In a new study of how top brands use Twitter, social media analytics firm Simply Measured found 92 percent of brands tweet an average of 12 times a day. Nearly all (98 percent) of top brands are active on Twitter.
The study shows that consumers are eager to follow brands on Twitter. Audiences for top brands grew 20 percent in Q4. Nearly 60 percent of top brands now have followings of 100,000 or more.
Links Increase Engagement 150 Percent
It’s not surprising to see that tweets that include photos and links receive more engagements, but the degree to which they outperform brand averages is impressive. Brand tweets with photos and links see 150 percent more engagement than brand averages. Still just 36 percent of brand tweets contained links.
Images, however, are overwhelmingly the top performing link type in tweets with 210 average engagements per tweet, compared to just 27 for a bit.ly link.
Search Metrics found that the top 10 brands accounted for 60 percent of engagements. The chart below outlining the activity of the top 10 brands is interesting in that it illustrates different brand strategies on Twitter.
The starkest example is probably Pizza Hut. Of the top 10, Pizza Hut had the lowest percentage of tweets with links, with just 8 percent. However, the brand was ahead by far in @replies tweeted to consumers. In fact, out of 34,029 tweets in Q4, 33,659 were @replies. Here’s a recent example of how Pizza Hut engages with consumers:
Contrast Pizza Hut’s stats with the fact that over half (54 percent) of Interbrand companies — those tweeting 12 times a day on average — send just one @reply per day.
Download the complete Simply Measured study here.
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