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
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Do I Want to Follow Your Brand?

A Survey of Brand Perception on Twitter

Recently Peter Sorgenfrei and Warren Sukernek conducted a survey on Twitter regarding users’ perception of brands on Twitter. We surveyed 240 people with 6 questions regarding interacting with brands. The survey and results are below. A couple of key insights:

• Not surprisingly, most users (89%) agree that brands should engage their customers on Twitter.The majority also have a better impression of brands that use Twitter for customer service (81%).
• Proper usage of Twitter however, is paramount as almost 90% of users would frown upon poor or inappropriate brand use of Twitter.
• The power of a relationship is extremely strong on Twitter. 60% of respondents would recommend a company based on their presence on Twitter and 80% of Twitter users will reward those brands they have key relationships by being more willing to purchase from them.
• Influencers: More than 60% of respondents have 100+ followers and almost 50% of respondents have posted more than 1000 Tweets since they signed up for the service.

Twitter Survey by @warrenss, Twittermaven blog and @researchguy, Sorgenfrei
– attribution appreciated. Documents protected by Creative Commons License.

I'd love to get your thoughts and insights. What did you think of the survey, the results, and most importantly, how companies can join Twitter?

Q1: “I feel brands should engage with their customers on Twitter”

89% of respondents answered favorably (agree or strongly agree) with just under 50% answering agree. Just over 10% of the audience disagreed with the
statement. Thus, the respondents are overwhelmingly in favor of
brands joining Twitter and having conversations with customers. This
should not be surprising as the majority of the respondents are
strong fans of the service.

Q2: “I have a much better impression of companies that use Twitter for customer service”

Eighty-one percent of the respondents either agreed or strongly agreed with the
statement. Just two percent strongly disagreed. Since several
companies such as Comcast, Zappos, Dell, and HR Block have become
notable on Twitter in using the service to resolve customer service
problems, they have made a favorable impression on their peers.

Q3: “I am interested in receiving special offers and coupons from companies on Twitter”

40% of respondents agreed with the statement and just 15% strongly agreed. So although the group was in favor of receiving special offers, there was a very strong dissent. Over 15% of respondents strongly disagreed which was the highest percentage in the entire survey.Twitter users are wary of over promotion and being bombarded with offers and coupons. This is in contrast to Q1, where just under 90% of respondents were very favorable towards a company resence on Twitter. One can conclude that the Twitter community wants dialogue and relationships from their favorite brands, not broadcasted impersonal coupons.

Q4: “If a company uses Twitter poorly or inappropriately, it would affect my overall perception of their brand”

88% of the respondents were in agreement (strongly agree or agree) with this
statement. This statement really resonated with the audience as it received the highest strongly agree score (50.5%) out of the entire survey. Correspondingly, strongly disagree had the lowest score in the entire survey for this question as well. The Twitter community wants to engage in conversation with their brands, but it will not tolerate poor practices from those companies. Although poor or
inappropriate use was not defined in the survey, that is assumed to include broadcasting messages, lack of responses, latency in response, follower spam.

Q5: “I would recommend a company’s product or service based on their
presence/usage of Twitter”

60% of respondents were in favor (strongly agree or agree) with this statement. 16.7% strongly agreed. The strength of the Twitter relationship is such that it can positively impact brand perception and recommendations of that brand. Company Twitter usage and relationships has an impactful word of mouth effect. As seen elsewhere, offline word of mouth activities are affected by online recommendations and experiences.

Q6: I would be more willing to purchase a product/service from a company that has a relationship with me on Twitter”

Over 78% of respondents were in favor (strongly agree or agree) with this
statement. As described in Q5, the power of the relationship on Twitter is very strong. In Q6, the relationship appears to have an even stronger impact than Q5. The audience is more willing to purchase a product than recommend it. Respondents are willing to reward company’s who engage with them on Twitter by purchasing their product or service.

Demographic Questions

Q7: How many followers do you have on Twitter?

This question was fairly distributed with the largest (100-499) at 42% and the smallest (less than 50) at 12.1%

Q8: How many tweets have you posted since signing up for Twitter?

Interestingly, there was a tie for most popular answer between 100-499 and 1000-2999. The fewest respondents had <100. Based on the answers to questions 7 and 8, one can infer that most respondents are experienced Twitter users.

Q9: What is your age range?

Q10: What is your gender?

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