Customer Experience

By adaptive - August 20th, 2013

The latest research from Brandwatch reveals that a quarter of brands are still using Twitter as a broadcast platform and ignoring its core engagement features.

Brandwatch monitored 253 brands and saw high levels of activity across their Twitter accounts, with 145 brands tweeting 30 times per week. The issue is the content of those tweets, and how these brands view their Twitter feeds. The research did show that nearly 70% of brands use Twitter for broadcast as well as engagement with their customer bases. As you would expect, brands like Disney and ESPN use Twitter for engagement.

Also, there has been an increase in the use of multiple Twitter accounts, with over 60% of brands now using more than one account. This behaviour usually means a brand is using separate feeds for customer service, announcements and engagement. Dell for instance has 44 Twitter accounts! What’s more, there is a massive difference between the UK and US when it comes to tweet quantity. Of the brands monitored, the maximum tweets per week in the US is a massive 2,500. Whereas, in the UK just 113 tweet were sent.

Most brands recognized that Twitter is best utilized as a two-way publishing channel. Just 3% of the brands used Twitter exclusively for engagement, only responding to customer inquiries. Among the 100 most-followed brands, @Notebook, @ESPN, @PlayStation and @Disney engaged the most with their Twitter audiences. UK brands @BBCBreaking, @chelseafc and @arsenal are among those that scored the highest levels of engagement.

One quarter of all brands used Twitter solely as a broadcasting channel, using it in the same way as they do traditional media.

The tools that corporations are using to manage their Twitter accounts is also interesting. A third of brands use just one tool, with the Twitter web interface being the most popular. However, there was no outright winner when it came to the popularity of Twitter tools, with brands regularly switching the tools they use.

At the moment each brand is choosing its own with little in the way of cross-business integration. This can mean messages become confused. Brands should look at their Twitter ecosystem to see how their accounts are managed to offer more insight, and consequently powerful marketing messages that are multifaceted, yet have a common well-defined message.

For brands, Twitter means a number of different things: Customer service, news announcements, sales and discounting plus general engagement with their customer bases. In the future, brands need to further integrate their feeds to offer even deeper insight into consumer profiling. This can then help them develop Twitter into an even more essential tool right across their businesses.