Twitter is more likely to help induce advocacy and future purchases
Value:
Our commentary: This short piece on emarketer.com gives a review of some new research revealing that Twitter followers who “follow” a brand are more valuable at the business level than Facebook fans, who “like”.
For example, daily Twitter users who followed a brand were more than twice as likely as daily Facebook users to say that they felt more likely to purchase from the brand after becoming a social media follower. That pattern is similar when users where asked if the would recommend a brand.
Marketing implications: Although it’s not really a Twitter or Facebook question, we know that marketing and social media success is about more than one channel, or one social network, it does raise the importance of understanding the implications and being alert to these differences in your business, and specifically to your audience.
For some businesses Twitter isn’t so relevant at all. Clearly if Twitter is right for you their are is early evidence here that incentivising people to follower your brand on Twitter could be extremely important, so thinking about how to do that, and what’s in it for your followers would be a key concern.
Recommended link: Are Twitter Followers Better Than Facebook Fans?
Influence of Twitter users
For anyone researching or studying, this more technical study by researchers at Hewlett Packard may be useful, although there aren’t that many specific actionable takeaways. The main findings are:
1. The majority of Twitter users are passive and have limited influence
2. Users with the highest number of followers aren’t necessarily the most influential
3. Their influence algorithm is the best method for fining the influential.
