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During the fourth quarter of 2013, Simply Measured analyzed tweets from the Interbrand 100 and Forbes’ 100 Best Small Companies in America.

Most of the world’s top brands have utilized Twitter as a marketing tool, but some are doing better than others in terms of making the most out of their social media strategies.

Simply Measured, a growing Seattle-based startup, today published an in-depth study of the world’s top brands and their Twitter account activity.

twitterThe report, which analyzed tweets from both the Interbrand 100 and Forbes’ 100 Best Small Companies in America, found that 98 percent of the top brands were active on Twitter during the fourth quarter of 2013, while just 64 percent of small businesses could say the same.

Of the Interbrand 100 companies, 58 percent had at least 100,000 followers, with 17 percent already cracking the 1 million follower mark. For the Forbes’ small companies, 17 percent had at least 5,000 followers, and three percent had 50,000 or more.

The study also looked at what makes a tweet more effective in terms of engagement, as well as frequency habits. About 92 percent of the top brands tweeted more than once per day last quarter, while 44 percent of small business did the same. The top ten Interbrand companies averaged 1,562 tweets per month — more than four times the average of 380 tweets for the entire Interbrand list.

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However, there was low correlation between tweet frequency and follower growth:

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The study also found that both links and visual content are great for engagement on Twitter. Several top 10 brands — eBay, Amazon, Google, and Disney — all post tweets with links over 95 percent of the time.

Tweets that included a “pic.twitter.com” were the highest performing tweets, while “Tumblr.com,” “Pinterest.com,” and “Vine.co,” followed:

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Finally, in terms of replying to individual tweets, 54 percent of Interbrand companies sent less than one “@reply” per day. Simply Measured noted that “while top brands are dedicating resources to brand promotion, many aren’t engaging with users in a one-on-one capacity.”

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Simply Measured, which raised $8 million one year ago, analyzed 129,300 brand tweets, 12.7 million engagements (@replies, mentions, retweets, and favorites), 47,600 links, and 52,700 hashtags for this study.

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