Getting our @ttention

A newly released white paper gives an interesting perspective on how brands are using Twitter – and how it could be done better.

Digital agency 360i’s ‘Twitter and the Consumer-Marketer Dynamic’ confirms that marketers’ use of Twitter is very different to how regular folk use the platform in their daily lives. The stand-out stats include the fact that only 12% of marketers’ tweets are @replies compared to 43% of consumer tweets – it’s still more about broadcast than conversation for brands. And only 12% of consumer tweets mention a brand, suggesting that there’s still much to do for companies wanting to inspire word of mouth with and about them in the microblogging sphere.

Some brands are of course going to the opposite extreme, such as the Wheat Thins campaign which responds to Twitter mentions about the product with real life deliveries.

This kind of dramatic reactivity can be extremely effective, as we’ve found in our ongoing reactive stream for Nokia, which continually identifies potential advocates and issues through daily WOM monitoring and engages with them with trials, solutions or even lovely surprises.

However, it’s also important to simply stay human and conversational on daily brand presences, sharing news and info but also getting involved with the community, picking up on interesting discussions and letting people know you’re listening and participating.

This doesn’t just mean addressing customer service issues via Twitter, which the likes of Dell and Twelpforce do so well – but engaging with consumers because you think they have something interesting to say.

Yes, it takes resource. But it’s more than worth it. It may not be as exciting as the dramatic stuff but it shows consumers you understand the social space and use it like a regular, conversational person they would be comfortable connecting with – not like a dreaded ‘marketer’.

Brought into the world on Tuesday, August 10th, 2010 and filed under Stats & Research.