by contributing to the dialog. When folks are talking about your content they are making you money.
Let’s Give them Something To Talk About!
OK, so we know that our content needs to further the dialog, but why is it that some content gets talked about and some just lays there like a dead fish? It’s because most people only like talking about certain things.
People like talking about:
- things that make them laugh.
- things that make them cry.
- things that make them angry.
- things that inspire them.
- things that make them think.
See those social media buttons below this post? Those buttons are useless without engaging content. Without engaging content that people want to talk about or share, those buttons are a waste of space. That’s why here at Marketing Pilgrim we work hard to create content that you want to share with your friends. So next time you are creating content ask yourself, will people talk about this? If not, then don’t expect it to do well in social media.
Until next time, start a conversation with your own content today!
There’s No Right Way To Blog
Until very recently, research company Forrester had been one of the poster-children of people wishing to show how companies have grown their business on the back of a deep understanding of social media.
Its analysts, including Groundswell author Charlene Li, not only produced research on how businesses and consumers were using social media, but also used [...]
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Cup of Joe: I Am a Heartless B@st@rd on Twitter
If you are following me on Twitter or a friend on Facebook you might already be aware that I am a heartless b@st@rd. OK so maybe that’s a bit extreme but the truth is, I think a lot of what mainstream social media users take part in is a waste of time. For example I don’t thank people for retweets, I don’t participate in follow Friday, and I don’t join every Facebook fan page that comes along. Why don’t I do all of these things? Because quite honestly they do very little to help promote my ideas and the people I believe in. And more importantly they add more noise to a medium that is already saturated to the rim with useless content.
In the video above Wanda Sykes talks about why (at the time) she isn’t a member of Facebook. She asks the question “since when did we get so social?” I think that’s a very important question to consider. 5 or 6 years ago if you wanted to connect with a family member or an old friend you might call them or send them a letter. Doesn’t that seem like a more genuine connection than taking a few seconds to approve a friend request on Facebook?
As new media marketers we are expected to bring new ideas and techniques to the table. So much so that I think some times we forget to stop and ask ourselves “is this a good idea?” A lot of marketers will say well what harm can we be doing? It’s just Twitter! The worst possible scenario for any social media marketer is to take a strong brand and make it irrelevant and annoying. Here’s the way I look at it. If you don’t have a clear strategy on how to add value to your brand in social media, they stay out of it! Otherwise you run the risk of adding to the noise and coming a across as ingenuous.
