Firms fail to engage Twitter users

Not enough companies that use Twitter for marketing purposes make an effort to properly engage with potential customers, according to a new study by PR firm immediate future.

Friday, 10 July 2009

The research saw the company examine the Twitter activities of 140 big brands and found that most use the microblogging site as a tool to broadcast information to users.

More than one quarter of these were discovered to adopt a formal tone of voice in these messages and only talk about themselves or their specific sector.

According to immediate future, companies that used Twitter to engage users by talking about their target audience's interests and embracing the free flow of conversation were more likely to see success in the form of more followers, recommendations and participation.

The research also found that while some businesses, like BMW, tweeted about once a month, others such as smoothie maker Innocent did so up to 900 times per week.

"Unless you broadcast really useful tweets such as news and information, you are likely to be perceived as the self centred, crashing bore at the Twitter party," says Katy Howell, managing director at immediate future.

The 12 months to May 2009 brought a 22-fold increase in UK traffic to Twitter, according to web monitoring company Hitwise.

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