97% of Twitter members think brands should engage with customers on Twitter

There have been a lot of studies of Twitter users lately. Have you seen this study by PMN that says only 22% of Gen Y consumers are using Twitter. Or this Harvard Business Review study of 300,000 users reveals that the 10% of Twitter users account for over 90% of Twitter messages sent. The Harvard study also determined that:

• “Men have more more reciprocated relationships, in which two users follow each other.”
• "Men have 15% more followers than women."
• "An average man is almost twice more likely to follow another man than a woman."
• "An average woman is 25% more likely to follow a man than a woman."

Interesting stuff!

Well, I’ve got my own interesting study to share. Recently Peter Sorgenfrei and I conducted a survey of 208 Twitter members to learn their perceptions of brands on Twitter. We asked 6 questions and then some demographic questions. This is a exact repeat of the “Do I want to follow your brand” survey that we ran last fall.

As you can see, 97% of users believe that brands should engage with their customers on Twitter. Other highlights are:

1) The majority also have a better impression of brands that use Twitter for customer service (88%). This is 7 percentage points higher than the original survey.

2) Proper usage of Twitter however, is paramount as 90% of users would frown upon poor or inappropriate brand use of Twitter. This is equivalent to the results found in the original survey.

3) The power of a relationship is extremely strong on Twitter. 80% of respondents would recommend a company based on their presence on Twitter, a huge 20 percentage point increase from the prior survey and 84% of Twitter users will reward those brands they have key relationships by being more willing to purchase from them. This was a 5 percentage point increase from the original survey.

4) Influencers: More than 80% of respondents have 100+ followers and almost 35% of respondents have posted more than 1000 Tweets since they signed up for the service.

Twitter Brand Perception Survey 5 09
Feel free to download the images or slides as well.
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