Marketers looking to engage social users to gain online brand advocates may be interested to know that active Twitter users are the most influential consumers on the web. A new study from ExactTarget, the Twitter X-Factor, shows that Twitter users are looking to interact with companies, and they are three times more likely than other social followers to impact brands’ online reputations.
The study reveals that Twitter users hold more influence among online shoppers than any other category of internet consumers – 72 percent of them publish blogs and 61 percent write at least one product review per month. Active users are even more likely to shape brands, with those who tweet daily five times more likely to maintain blogs and three times more likely to regularly write product reviews than non-Twitter users.
Notably, these users are actively engaging brands on the platform to learn more about companies. One-fifth of all Twitter users say they have followed a brand, and 90 percent of them said their motivation was getting more information about a business. These respondents said they felt Twitter was the best way to interact with a company, outranking emails and Facebook.
This indicates that the platform offers marketers an invaluable opportunity to connect with consumers who could become important brand advocates. To capitalize on the potential of Twitter users’ word-of-web referrals, marketers should aim to offer consumers the kind of engagement they seek. A study from 360i suggests that brands may gain an edge by actively conversing with followers on the social site.
