Brafton has reported that social content marketing is a must this year, and brands looking to build a Twitter following may want to mention their locations in their Tweets. Data from Sysmos indicates that Twitter users are getting more neighborhood-conscious.
According to the company’s Update on the State of the TwitterSphere blog entry, Twitter users are increasingly sharing their location information. In 2009, just 44 percent of account holders provided location info, while 73 percent of the site’s 20.3 million users offered this information in 2010.
Marketers may want to plan content for the microblogging site accordingly – Twitter users are growing in number and might prove a valuable audience. Sysmos says 44 percent of the total Twitter population joined the site between January 2009 and August 2010, indicating its rapid growth. Plus, Brafton has reported that Twitter users represent 6 percent of the entire U.S. adult population.
Evidence about Twitter users’ increasing interest in location seems to affirm the idea that consumer behavior will shift toward local searches across platforms this year. Perhaps the smoking gun of local/social’s rise is Google’s repeated articulation that local is its top priority, and Brafton reported that Google exec Marissa Mayer believes social recommendation tool HotPot will help Google get an edge in the location-based market.
