Being on Twitter and correctly using Twitter to get your message and brand out to the masses are two different things. What we’ve learned here at One Social Media, and what a recent study also concluded is that people are not using Twitter correctly.
Not that big of a shocker.
A study, conducted by Buddy Media, analyzed 320 Twitter handles from the world’s biggest brands between the dates of Dec. 11, 2011 to Feb. 23, 2012.
Five Key Findings:
1. Twitter engagement rates for brands are 17% higher on Saturday and Sunday compared to weekdays (might be a good idea to schedule some of your posts for the weekend!) Currently, only 19% of brands publish tweets on the weekends.
2. Tweeting during the busy hours (8 a.m. to 7 p.m.) receives 30% higher engagement than the “non-busy” hours of 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. You may think this would be reverse, as people would probably have more time when not busy to be tweeting.
3. Want more people to interact with your Tweets? Keep them short. You may have 140 characters, but that doesn’t mean you need to use them all. Tweets with 100 characters or less received 17% higher engagement than longer tweets.
4. Want more re-tweets? Ask for them! The study showed that sometimes, simply having a great tweet won’t get it re-tweeted. Tweets specifically asking followers to “Retweet” (NOT RT) the message received 12 times higher retweet rates than tweets with no call to action. Why spell out “retweet”? The study also showed by spelling it out, your tweet is 23 times more likely to actually get retweeted than a simple RT!
5. Want to really amp up your Twitter? Images are worth a million (well, maybe not that many) retweets and replies. Tweets that contained links to images (even though you can’t always see them within the tweet) received engagement rates two times higher than tweets without image links.
To read over the complete Twitter finding and conclusions, click here.
Want some more Twitter tips? Watch our video on how to Tweet effectively.
